Black Sabbath's first album carved out the template for heavy metal
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article7025730.ece
Pete Paphides
February 13, 2010
If Black Sabbath's eponymous debut album invented heavy metal, it was
more by accident than design. When I interviewed him in 1995, Ozzy
Osbourne confessed that his group's fascination with the occult was
partly born of simple opportunism.
"We used to rehearse across the road from a picture house and Tommy
[Iommi, the guitarist] said: "Don't you think it's strange how people
pay money to get frightened? Why don't we start writing horror music?
And that's what happened."
In 1968, when Black Sabbath were formed, it wasn't altogether clear
that a gap in the market existed for a group of Brummie Satanist
rockers. But two years later, when the album appeared, its timing was
immaculate.
Flower power had faded to grey. Open-air festivals in profoundly
unlovely locations such as Plumpton and Maidstone hosted bearded
blues-rockers like Grimsby Dyke, Hard Meat and the Groundhogs. More
than any other band, Black Sabbath were emblematic of an era that
wanted nothing to do with the summer of love or the 1960s.
The unrelenting heaviosity of standouts from Black Sabbath in
particular N.I.B. and Warning have ensured that the album remains
something of a lodestone to groups such as Metallica, Slayer, Anvil
and, more recently, Flaming Lips and Arctic Monkeys.
If Sabbath weren't Satanists to start with, the stories surrounding
the creation of the album's signature song suggest they warmed to the role.
The pummelling brutality of Black Sabbath's title track was
apparently borne of an episode in which bassist Geezer Butler who
had painted the walls of his room black and bedecked it with
upside-down crucifixes was given a book on witchcraft by Osbourne.
Butler read it, went to sleep and woke up to find a dark, shadowy
figure at the end of his bed. When the figure disappeared, Butler
went to get the book, only to find that it had gone.
Sceptics may counter that the figure might have just been someone
going in to get the book.
Be that as it may, nothing at this stage can detract from the
mythical status that the album has accrued.
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Heavy Metal milestone is 40 years old
http://www.therockradio.com/2010/02/heavy-metal-milestone-is-40-years-old.html
February 13, 2010
Saturday, February 13, marks the 40th anniversary of the self-titled
debut album by Tony Iommi (guitar), Ozzy Osbourne (lead vocals),
Terry "Geezer" Butler (bass), and Bill Ward (drums and percussion);
Black Sabbath.
Originally released in the UK on Friday, February 13, 1970, this
seminal album in rock music is hugely credited with the development
of the heavy metal genre.
Interestingly, what was to become one of the most influential albums
of all time, was dismissed by most critics at the time. Rolling Stone
magazine felt Black Sabbath was "just like Cream [the band]. But
worse; a shuck - despite the murky songtitles 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 clichés". The
self-proclaimed Dean of American Rock Critics Robert Christgau wrote
that the album was all about "the worst of the counterculture,
bullsh*t necromancy, drug-impaired reaction time, long solos, everything".
But the story continues. Long live rock and metal!
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