ABlairican Pie's Record Review Restrospective: Black Sabbath

[ABlairican Pie]

Quite a while back, we had a look at the record catalog of the band Rush. We're now looking at the band that began heavy metal, the one and only Black Sabbath. We'll look at the band's 49-year career with their albums that influenced a generation, the good, the bad, the highs and lows (operative word: HIGH, which we'll get into), and material that is rather surprising.

The first album, the self-titled debut, 'Black Sabbath', released on February 13, 1970 (a Friday, which is significant), was recorded in twelve hours on a limited recording budget. The opening track, also called "Black Sabbath", is considered the first official heavy metal song, according to many critics. The tolling of the church bell in a thunderstorm, and the infamous tritone of the song's riff, which was known in medieval church music as Diabolus In Musica, or The Devil's Interval. The three notes were so jarring and unsettling, and a perfect introduction to the young band from Birmingham, England. These notes were also used in "Purple Haze" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The lyrics describe people being summoned by Satan for earthly pleasures in a Faustian bargain. An adequate way to describe the business of rock and roll.
The track ends with a climactic jump-blues outro. The song was so effective in the band's early pub days when they played it that everyone, including wait staff stood to watch the band play this unearthly song, and they got quite a reaction with Ozzy's howl.

The second song, "The Wizard", is the only song to feature Ozzy on harmonica. The lyrics are about a magical figure bringing happiness to people, perhaps he is a Christ figure, it is not clear. But the song appears to have influenced the song "Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll" by Blue Oyster Cult, America's alleged answer to Black Sabbath a few years later (which is another story altogether, in ten years).

"Wasp" and "Behind the Wall Of Sleep" incorporate a call-and-response technique in blues, where the vocals are followed by a guitar riff in succession. "Faces cupped within the flower" (guitar) "Deadly petals with strange power" (guitar), etc. And the riff is haunting and full of menace.
As Bill Ward's drums fade out, the bass solo by Geezer Butler ("Bassically") segues into one of the band's most notable songs, "N.I.B." The song is thought to have been named after an acronym meaning "Nativity In Black", as was the title of a Black Sabbath covers compilation in 1994, but it in fact is a reference to Bill Ward's beard resembling the nib of a pen. The band did something that was unheard of at the end of the 1960's: write a love song from the point of view of the Devil! "Your love for me has got to be real..." "My name is Lucifer, please take my hand." Such themes are rife within metal for decades, but in those days this was unthinkable. A far cry from The Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand".

[ABlairican Pie]

The second half of the debut Black Sabbath album featured much of Tony Iommi's guitar playing. The album continued with "Wicked World", which starts out as a fast, jazzy piece before resuming the dark, somber riff of the main lyric. The song describes such grim circumstances in today's society as pollution, war, and fatherlessness. This stood in stark contrast to the happy-hippie utopia promised during the flower power era where peace would prevail and love and sunshine would reign. Yet the members of Black Sabbath saw things much differently.
Halfway through the song, Tony Iommi's guitar goes through two extremes, an eerie, haunting "clean" tone before erupting into a louder-than-loud distorted guitar solo fill.

The next song cycle, "A Bit Of Finger", "Sleeping Village", and "Warning", demonstrates Tony Iommi's guitar textures. The first two songs are performed on what appears to be an acoustic (and also note the jaw harp which sounds as if it is saying "beer bong"), a soft piece before launching into the album's lengthy closer, "Warning". The song moves through various passages and tempos before entering the main lyrics about an omen of broken love. A manic guitar solo ensues before resuming the jump-blues motif, which is followed by the loudest guitar solos ever captured on record. A tasteful bluesy clean-tone intermission breaks in briefly before the high volume solo returns. Iommi appears to be influenced by the Cream song "Spoonful" for the bluesy parts.
The performance by the band on this album resulted in the record's producer demanding that the band turn down the volume so the guitar would not be picked up by the drum mics. To which Ozzy replied, "We don't turn down, man. We turn up."

The album was the closing release of the British electric blues scene at the end of the 60's where bands had gotten louder and heavier such as Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, the Jeff Beck Group, the aforementioned Cream and many others, but this new band Black Sabbath took heaviness to the next level. In fact, critics then hated this new band of longhairs playing this dark, loud music. This "fad" would end, they wouldn't last. But fans understood the band, they got the music, and the album hit the British charts at #23.

