Black Sabbath | Heavy Metal Is Born

Black Sabbath

In 1968 when four Englishmen from the dirty industrial town of Birmingham, England joined forces and formed The Polka Tulk Blues Band, Heavy Metal history was about to be written, well almost. They shortened the name to Polka Tulk and the rest is history, well not quite. They dropped the slide guitarist and sax player that made up the sextet, decided to change their name to Earth and and the legend was born, not quite, we are almost there. Vocalist, John Michael (Ozzy) Osbourne, guitarist, Frank Anthony (Tony) Iommi, bassist, Terence Michael Joseph (Geezer) Butler, and drummer, William Thomas (Bill) Ward found themselves being confused for another band in England with the same name. So they decided to adapt the title of a Boris Karlof horror film that was playing across the street from their rehearsal room and called themselves Black Sabbath, now the greatest Heavy Metal band ever, was born.

Let the Metal begin

Okay, the players are in place and the name has been established, now what about the music. With the Summer of love (1967), flower power and hippies fading, the band decided along with their horror film influenced name that they wanted to be “The scariest band ever.” Incorporating the musical equivalent of the “Devils Music” the Tritone, (a musical interval that spans three whole notes) and dark lyrics based on nightmares and horror movie themes, the band began to write songs that would start a musical genre so powerful that after 40 years it is still going strong today.

Another event that contributed to Sabbath’s heavy dark sound was something that had happened years earlier. In an industrial accident at the age of 17 on his last day of work in a sheet metal factory (that’s right a metal factory), Tony lost the tips of the middle and ring finger of his right hand. Iommi considered abandoning music, but his boss (who knew of Iommi’s “night job” as a pub band guitar player) encouraged him to reconsider by playing a record by jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, who earned wide acclaim despite limited use of his fretting hand following an injury.

After attempting to learn to play right-handed, Iommi strung his guitars with extra-light strings (using banjo strings, which were a lighter gauge than even the lightest guitar-strings of the time) and wore plastic covers over the two damaged fingers. By melting plastic liquid-soap bottles into a ball and then using a soldering iron to make holes into this ball, Iommi placed his fingers in the hole while the plastic was still soft enough to be shaped. He then trimmed and sanded away the excess plastic to leave himself with two thimbles, which he then covered with leather, to provide better grip on the strings.

Scary!

February 13th, 1970 is the day that the world was introduced to Heavy Metal music, well at least the U.K. was (the album was released in the U.S. June 1st, 1970). February 13th in 1970 was a Friday, that’s right “Friday the 13th,” whether it was a coincidence or brilliant marketing, no one really knows, just another event that proved the Metal Gods above had picked their band. According to the Godfather of Heavy Metal guitar, Tony Iommi, this historic album was recorded in one day,

“We just went in the studio and did it in a day, we played our live set and that was it. We actually thought a whole day was quite a long time, then off we went the next day to play for £20 in Switzerland. Iommi recalls recording live: “We thought, we have two days to do it and one of the days is mixing.’ So we played live. Ozzy was singing at the same time, we just put him in a separate booth and off we went. We never had a second run of most of the stuff.”

Musically and lyrically the album was considered quite “dark” for the time. The first song on the album ‘Black Sabbath’ is based on a “figure in black” which bass player Geezer Butler saw after waking up from a nightmare.

Black Sabbath

Similarly, the lyrics of the song “N.I.B.” are written from the point of view of Lucifer. Contrary to popular belief, the name of that song is not an acronym for “Nativity In Black”. Tony Iommi said in several interviews that it is merely a reference to drummer Bill Ward’s pointed goatee at the time, which was shaped as a pen-nib.

Lyrics of two other songs on the album were written about supernatural-themed stories. “Behind the Wall of Sleep” is a reference to the H. P. Lovecraft short story Beyond the Wall of Sleep, while “The Wizard” was inspired by the character of Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings. The latter includes harmonica performed by vocalist Ozzy Osbourne.

Both the songs “Warning” and “Evil Woman” (included on the U.K. version only) are covers of blues songs, with lyrics regarding relationships. The first was written and performed by Aynsley Dunbar’s Retaliation, and the second was written and performed by the band Crow.

Some people just don’t get it

Now the significance of this event was of course not recognized by many in the main stream media, and the reviews were not favorable. Check out this Review by Rolling Stone magazine writer Lester Bangs, man did he miss the boat, this guy hates Cream and Black Sabbath:

In the industrial side of Cream country lie unskilled laborers like Black Sabbath, which was hyped as a rockin’ ritual celebration of the Satanic mass or some such claptrap, something like England’s answer to Coven. Well, they’re not that bad, but that’s about all the credit you can give them. The whole album is a shuck—despite the murky song titles and some inane lyrics that sound like Vanilla Fudge paying doggerel tribute to Aleister Crowley, the album has nothing to do with spiritualism, the occult, or anything much except stiff recitations of Cream cliches that sound like the musicians learned them out of a book, grinding on and on with dogged persistence. Vocals are sparse, most of the album being filled with plodding bass lines over which the lead guitar dribbles wooden Claptonisms from the master’s tiredest Cream days. They even have discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitized speedfreaks all over each others musical perimeters yet never quite finding sync—just like Cream! But worse.

Robert Christgau, critic and music editor for The Village Voice for 37 years in New York gave the album a C- and hated the Heavy Metal genre.

When my older brother brought this album home and placed it on our parents console stereo (you know, the one that had everything built into a large furniture type body, T.V., Stereo, record player) and cranked it up, I was blown away (I was only 11 at the time) but it was so powerful and so scary, that I have been hooked on Hard Rock and Heavy Metal music ever since.

Even after Black Sabbath established the Heavy Metal genre with the release of this landmark record and the many more that followed, and were considered to be a brilliant, innovative and influential band by pretty much everyone that had anything to do with the genre they created and even some that didn’t, they still weren’t respected by some in the industry. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in all it’s wisdom, didn’t induct the band until ten years after they were eligible.