Black Sabbath/Ozzy Osbourne Album by Album thread

Now we look at Black Sabbath...

I decided to include Ozzy in the mix as Ozzy will pick up when Sabbath starts to wane. I can't do any other Sabbath members as it would be too long. Sabbath has a rich history so I hope people stick with this thread and maybe will learn somthing in the process. A few things first. I will only be doing We Sold Our Soul and the recent Rhino best ofs for comps. Sabbath has a ton of comps, especially non-US ones, and it just weigh the thread down. For live albums we will do Past Lives (which will cover Live At Last), Live Evil, Cross Purposes Live, and Reunion. The rest will be the regular albums. Have fun everybody!

Let's start with their debut...
Black Sabbath
1. Black Sabbath
2. The Wizard
3. Wasp / Behind The Wall Of Sleep / Bassically / N.I.B.
4. Wicked World
5. A Bit Of Finger / Sleeping Village / Warning

Their debut was certainally unlike no other. Just one look at the cover and you knew you were in for something very different. The song Black Sabbath, I still don't think there is one other song named after a band that defined a band so well. For a while I couldn't get into the Wizard because of thE harmonica but I know I think it's a pretty good song. The Behind The Wall Of Sleep/NIB medley is the highlight for me. Love those 2 songs a lot. I don't play the 2nd half of Black Sabbath enough. Wicked World is good and I forget how Sleeping Village/Warning goes for some reason. I'm listening to it right now in depth for probably the first time ever. Still it's a strong album and debut. I just liked it when they finally focused on certain musical ideas like on the later records as it does ramble a bit. It makes for an interesting listen because it is so blues based as that's what they were before they became - BLACK SABBATH. The band is really tight and Bill Ward really shines on this and of course Iommi..

4 stars

 

Fantastic album, the rain intro sets the mood perfectly. I have to listen to this album at least once a month.

 

I forgot to add that Evil Woman was a non US track on the LP until the recent Rhino comp and Black Box came out. Great cover!!

 

So good, and as rock historian and critic Chris Welch correctly noted in his book on Sabbath about 25 years ago, it has elements of "swing" jazz that give it a sound very different from heavy blues rock of the time.

Jim Simpson -- who discovered the band and was a trumpet player in Locomotive -- apparently spent hours with them listening to old jazz records, and one listen to Ward's drumming on "The Wizard," "Behind The wall Of Sleep" or "Wicked World" makes clear that this element of "swing" in their sound was a bit of an influence. This feel was somewhat abandoned on Paranoid and Master Of Reality (although it does make appearances), but would resurface more commonly on Vol. 4.

It's also interesting to note that Iommi was one of the best players in the Midlands area for many years before this. Starting with The Rockin' Chevrolets in 1964, he had been around, as had Ward. Butler and Osbourne came onto the scene a bit later. A show from the band Mythology has recently surfaced with Iommi and Ward. Recorded in 1968, it features blues covers but is a real gem. Iommi just goes *nuts* on it.

To think that their s/t album was recorded in late 1969 is a bit of a mind blower. I've never heard anything from the time that could really predict it. It seems pretty left field. Sabbath claim to have listened to the band Art (Supernatural Fairy Tales), Frank Zappa, Cream, Hendrix, the first Zep album and of course I'm sure lots of other stuff; lots of jazz. I suspect Alvin lee was a bit of an influence on Iommi, and he was a friend of the band back when they were called Earth.

So... great album. 4 and 1/2 stars for me.

On stage...? Raw, loud, and perhaps less pretentious than just about anybody in their early days:

1970 "Behind The Wall Of Sleep."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkKYC9_viyc

 

I saw this but you totally misread it. Iommi was just surprised that some band named Coven had an album released in the US with a song named Black Sabbath. I read no intention on her part to demonstrate anything but the coincidence and Iommi seemed to be surprised and got a kick out of it.

Were you smoking some good stuff that night?

 

i don't understand what the Sabbath fan can find fault with on this album. Ozzy's vocals not being fully realized? rambling late '60s blues-rock leanings? raw production? it's all part of the package, a time capsule of sorts. there are five stone classics on this album, and the sequencing (US edition) is like a late '60s Beatles album, as if preordained. as such, i rate the first LP as perfect - 5 stars.

 

I like its pervasive English-ness. The great cover scene, the tone of the music, the intro to side one.... As I got to know the album in the seventies it grew in stature for me. This is an album that really has 'soul.' Side two opens with a kick a** jam - then their 'UK blues' background comes to the fore, which I love. I eventually came to miss that in later hard rock and metal. I think of this as a true five star album. And to think of what was to follow...more five star albums!

