<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Black Sabbath have called it a day, but they won\u2019t disappear anytime soon.\u00a0 Classic Rock radio and magazines will continue to play their music and talk about their legacy.\u00a0 The last time I visited Amoeba Music in Los Angeles in 2013 (just prior to the WOAS West Coast Bureau relocating to Oregon), I picked up a copy of their final studio album together, <\/span>13.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>The twenty-something clerk looked over the counter and said, \u201cOh, is that new?\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know they had a new album.\u00a0 I will have to check it out.\u00a0 I love Sabbath.\u201d\u00a0 As she bagged my purchases, I casually mentioned that I had played <\/span>Paranoid<\/span><\/i> in my high school band back in 1970.\u00a0 She looked me over one last time, apparently searching for just the right thing to tell the old guy who was buying a variety of blues CDs along with Black Sabbath\u2019s <\/span>13.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>All she was able to come up with was, \u201cWow!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We did play <\/span>Paranoid<\/span><\/i> in The Twig back in 1970, but only once.\u00a0 The truth be told, it was at a rehearsal in my folk\u2019s basement and a kid who wanted to join our trio taught it to us on the spot. I had never heard the song before that evening but it was pretty basic and fun to play.\u00a0 In fact, it took some time before I heard it on the radio and learned it was by a new English band called Black Sabbath.\u00a0 In the end, we decided to stay a trio and <\/span>Paranoid<\/span><\/i> never made our playlist.\u00a0 The band would remain off my radar until 1973 when my buddy Mitch upgraded his car tape player from 8-track to cassette.\u00a0 He gave me his old player and a box of 8-track tapes which went straight into my beater of a Chevy Bel Aire and later into my Chevy pickup truck.\u00a0 These tunes kept me awake on many of my late night commutes between band jobs in Marquette and my summer job at the Huron Mountain Club.\u00a0 Among Mitch\u2019s stash of 8-track tapes was Sabbath\u2019s 1973 release <\/span>Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>I liked what I heard on the album but did not get interested in their back catalog until they released a compilation of their work in 1975 entitled <\/span>We Sold Our Souls For Rock and Roll.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I have been a fan ever since, but never got deep enough to go back to the albums that sourced the music found on <\/span>WSOSFR&R<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 WOAS-FM\u2019s West Coast Bureau musicologist, Todd,\u00a0 recently sent a pile of music he had been collecting for me during the COVID-19 lockdown.\u00a0 Among the dozen CDs he sent were the second and fourth Black Sabbath records, <\/span>Paranoid <\/span><\/i>(1970) and <\/span>Vol. 4 <\/span><\/i>(1972).\u00a0 I took this to be an omen:\u00a0 it is time to talk about the origins of one of the most iconic, pioneering, and heavy bands to come out of the late 1960s.\u00a0 Contrary to the various urban legends that have grown up around the band, they weren\u2019t pushing Satanism<\/span> any more than The Rolling Stones were when they put out <\/span>Their Satanic Majesties Request <\/span><\/i>in 1967.\u00a0 They were trying to sell records and as sometimes happens, they created their own niche in the music biz.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Black Sabbath began as one of many blues based boogie bands that existed in the gritty factory town of Birmingham, England in the later half of the 1960s.\u00a0 When Savoy Brown recorded their 1990 <\/span>Live And Kickin\u2019<\/span><\/i> album in New York City, guitarist Kim Simmonds introduced singer Dave Walker by describing his hometown, Birmingham, as, \u201cA grim, \u2018orrible place that has produced some of the best blues singers in the world,\u201d (to which Walker added, \u201cAnd a lot of really good bricklayers!\u201d). \u00a0 John Osbourne\u2019s audition for the band was driven more by the public address system the band needed and the convicted and newly reformed burglar owned.\u00a0 That Ozzy could actually sing was a bonus when he was asked to join the band now known as Earth.\u00a0 Ozzy later recalled, \u201cI was a terrible burglar and I got sent to prison when I was 17.\u00a0 When someone said \u2018Why not try being a singer,\u2019 I said, \u2018Sure, why not\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 In the liner notes for the 2016 reissue of the band\u2019s second release,\u00a0 the author described the band in 1971 (before they became identified by\u00a0 \u201cThe devil-came-down-to-Birmingham lyrics, inverted crosses and suchlike,\u201d) as a band searching for an identity.