Formation and early days (1968–1969)
Following the breakup of their previous band Mythology in 1968,
guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward sought to form a heavy blues
band in Aston, Birmingham. The group enlisted bassist Geezer Butler and
vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, who had played together in a band called Rare
Breed, Osbourne having placed an advertisement in a local music shop:
“Ozzy Zig requires gig- has own PA”. The new group was initially named
The Polka Tulk Blues Company, after an Indian clothes emporium, and also
featured slide guitarist Jimmy Phillips and saxophonist Alan “Aker”
Clarke. After shortening the name to Polka Tulk, the band changed their
name to Earth, and continued as a four-piece without Phillips and
Clarke.
Earth played club shows in England, Denmark, and Germany; their
set-list consisted of cover songs by Jimi Hendrix, Blue Cheer, and
Cream, as well as lengthy improvised blues jams. In December 1968, Iommi
abruptly left Earth to join Jethro Tull. Although his stint with the
band would be short-lived, Iommi made an appearance with Jethro Tull on
the The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus TV show. Unsatisfied with
the direction of Jethro Tull, Iommi returned to Earth in January 1969.
“It just wasn’t right, so I left”, Iommi said. “At first I thought Tull
were great, but I didn’t much go for having a leader in the band, which
was Ian Anderson’s way. When I came back from Tull, I came back with a
new attitude altogether. They taught me that to get on you got to work
for it.”
While playing shows in England in 1969, the band discovered they were
being mistaken for another English group named Earth, and decided to
change their name again. A movie theatre across the street from the
band’s rehearsal room was showing the 1963 Boris Karloff horror film
Black Sabbath. While watching people line up to see the film, Butler
noted that it was “strange that people spend so much money to see scary
movies”. Following that, Osbourne wrote the lyrics for a song called
“Black Sabbath,” which was inspired by the work of occult writer Dennis
Wheatley, along with a vision that Butler had of a black-hooded figure
standing at the foot of his bed. Making use of the musical tritone,
also known as “The Devil’s Interval”, the song’s ominous sound and dark
lyrics pushed the band in a darker direction, a stark contrast to the
popular music of the late 1960s, which was dominated by flower power,
folk music, and hippie culture. Inspired by the new sound, the band
changed their name to Black Sabbath in August 1969, and made the
decision to focus on writing similar material, in an attempt to create
the musical equivalent of horror films.
Black Sabbath and Paranoid (1970–1971)
Black Sabbath were signed to Philips Records in December 1969, and
released their first single, “Evil Woman” through Philips subsidiary
Fontana Records in January 1970. Later releases were handled by Philips’
newly formed progressive rock label, Vertigo Records. Although the
single failed to chart, the band were afforded two days of studio time
in late January to record their debut album with producer Rodger Bain.
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.”
The eponymous
Black Sabbath was released on Friday the 13th,
February 1970. The album reached number 8 in the UK Albums Chart, and
following its US release in May 1970 by Warner Bros. Records, the album
reached number 23 on the
Billboard 200, where it remained for over a year.
While the album was a commercial success, it was widely panned by critics, with Lester Bangs of
Rolling Stone
dismissing the album as “discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling
like velocitised speedfreaks all over each other’s musical perimeters,
yet never quite finding synch”.
It has since been certified
platinum in both US by the Recording Industry Association of America
(RIAA) and in the UK by British Phonographic Industry (BPI).
To capitalise on their chart success in the US, the band quickly returned to the studio in June 1970, just four months after
Black Sabbath was released. The new album was initially set to be named
War Pigs after the song “War Pigs”, which was critical of the Vietnam War. However Warner changed the title of the album to
Paranoid,
fearing backlash by supporters of the Vietnam War. The album’s lead-off
single “Paranoid” was written in the studio at the last minute. As Bill
Ward explains: “We didn’t have enough songs for the album, and Tony
just played the (Paranoid) guitar lick and that was it. It took twenty,
twenty-five minutes from top to bottom.”
