It’s a fitting introduction to the most influential album in the history of metal. Half a century on, the bell that was meant to signify the end of someone – or something – instead symbolises the opposite: the starting point of an entirely new strain of music, a kind that endures today.
Sabbath weren’t the first to take the blues and encase it in concrete and steel. But no band, and no album, has so perfectly defined an entire genre. All of heavy metal’s soul is right there in Black Sabbath’s first recorNo one expected it to turn out the way it did, and certainly not the four original members of Black Sabbath. But that landmark debut album – released on February 13, 1970, a date loaded with portent – remains as imposing as an ancient monolith. d.Tony Iommi: “We went into a music shop and we saw this advert saying ‘Ozzy Zig requires gig, owns his own PA.’ I said to Bill, ‘I know an Ozzy but it can’t be him.’”Ozzy Osbourne: “People say he used to beat me up. He never did.”
Tony Iommi: “We drove around to his address, knocked on the door, his mother answered it and we said, ‘Is Ozzy in?’ She said, ‘Yes, just a minute.’ She turned round and said, ‘John, it’s for you.’ And when he came to the door, I said to Bill, ‘Oh no, forget it, I know this guy.’”
Ozzy Osbourne: “I have no idea what I said to Tony outside my house that night to make him change my mind and give me a chance. I think the fact I had a PA system probably helped
.”Geezer Butler My personal ambition was to avoid proper jobs and have fun doing what I wanted to do, play music, and hopefully make enough money to live on.”
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