\u00a0 Bassist Geezer Butler and Osbourne had worked together in The Polka Tulk Blues Band.\u00a0 Guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward were mates in the band Mythology.\u00a0 When they came together as Earth, all of the elements that would become Black Sabbath were now in place.\u00a0 A new name was in order when they discovered there was another band called Earth playing the small-time English music circuit.\u00a0 A fan of horror films, Butler suggested Black Sabbath, the name of a popular Boris Karloff movie.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Guitarist Tony Iommi fancied himself a drummer as a teen, but switched instruments when the excessive noise created by drums was weighed against the quieter guitar.\u00a0 The left hander thought his career was done before it had really started when at age 17, he lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers on his right hand working in a sheet metal factory.\u00a0 When told he would never be able to play with his fretboard hand so damaged, he was resigned to a guitarless future.\u00a0 His glum view was reversed when his factory work foreman played him a jazz record by Django Reihhardt.\u00a0 He told Iommi, \u201cYou know, the guy\u2019s only playing with two fingers on his fretboard hand because of an injury he sustained in a terrible fire.\u201d\u00a0 This inspired Iommi who first considered switching to playing right-handed as he hadn\u2019t been playing all that long:\u00a0 \u201cI did have a go at [playing right-handed], but I just didn\u2019t have the patience.\u00a0 It seemed impossible to me.\u00a0 I decided to make do with what I had, and I made some plastic fingertips for myself.\u00a0 I just persevered with it.\u201d\u00a0 The use of light-gauge strings helped him work around his injured fingers.\u00a0 It also forced Iommi to use all of his fingers more.\u00a0 When Tony later began tuning down his guitar to lower pitches, it not only made the strings easier to bend, but it also paved the way for the bigger, heavier sound that would become Black Sabbath\u2019s signature sound.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Butler acquired the name \u2018Geezer\u2019 as a lad from his habit of calling all adult men \u2018geezers\u2019.\u00a0 Originally a rhythm guitar player in the John Lennon mode before joining Black Sabbath, he switched to bass because Iommi did not want to have two guitars in the band.\u00a0 Butler later explained, \u201cI\u2019d never played bass until I was on stage at the first gig that we played.\u00a0 Borrowed the bass guitar off one of my friends and it only had three strings on it.\u201d\u00a0 His love for mythological and horror books and films, Geezer became the band\u2019s primary lyricist.\u00a0 This kind of flies in the face of his original career studies to become an accountant.\u00a0 His schooling wasn\u2019t wasted as he ended up managing the band\u2019s finances in the early days.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As previously mentioned, Bill Ward came to the band along with Tony Iommi.\u00a0 A fan of big band drummers like Gene Kruppa, Buddy Rich, and Joe Morello, Bill himself became a gifted drummer.\u00a0 For some reason Ward was the butt of many a practical joke like the time he agreed to let Iommi squirt him with lighter fluid and set him ablaze.\u00a0 Luckily this episode didn\u2019t end his life, let alone his career.\u00a0 Never one to over imbibe before he joined Black Sabbath, Ward ended up shortening his tenure with the band through excessive consumption of alcohol and other substances.\u00a0 He also missed a final chance for a reunion with his Sabbath bandmates when he made contract demands\u00a0 the rest of the band would not agree to.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Their self-titled first album was pounded out in two days with a budget of only 600 pounds.\u00a0 Amazingly, the album, \u201ccrashed into the album charts in both Britain and America,\u201d\u00a0 according to Wells\u2019 liner notes:\u00a0 \u201cEven by the elevated standards of the music industry – where, as Sabbath fan David St. Hubbins (of Spinal Tap fame) once sagely observed, \u2018there\u2019s such a thin line between clever and stupid\u2019 – it was an amzaing transformation.\u201d\u00a0 The problem was what to do next.\u00a0 There is such a thing as the \u2018second album syndrome\u2019 where an artist shapes their first album over many years of rehearsal and gigs then has to write a follow up in a few months.