from the LP Paranoid, Vertigo Records, 1970In honor of Easter Sunday… oh gosh, wait a second, hmmmm… hadn’t realized it was already Monday. Well, I had intended to be a big smart-ass by posting these guys on everyone’s favorite ripped-off pagan holiday---I suppose now I can’t be held responsible for any heresy, so that’s good. I spent yesterday with people I love, doing things we love (i.e. eating, drinking, playing cards, smoking a LOT of weed), listening to records all day long. So, back to the blog then, ahem. If there’s one thing obsessive music geeks really enjoy doing it’s arguing, and one of the choicer selections of debate in those circles revolves around who gets the crown for being the “first” heavy metal band in music history. Is it Blue Cheer? Maybe it’s Led Zeppelin? Or perhaps Steppenwolf for merely mentioning the phrase “heavy metal thunder” way back in ’66…?! Frankly, if we are looking backwards with eyes filtered by what we currently know as “metal”, there is only one appropriate choice for the ultimate godfathers of all things heavy & metallic: Black motherfucking Sabbath. Crawling out of the acutely bleak and perpetually grey Birminham, England neighborhood of Aston, Black Sabbath changed the blues-style rock so popular at the time in a way that created an entirely new sound and vibe; there can be no doubt that the physical surroundings where they grew up, piles of rubble and closing steel mills as far as the eye could see, had direct influence on both the lyrics and the sound which Sabbath exemplified. Downtuned bass, sludgy pace, wailing guitar solos, evocative and evil-feeling lyrics sung in a tormented fashion---these guys were clearly not interested in wearing flowers in their hair! This long track gives all the players (Tony Iommi – guitar, Geezer Butler – bass, Bill Ward – drums) room for tempo shifts, vamping, extended bridges, et al; though panned by critics at the time as “too heavy”, the musicianship here holds up exceedingly well. Ozzy, heard here at a time when his slurred speech and sloppy appearance were actually caused by handfuls of Quaaludes and Seconals and not just cumulative damage from said pills, belts out a truly drug-addled and unusual (autobiographical?) tale: “…goin’ home late last night, suddenly I got a fright; yeah I looked through a window and surprised what I saw, a fairy with boots was dancin’ with a dwarf…” As one who undoubtedly understands the alchemical precision of mixing several drugs together at once, Ozzy pursues a fittingly substance-based solution to the hallucinations which haunt him, “…so I went to the doctor, see what he could give me; he said, ‘son, son, you’ve gone too far, ‘cause smokin’ and trippin’ is all that you do,’ yeaaaaaaa…” Sabbath’s first two albums still scare the living daylights out of me sometimes, which is saying a lot in our now-oversaturated violent world; just look at the freaky, psychedelicized warrior-dude on the album cover---that chap looks paranoid alright!!
