The Bands: Black Sabbath

Forget what anyone may say about who invented heavy metal. People will try and argue that it was The Kinks, Blue Cheer, Cream, Steppenwolf or even The Beatles. And it was never, ever Led Zeppelin, good as they are there was far too much other stuff going on with Zeppelin for them ever to be labeled 'heavy metal'.

No, the first band ever to play what has since become known as heavy metal was Black Sabbath. Forming in Aston in Birmingham in the late sixties they went under various names such as Polka Tulk Blues Band and Earth before settling on the name Black Sabbath. They got their name from the poster for a film which was showing in a cinema across the road from their rehearsal room. They realised that people were willing to pay to see this horror film called Black Sabbath and be frightened. Paying to be frightened was an idea that appealed to them. I still think that no band has ever come up with a more suitable name than Black Sabbath, it says everything about them without hearing any of the music.

Their dark, heavy guitar sound came from the fact that guitarist Tony Iommi had an accident while working on an industrial press and had the finger ends of his right hand chopped off. Not much of a problem for a right-handed guitarist but Iommi was left-handed. So he devised a system of putting Fairy Liquid bottle tops on the ends of his fingers, which went some way to making their signature sound.

With drummer Bill Ward, bassist Terry 'Geezer' Butler and a manic, speed-freak singer called Ozzy Osbourne completing the line-up they made for one of the best heavy metal line-ups ever.

If someone who'd never heard heavy metal before asked me to describe it to them, I'd play side 1, track 1 of their debut album. The track called Black Sabbath just about wrote the book on heavy metal. It starts with the sound of a thunderstorm, a tolling church bell can be heard in the distance. Enter the band with one of the heaviest, most gut-churning sounds ever created by man. Then you get to the vocal, never the strongest of singers, Osbourne's vocal sounds like a man absolutely terrified. "What is this that stands before me? Devil in black and eyes of fire" is the opening line and you can't get much more metal than that.

Their first four albums (Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality and Volume Four) are all pretty much essential. With Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage also being worthy of any serious metal collection.

Over the years Sabbath have become something of a joke, not least because of Osbourne's gradual decent into reality TV jester. I just hope people still realise that, along with three others, what a true innovator he was.

Recommended listening:

1. Black Sabbath


2. Sweet Leaf


3. NIB


4. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath


5. War Pigs