The band's music was simple and effective, and their inadequacies worked in their favor. Tony Iommi suffered a workplace injury where a cutting machine severed two of his fingertips, where he compensated for this by constructing plastic thimbles to enable him to play guitar. He was told initially that he would have to give up playing, but after being told that Gypsy jazz guitar virtuoso Django Rheinhardt played in spite of losing the use of several fingers in a caravan fire, this encouraged the guitarist to keep playing. It accounts also for the jazzy approach. Classical music entered the picture as well on the album's title track, Holst's "The Planets" with "Mars: Bringer Of War".

The band's record label also tried to enhance the appeal of the band on their debut album by using an upside-down cross image and a gruesome poem on the British version of the album. The band was not happy that the label was promoting them as "satanists", which drew occultist types out of the woodwork. But the band's radical approach was its real selling point. The album was so influential that one critic described that it as "the album that eats hippies for breakfast."

Black Sabbath 1970:

[ABlairican Pie]

On a personal level, at the age of 14, I wanted more than anything to play guitar like Tony Iommi on "Warning". That was in 1977. I still haven't lost that desire.

The debut album's cover was taken at Mapledurham Watermill with model Louisa Livingstone at 4:00 AM.

So the debut album was a success. There was only one thing to do but to capitalize on that momentum, so the band began rehearsing while on tour in Switzerland. The songs became tighter and heavier. The next album was about to be called "War Pigs", but the record label was against that idea as it was "too controversial".

The opening track to the album which was inexplicably called 'Paranoid', was based on news reports Geezer Butler had watched about the Vietnam War going on that was not being heard in America, such as American forces bombing roads they had just poured money into building in Vietnam. "War Pigs" was originally titled "Walpurgis", which was a sort of satanic version of Christmas. A live video of the band performing it exists. But when the record label urged them to change the title, the band kept the lyrics, for the most part and made it into a song condemning war as "the real satanism", "Evil itself" according to Butler, the band's main lyricist.
The song opens with bleak chords and the chilling air raid siren before jumping into the up-tempo call-and-response "Generals gathered in the masses..." lyrics. After drum breaks and guitar riffs, Ozzy's vocals decry the politicians who hide after sending poor people to do their bidding for fighting the war. Ozzy's shriek, "Yeah!" feels the pain and outrage of this.
The guitar leads in the middle of the song are two separate solos on top of each other for a sort of disorienting effect. The lyrics continue with a Biblical, apocalyptic end of the war as God calls for Judgment Day and the war pigs grovel, begging for mercy for having destroyed the world. The song closes with a climactic set of passages. "War Pigs" is regarded as Black Sabbath's most important song. The song had a huge response and connection with vets returning from their tour of duty in Vietnam.

The album's title track, "Paranoid", was in fact the last song to be recorded for the album. The band realized they had enough space on the album for a simple track to fill space, and so within five minutes Butler whipped up lyrics for the song, for which he really knew nothing what the word "paranoid" even meant, but the song worked. The band spent up to two hours hammering the song together and recorded it. The band were unaware that they had recorded metal's first official anthem. Tony Iommi's guitar leads were dissonant and fully charged, and Ozzy's vocals were frantic, and at the same time rather unclear and echoey.

"Planet Caravan", the following song, was a sci-fi-themed soft number with vocal and guitar effects. The song describes a nomadic journey through space with Tony Iommi playing a jazz guitar guitar outro.

And of course, what is regarded as the most popular song , by Black Sabbath, "Iron Man", closes the first side of the album. From the doom-filled footsteps to the metallic announcement "I am Iron Man" and the fearsome guitar riff, the song tells the story of a scientist who travels through time to see what will happen to humanity, but something goes wrong when he enters a magnetic field and is transformed into a metal monstrosity. He returns to the present to warn society, but when he is rejected, he unleashes his revenge and kills everyone. His compassion and concern turns to rage and violence. The song was released as a single in America in October 1971.

The album was in fact released on the same day as the death of Jimi Hendrix, September 18, 1970. The end of one era of rock coincided with the beginning of another.

Curiously, the album's title makes no sense with the sword-wielding figure with a shield on the cover. It would have made more sense with the album's original title "War Pigs". It seems logical that in the sense of a paranoid person suffering from delusions of grandeur, a sort of Don Quixote battling windmills as giants with a saber.