 

And Tony always pissed and moaned that Ozzy could not sing live.. sounds like he's a bout right on here.

 

where did you read/hear that?

 

And on Sabotage, especially "Symptom of the Universe." Not quite sure I'd call it "swing," but it's no conventional rock drumming for sure.

 

Not if you listen to "N.I.B." Ozzy shouts "oh yeah" the same way he's done ever since.

 

I like the sonic atmosphere on this record. It sounds like the band is playing outdoors in front of a few hundred people at most with a few loud amps and speakers.

 

Excellent thread topic. I love the debut album. It was the first album by Sabbath that I owned and I remember how freaky some of those tracks were when I first heard them. I hadn't listened to it in years but rediscovered how good it was when the boxed set of the Ozzy years of Sabbath came out. I give it four stars.

 

Um, I've never read that, but you do realize Ozzy has had about a forty year career, right?

 

I hear ya, Eddie. If it weren't for later efforts like SBS and Sabotage, I'd probably give it 5 stars, but then I'd have to give those albums 5 and 1/2.

 

I find Black Sabbath's S/T album their overall best record. It's so fresh and raw, and great jamming. The long Sleeping Village/Warning just gets me every time.

I love the sound of this album as well, it's also sonically my favorite Black Sabbath album. Everything sounds so warm, and the guitar sound is awesome.

5 stars.

 

I agree. The production of the first album is fantastic. Sounds almost like a Steve Albini production. The production on Paranoid and Master of Reality is a step down IMO..

 

I always wondered why they tried to display the message that Evil is real but to beware it, but then the gatefold to this album has an upside-down cross. I don't get it.

 

Sabbath had nothing to do with the inverted cross Vertigo placed in the gatefold (nor, as it were, the Keef-designed cover), and they were not happy when they saw it.

 

Interesting. That's cool. Where do you read this info?

Also, what is N.I.B. about?

 

N.I.B. stands for 'nib', which is English slang for the cap of a pen. Bill Ward had a chin beard that they thought looked like a pen nib, so they called the song NIB and put periods after the letters to add to the mystique, which was in full swing even in 1969. (similarly, 'S.A.T.O.' on Diary of a Madmanstands for nothing.)
PS. read my profile.

 

As I wrote before in this forum, for my money the heavy metal genre was born on Friday, February 13, 1970. Yeah, those artists of the '60s like Hendrix, Zep, Cream, The Who, etc. influenced the shape of the path that metal would take, but I say they never actually went down that path themselves.

But here, the opening seconds of Black Sabbath with the rain, the eerie tolling bell, and then those rumbling chords of doom... lyrics about a "figure in black" and Satan laughing.... this is it. This is Day One. Those earlier bands were 'noisy' but Black Sabbath added the darkness, doom and horror film theatricality that would be much built upon (and parodied in pop culture's perceptions of metal) as metal evolved in years to follow.

There's even a song about a wizard that was influenced by Geezer's reading Lord Of The Rings - fantasy and so-called 'Dungeons & Dragons' lyrics would also become closely associated with metal. Though less parodied in pop culture, metal is also known for tackling serious real-world issues like drugs and war - 'Wicked World' has that, but this would be explored a lot more in future Sabbath albums. One thing the music doesn't introduce to metal is speed and shreddin', that would be Deep Purple's thing.

All that said, this debut is still kind of a '60s-into '70s transitional album, with more "traditional" heavy blues, evil-woman-don't-play-your-games stuff, other lyrics a bit 'trippy' and psychedelic. So this sound didn't totally come out of nowhere. But very impressive for a debut; my favourite song is 'N.I.B', I still remember the first time I heard it and Ozzy delivers that deadpan 'my name is Lucifer' bit and I was like, 'okay, THAT was cool'.

So the location of the front cover has been identified, but I guess the identity of the woman on the front cover is still totally unknown? There were rumors that it was Bill Ward's wife, or Ozzy himself, but both have been denied. I rather like that it's a mystery, actually

 

Great debut with nice sound. I'd had the 8-track tape a few years already. But my first copy on LP was the Nems UK with gatefold. They were importing the first few albums into the US (around 1978) by the droves. It was $2.99 with no cut or holes in jacket. Much nicer than the US version in every way. Funny that the US declined to do gatefold on this one and SBS.

Anyway, this album has a nice stereo spread, and the heavy Sab sound is all there. A fantastic warm up for the next few.

I know people who went to the Whiskey show in 1970, their first LA appearance. They were so loud that they turned the air into cottage cheese is what I was told.

 

No mention of the Yardbirds there huh? They are the ones that were a huge influence on BS.

 

But what is the song about?