\u00a0 With the success of <\/span>Black Sabbath<\/span><\/i>, the band found itself crisscrossing Europe in a Transit van on a schedule of live shows not planned with the band\u2019s health and well being in mind.\u00a0 Such mismanagement can make some bands implode, but Sabbath managed to make it work to their advantage.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0According to Iommi, their second album began taking shape because of their insane schedule:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe were on tour for a bit after the first record.\u00a0 We had a stint at a club in Zurich, where we\u2019d start at three in the afternoon and play seven 45-minute sets – for six weeks!\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have enough songs, so we\u2019d keep playing the same things, which got really boring.\u00a0 So we used that time to start jamming and making up things.\u00a0 That\u2019s when <\/span>War Pigs<\/span><\/i> came about, just jamming there.\u00a0 We\u2019d start playing something, somebody would say, \u2018Oh, I like that,\u2019 and then we\u2019d make it into a song. \u00a0 At the end of the six-week period, we had two or three real songs to start the new album with.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>War Pigs<\/span><\/i> began as a tune originally called <\/span>Walpurgis<\/span><\/i> in reference to the Witches\u2019 Sabbath.\u00a0 The one dimensional marketing campaign for the <\/span>Black Sabbath<\/span><\/i> album branded the band in the media (\u2018demonized\u2019 is the word Wells used).\u00a0 This in turn made their record label nervous and the band uncomfortable.\u00a0 Iommi sums it up with an apt phrase:\u00a0 \u201cWhen the woodwork squeaks, out come the freaks.\u201d\u00a0 The band purposely steered away from the witchy subject matter and remolded their soon to be epic song into <\/span>War Pigs.\u00a0 <\/span><\/i>The song was destined to be the album show piece and namesake, but then something odd happened as the album was nearly complete.\u00a0 The band broke for lunch and Iommi, the riffmeister that he was, sat noodling about in the studio.\u00a0 When the band got back, Ward confirms, \u201cHe was playing it on his own,\u00a0 Geezer plugged in his bass, I sat behind my drum kit, we automatically grooved with him and Ozzy started singing.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t say a word to each other, we just came into the room and started playing.\u00a0 I think it was about one-thiry in the afternoon,\u00a0 Tony had the riffs, and by two o\u2019clock, we had <\/span>Paranoid<\/span><\/i> exactly as you hear it on the record.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The last minute addition to the already recorded songs for the album was just too good to leave in the dust bin, but it took some convincing from producer Roger Bain to get them to even include it on the record:\u00a0 \u201cI remember pressing the talkback and saying words to the effect of, \u2018That\u2019s pretty good.\u00a0 What is that?\u2019 and sort of getting disbelief.\u00a0 \u2018You\u2019re joking\u2019 they said, \u2018We\u2019re just messing around.\u00a0 We just made it up.\u2019\u00a0 I said, \u2018that\u2019s great – let\u2019s do it!\u2019\u201d\u00a0 The band thought the final product was a bit too pop for them, but in the end, it became the lead single for the still unnamed album.\u00a0 It was released in mid-July and by the second week of October, it peaked at Number 4 on the charts.\u00a0 The surprise hit single from a band that did not write hit singles landed them an appearance on <\/span>Top of the Pops<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 It also sent the record company scrambling before the album could be released.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I often wondered what Sabbath was trying to say with the cover art for the second album.\u00a0 The record company rightly decided to tie the album to the hit single and named it <\/span>Paranoid.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 It turns out the last minute change did not give them time to reshoot the cover photo that had been done for the LP\u2019s intended original title:\u00a0 <\/span>War Pigs.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Of course, I never did connect the bearded, motorcycle helmet wearing man with a red sash brandishing a sword and shield with the song <\/span>War Pigs.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 The image was some label guy\u2019s vision of what a War Pig would look like.\u00a0 With the war in Vietnam still making daily headlines, the reworked lyrics fit right into the public\u2019s anti-war sentiment, but the image did not exactly remind one of anything remotely military.