[24] The single was
released ahead of the album in September 1970 and reached number four on
the UK charts, remaining Black Sabbath’s only top ten hit.
[20]
Black Sabbath released their second full-length album,
Paranoid
in the UK in October 1970. Pushed by the success of the “Paranoid”
single, the album hit number one in the UK. The US release was held
until January 1971, as the
Black Sabbath album was still on the charts at the time of
Paranoid’s UK release. The album broke into the top ten in the US in March 1971, and would go on to sell four million copies in the US,
[25] with virtually no radio airplay.
[20] The album was again panned by rock critics of the era, but modern-day reviewers such as
AllMusic’s Steve Huey cite
Paranoid
as “one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all
time”, which “defined the sound and style of heavy metal more than any
other record in rock history”.
[2] Paranoid’s chart
success allowed the band to tour the US for the first time in December
1970, which spawned the release of the album’s second single “Iron Man”.
Although the single failed to reach the top 40, “Iron Man” remains one
of Black Sabbath’s most popular songs, as well as the bands highest
charting US single until 1998′s “Psycho Man”.
Master of Reality and Volume 4 (1971–1973)
In February 1971, Black Sabbath returned to the studio to begin work on their third album. Following the chart success of
Paranoid,
the band were afforded more studio time, along with a “briefcase full
of cash” to buy drugs. “We were getting into coke, bigtime”, Ward
explained. “Uppers, downers, Quaaludes, whatever you like. It got to the
stage where you come up with ideas and forget them, because you were
just so out of it.”
Production completed in April 1971, and in July the band released
Master of Reality, just six months after the release of
Paranoid.
The album reached the top ten in both the US and UK, and was certified
gold in less than two months, eventually receiving platinum
certification in the 1980s and Double Platinum in the early 21
st century.
Master of Reality contained Black Sabbath’s first acoustic songs, alongside fan favourites such as “Children of the Grave” and “Sweet Leaf”.
Critical response of the era was again unfavourable, with Lester Bangs of
Rolling Stone dismissing
Master of Reality
as “naïve, simplistic, repetitive, absolute doggerel”, although the
very same magazine would later place the album at number 298 on their
500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, compiled in 2003.
Following the
Master of Reality world tour in 1972, Black
Sabbath took its first break in three years. As Bill Ward explained:
“The band started to become very fatigued and very tired. We’d been on
the road non-stop, year in and year out, constantly touring and
recording. I think
Master of Reality was kind of like the end of an era, the first three albums, and we decided to take our time with the next album.”
In June 1972, the band reconvened in Los Angeles to begin work on
their next album at the Record Plant. The recording process was plagued
with problems, many as a result of substance abuse issues. While
struggling to record the song “Cornucopia” after “sitting in the middle
of the room, just doing drugs”,
Bill Ward was nearly fired
from the band. “I hated the song, there were some patterns that were
just… horrible” Ward said. “I nailed it in the end, but the reaction I
got was the cold shoulder from everybody. It was like ‘Well, just go
home, you’re not being of any use right now.’ I felt like I’d blown it, I
was about to get fired”.
The album was originally titled
“Snowblind” after the song of the same name, which deals with cocaine
abuse. The record company changed the title at the last minute to
Black Sabbath Vol. 4, with Ward stating “There was no Volume 1, 2 or 3, so it’s a pretty stupid title really”.
Black Sabbath’s
Volume 4 was released in September 1972, and
while critics of the era were again dismissive of the album, it
achieved gold status in less than a month,
and was the band’s fourth consecutive release to sell a million copies in the US. With more time in the studio,
Volume 4 saw the band starting to experiment with new textures, such as strings, piano, orchestration and multi-part songs.
The song “Tomorrow’s Dream” was released as a single—the band’s first since
Paranoid—but
failed to chart. Following an extensive tour of the US, the band
travelled to Australia for the first time in 1973, and later mainland
Europe.