[Penny Lane]

Paranoid and Iron Man are my favorites

[AB]

Originally Posted by Penny Lane

Paranoid and Iron Man are my favorites

Same here. I also like Voodoo, I think Ronnie James Dio sings lead on it, at least it sounds like him.

[ABlairican Pie]

Originally Posted by AB

Same here. I also like Voodoo, I think Ronnie James Dio sings lead on it, at least it sounds like him.

That was him on that song from 'Mob Rules'.

[ABlairican Pie]

Originally Posted by Penny Lane

Paranoid and Iron Man are my favorites

What??! Not "Sweet Leaf" or "Symptom Of the Universe"?

[ABlairican Pie]

At the age of nine, in 1971, I did happen to see the 45 single to "Iron Man" with "Electric Funeral" as the B-side. I did not catch the name of the band for about five years, but I remember "Iron Man" as being a far cry from what was popular that year, "Horse With No Name" by America, and "Me And Mrs. Jones" by Billy Paul. And whatever an electric funeral was, it sounded cool, I was intrigued by these kinds of metaphors that were so out of the ordinary!

All that time, there was nothing heavier for people in my family than "Iron Man". We went to a restaurant in Auburn, Washington, called Grotto's, where we had to crank "Iron Man" on the jukebox. I'm not sure my mother knew what to think!

[ABlairican Pie]

Side 2 begins with "Electric Funeral', one of the most familiar Black Sabbath songs, rife with doom and destruction. The song in fact is about nuclear fallout incinerating mankind to the point where even the moon is shaken from its orbit and crashes into Earth. After some heavy slow riffs, the chorus stanza picks up into familiar jazz cadence before returning to an apocalyptic motif of the irradiated world being taken over by Satan.

The next song, "Hand Of Doom", describes a bad heroin trip that begins with fun and euphoria. Ozzy sings about "Vietnam napalm" as the reason he and the band saw so many vet fans from the war immerse themselves into heroin to anesthetize their deep pain. It starts slow and builds with a jump-blues break.

The next song, the provocatively titled "Rat Salad", is a jazzy instrumental highlighting Bill Ward's manic drumming abilities. The song was an influence on a nascent version of Van Halen to name themselves Rat Salade.

The album's closer, "Jack the Stripper/Fairies Wear Boots" was written in response to the band being accosted by skinheads. Since these proto-punk thugs wore jackboots, the band decided to mock them by saying "fairies wear boots", using an anti-gay slur. Ozzy decided to turn the lyrics around to make it a hallucinogenic experience of "fairy boots dancing with a dwarf." In response, a doctor explains that Ozzy's too busy smoking and tripping. The album has the jump-blues motif with a few tempo changes. It also incorporates the outro guitar lead from "Black Sabbath".

It is fair to say that this album, even more than the debut, marks the arrival of heavy metal. It is a clear departure from the blues movement with several traces. But since "heavy metal" is a reference to radioactive weapons-grade materials used to build atomic bombs, it makes sense that if music were to reflect this reality, Black Sabbath's dissonant, distorted and droning guitar, and everything else, would be heavy metal. Atomic, deadly, and very potent. Nothing like this had been heard before, and it squarely put the band on the map for decades.

Black Sabbath 'Paranoid' inner photo 1970:

[opus]

Is there a better album side then side one of Heaven and Hell?

[ABlairican Pie]

Each time I try to upload an image in my post, I keep getting an error message saying I am not logged in, even though it says that I already am. I log back in on the manage attachment post and it keeps saying I am not logged in. What is happening? This has never happened before.

[ABlairican Pie]

Originally Posted by opus

Is there a better album side then side one of Heaven and Hell?

No, there isn't. Soon, we'll get to reasons why after the next several albums.

[opus]

Originally Posted by ABlairican Pie

No, there isn't. Soon, we'll get to reasons why after the next several albums.

Wasn't trying to rush things. We'll get there when we get there

[ABlairican Pie]

Originally Posted by opus

Wasn't trying to rush things. We'll get there when we get there

Oh, no. Wasn't thinking we were rushing things. But it is good to know that the Black Sabbath saga got even better after 'Paranoid'.

[ABlairican Pie]

So until I find out why I am unable to post images on this site, I wish to continue with some commentary:

'Paranoid' is one of the greatest albums of all time. However, it is best to listen to it in its entirety, as just listening to the top three songs do not do it justice, as many classic rock stations seem to want to do.