\u00a0 Until recently, I could not make heads nor tails out of how this image evoked the \u2018paranoia\u2019 hinted at by the album\u2019s release title, but now it makes a little more sense.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Paranoid<\/span><\/i> came out on September 18, 1970 (the day Jimi Hendrix died) and bounded up the charts thanks to the unexpected success of the single.\u00a0 It knocked Simon & Garfunkel\u2019s <\/span>Bridge Over Troubled Water<\/span><\/i> LP from the top spot on the charts and revived sales of <\/span>Black Sabbath.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 By the end of 1970, both titles would appear on the top twenty best selling albums of the year list with <\/span>Paranoid<\/span><\/i> reaching No. 14 and <\/span>Black Sabbath<\/span><\/i> clocking in at No. 20.\u00a0 Album sales alone did not totally alleviate the \u2018weird and freaky\u2019 business that came with their success..<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On the basis of the record company marketing of the first album, a character named Alex Sanders began coming to their shows.\u00a0 As the \u2018head witch\u2019 in England, Sanders began inviting them to meetings of his little group (which they politely declined).\u00a0 When Sabbath turned down an offer to perform a concert at Stonehenge to celebrate Walpurgis Night, Sanders supposedly put a hex on the band.\u00a0 Taking no chances, Ozzy\u2019s father, Jack, began fashioning crucifixes for them to wear to ward off any evil spirits.\u00a0 Ward remembers the events leading up to the crucifix wearing in a slightly different context:\u00a0 \u201cJack began making the crosses for us when he learned we were all having mutual dreams – we were all being visited by monks in our dreams.\u00a0 I believed they were there to help us in our journeys and keep us safe and out of harm\u2019s way.\u00a0 Making those crosses was a gesture of love from Jack.\u201d\u00a0 The record buying public didn\u2019t hear this angle so they interpreted the band\u2019s jewelry choices in more sinister ways.\u00a0 If one needs to separate themselves from the pack, so to speak, even publicity hinting at the band\u2019s so-called \u2018dark side\u2019 stirred interest.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As far as a sophomore jinx, <\/span>Paranoid<\/span><\/i> was anything but.\u00a0 As Geezer explained it, \u201cOn the first album, we didn\u2019t really know what we were doing, When you write your first album, you\u2019re influenced by all the stuff that\u2019s going on around you, and I think each one of us brought our own particular style into the music that we did.\u00a0 So in the beginning, all the different influences you\u2019ve had up until then came together on one album, and from there, it gets into this one sound rather than lots of different things.\u00a0 When you realize that you\u2019ve got your own sound, then you can just pick up on that, and keep it in one direction.\u00a0 For me, that first happened on <\/span>Paranoid<\/span><\/i>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The future would see more albums, dark times, successful tours, a revolving door of band members, break ups, reunions, and all the attendant drama of being a major league rock band.\u00a0 As for 1970, we will leave the last word to Ozzy:\u00a0 \u201cAfter all these years, it amazes me how people\u2019s perception can get so distorted over the years.\u00a0 In the end, it was really down to four people:\u00a0 Iommi, myself, Butler, and Ward.\u00a0 We had a magic, we had vulnerability, and we were hungry.\u00a0 We were nothing without each other, but together we were Black Sabbath, which was unstoppable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 The golden age of Black Sabbath – or is this during one of the reunions?\u00a0 WICKED WORLD performed in the studio – judging by the age on Ozzy’s face, it was later day BS<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Black Sabbath have called it a day, but they won\u2019t disappear anytime soon.\u00a0 Classic Rock radio and magazines will continue to play their music and talk about their legacy.\u00a0 The last time I visited Amoeba Music in Los Angeles in 2013 (just prior to the WOAS West Coast Bureau relocating to Oregon), I picked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-from-the-vaults","category-new-music","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2271"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2334,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271\/revisions\/2334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}