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage (1973–1976)
Following the
Volume 4 world tour, Black Sabbath returned to Los Angeles to begin work on their next release. Pleased with the
Volume 4
album, the band sought to recreate the recording atmosphere, and
returned to the Record Plant studio in Los Angeles. With new musical
innovations of the era, the band were surprised to find that the room
they had used previously at the Record Plant was replaced by a “giant
synthesiser”. The band rented a house in Bel Air and began writing in
the summer of 1973, but in part because of substance issues and fatigue,
they were unable to complete any songs. “Ideas weren’t coming out the
way they were on
Volume 4 and we really got discontent” Iommi
said. “Everybody was sitting there waiting for me to come up with
something. I just couldn’t think of anything. And if I didn’t come up
with anything, nobody would do anything.”
After a month in Los Angeles with no results, the band opted to
return to England, where they rented Clearwell Castle in The Forest of
Dean. “We
Tony
Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne on stage at the California Jam festival on 6
April 1974. Portions of the show were telecast on ABC in the US,
exposing the band to a new audience.
rehearsed in the dungeons and it was really creepy but it had some
atmosphere, it conjured up things, and stuff started coming out again”.
While working in the dungeon, Iommi stumbled onto the main riff of
“Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, which set the tone for the new material.
Recorded at Morgan Studios in London by Mike Butcher and building off
the stylistic changes introduced on
Volume 4, new songs
incorporated synthesisers, strings, and complex arrangements. Yes
keyboardist Rick Wakeman was brought in as a session player, appearing
on “Sabbra Cadabra” .
In November 1973, Black Sabbath released the critically acclaimed
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
For the first time in their career, the band began to receive
favourable reviews in the mainstream press, with Gordon Fletcher of
Rolling Stone calling the album “an extraordinarily gripping affair”, and “nothing less than a complete success”.
Later reviewers such as
AllMusic’s
Eduardo Rivadavia cite the album as a “masterpiece, essential to any
heavy metal collection,” while also displaying “a newfound sense of
finesse and maturity”. The album marked the band’s fifth consecutive
platinum selling album in the US, reaching number four on the UK
charts, and number eleven in the US. The band began a world tour in
January 1974, which culminated at the California Jam festival in
Ontario, California on 6 April 1974. Attracting over 200,000 fans, Black
Sabbath appeared alongside such 70′s pop giants as Emerson, Lake &
Palmer, Deep Purple, Earth, Wind & Fire, Seals & Crofts, and
Eagles. Portions of the show were telecast on ABC Television in the US,
exposing the band to a wider American audience. In 1974, the band
shifted management, signing with notorious English manager Don Arden.
The move caused a contractual dispute with Black Sabbath’s former
management, and while on stage in the US, Osbourne was handed a subpoena
that led to two years of litigation.
Black Sabbath began work on their sixth album in February 1975, again
in England at Morgan Studios in Willesden, this time with a decisive
vision to differ the sound from
Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath. “We
could’ve continued and gone on and on, getting more technical, using
orchestras and everything else which we didn’t particularly want to. We
took a look at ourselves, and we wanted to do a rock album –
Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath wasn’t a rock album, really.” Produced by Black Sabbath and Mike Butcher,
Sabotage was released in July 1975. Again the album initially saw favourable reviews, with
Rolling Stone stating “
Sabotage is not only Black Sabbath’s best record since
Paranoid, it might be their best ever”,
although later reviewers such as Allmusic noted that “the magical chemistry that made such albums as
Paranoid and
Volume 4 so special was beginning to disintegrate”.
Sabotage reached the top 20 in both the US and the UK, but
was the band’s first release not to achieve Platinum status in the US,
having only achieving Gold certification. Although the album’s only
single “Am I Going Insane (Radio)” failed to chart,
Sabotage features fan favourites such as “Hole in the Sky”, and “Symptom of the Universe”.
Black Sabbath toured in support of
Sabotage
with openers Kiss, but were forced to cut the tour short in November
1975, following a motorcycle accident in which Osbourne ruptured a
muscle in his back. In December 1975, the band’s record companies
released a greatest hits record without input from the band, titled
We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘n’ Roll. The album charted throughout 1976, eventually selling two million copies in the US.
Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die! (1976–1979)
Black Sabbath began work for their next album at Criteria Studios in
Miami, Florida, in June 1976. To expand their sound, the band added
keyboard player Gerry Woodruffe, who also appeared to a lesser extent on
Sabotage.
Technical Ecstasy, released on 25 September
1976, was met with mixed reviews. For the first time the reviews did
not become more favorable as time passed, two decades after its release
AllMusic
gave the album two stars, and noted that the band was “unravelling at
an alarming rate”. The album featured less of the doomy, ominous sound
of previous efforts, and incorporated more synthesisers and uptempo rock
songs.
Technical Ecstasy failed to reach the top 50 in the US,
and was the band’s second consecutive release not to achieve platinum
status, although it was later certified gold in 1997.
The
album included “Dirty Women”, which remains a live staple, as well as
Bill Ward’s first lead vocal on the song “It’s Alright”.
Touring in support of
Technical Ecstasy began in November 1976, with openers Boston and Ted Nugent in the US, and completed in Europe with AC/DC in April 1977.
In November 1977, while in rehearsal for their next album, and just
days before the band was set to enter the studio, Ozzy Osbourne quit the
band. “The last Sabbath albums were just very depressing for me”,
Osbourne said. “I was doing it for the sake of what we could get out of
the record company, just to get fat on beer and put a record out.”
Former Fleetwood Mac and Savoy Brown vocalist Dave Walker was brought
into rehearsals in October 1977, and the band began working on new
songs.
Black Sabbath made their first and only appearance
with Walker on vocals, playing an early version of the song “Junior’s
Eyes” on the BBC Television program “Look! Hear!”.
Osbourne initially set out to form a solo project, which featured
ex-Dirty Tricks members John Frazer-Binnie, Terry Horbury, and Andy
Bierne. As the new band were in rehearsals in January 1978, Osbourne had
a change of heart and rejoined Black Sabbath. “Three days before we
were due to go into the studio, Ozzy wanted to come back to the band,”
Iommi explained. “He wouldn’t sing any of the stuff we’d written with
the other guy, so it made it very difficult. We went into the studio
with basically no songs. We’d write in the morning so we could rehearse
and record at night. It was so difficult, like a conveyor belt, because
you couldn’t get time to reflect on stuff. ‘Is this right? Is this
working properly?’ It was very difficult for me to come up with the
ideas and putting them together that quick.”
The band spent five months at Sounds Interchange Studios in Toronto, Canada, writing and recording what would become
Never Say Die!. “It took quite a long time,” Iommi said. “We were getting really
Tony Iommi in 2005.
drugged out, doing a lot of dope. We’d go down to the sessions, and
have to pack up because we were too stoned, we’d have to stop. Nobody
could get anything right, we were all over the place, everybody’s
playing a different thing. We’d go back and sleep it off, and try again
the next day.” The album was released in September 1978, reaching
number twelve in the UK, and number 69 in the US. Press response was
again unfavourable and again did not improve over time with Eduardo
Rivadavia of
AllMusic stating two decades after its release
that the album’s “unfocused songs perfectly reflected the band’s tense
personnel problems and drug abuse.” The album featured the singles
“Never Say Die” and “Hard Road”, both of which cracked the top 40 in the
UK, and the band made their second appearance on the Top of the Pops,
performing “Never Say Die”. It took nearly 20 years for the album to be
certified Gold in the US.
Touring in support of
Never Say Die! began in May 1978 with
openers Van Halen. Reviewers called Black Sabbath’s performance “tired
and uninspired”, a stark contrast to the “youthful” performance of Van
Halen, who were touring the world for the first time. The band filmed a
performance at the Hammersmith Odeon in June 1978, which was later
released on DVD as
Never Say Die. The final show of the tour,
and Osbourne’s last appearance with the band (until later reunions) was
in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 11 December.
Following the tour, Black Sabbath returned to Los Angeles and again
rented a house in Bel Air, where they spent nearly a year working on
material for the next album. With pressure from the record label, and
frustrations with Osbourne’s lack of ideas coming to a head, Tony made
the decision to fire Ozzy Osbourne in 1979. “At that time, Ozzy had come
to an end”, Iommi said. “We were all doing a lot of drugs, a lot of
coke, a lot of everything, and Ozzy was getting drunk so much at the
time. We were supposed to be rehearsing and nothing was happening. It
was like ‘Rehearse today? No, we’ll do it tomorrow.’ It really got so
bad that we didn’t do anything. It just fizzled out.”
Drummer Bill Ward, who was close with Osbourne, was chosen by Tony to
break the news to the singer. “I hope I was professional, I might not
have been, actually. When I’m drunk I am horrible, I am horrid,” Ward
said. “Alcohol was definitely one of the most damaging things to Black
Sabbath. We were destined to destroy each other. The band were toxic,
very toxic.”
Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules (1979–1982)
Sharon Arden, (later Sharon Osbourne) daughter of Black Sabbath
manager Don Arden, suggested former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio to
replace Ozzy Osbourne in 1979. Dio officially joined in June, and the
band began writing their next album. With a notably different vocal
style from Osbourne’s, Dio’s addition to the band marked a change in
Black Sabbath’s sound. “They were totally different altogether”, Iommi
explains. “Not only voice-wise, but attitude-wise. Ozzy was a great
showman, but when Dio came in, it was a different attitude, a different
voice and a different musical approach, as far as vocals. Dio would sing
across the riff, whereas Ozzy would follow the riff, like in “Iron Man”. Ronnie came in and gave us another angle on writing.”
Geezer Butler temporarily left the band in September 1979, and was
initially replaced by Geoff Nicholls of Quartz on bass. The new lineup
returned to Criteria Studios in November to begin recording work, with
Butler returning to the band in January 1980, and Nicholls moving to
keyboards. Produced by Martin Birch,
Heaven and Hell, was released on 25 April 1980, to critical acclaim. Over a decade after its release
AllMusic said the album was “one of Sabbath’s finest records, the band sounds reborn and re-energised throughout”.
Heaven and Hell peaked at number 9 in the UK, and number 28 in the US, the band’s highest charting album since
Sabotage. The album eventually sold a million copies in the US,
and the band embarked on an extensive world tour, making their first live appearance with Dio in Germany on April 17, 1980.
Black Sabbath toured the US throughout 1980 with Blue Öyster Cult on
the “Black and Blue” tour, with a show at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale,
New York filmed and released theatrically in 1981 as
Black and Blue.
On 26 July 1980, the band played to 75,000 fans at a sold-out Memorial
Coliseum in Los Angeles with Journey, Cheap Trick, and Molly Hatchet.
The next day, the band appeared at the 1980 Day on the Green at Oakland
Coliseum. While on tour, Black Sabbath’s former label in England issued
a live album culled from a seven-year old performance, entitled
Live at Last
without any input from the band. The album reached number five on the
British charts, and saw the re-release of “Paranoid” as a single, which
reached the top 20.
Vocalist Ronnie James Dio
On 18 August 1980, after a show in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Bill Ward
was fired from Black Sabbath. “I was sinking very quickly”, Ward later
said. “I was an unbelievable drunk, I was drunk twenty-four hours a day.
When I went on stage, the stage wasn’t so bright. It felt like I was
dying inside. The live show seemed so bare, Ron was out there doing his
thing and I just went ‘It’s gone’. I like Ronnie, but musically, he just
wasn’t for me. “
Concerned with Ward’s declining health,
Iommi brought in drummer Vinny Appice, without informing Ward. “They
didn’t talk to me, they booted me from my chair and I wasn’t told about
that. I knew they’d have to bring in a drummer to save the (tour), but
I’d been with the band for years and years, since we were kids. And then
Vinny was playing and it was like ‘What the fuck?’ It hurt a lot.”
The band
