Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal (6 page)

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MASTERS OF REALITY: SABBATH, PRIEST, AND BEYOND, 1970–1979

A
s heavy as bands like Led Zeppelin, the Stooges, and Blue Cheer were, they lacked the power and sonic impenetrability of the metal bands that followed their lead. More significantly, they could be rugged or mysterious, but they were rarely both, and they were hardly ever frightening. Black Sabbath changed all that. Built on a foundation of dense, simple power chords, tempos that veered from sludgy to fleet-footed, blues-based solos more fiery than anything by Jeff Beck or Eric Clapton, and vocals more akin to a siren than a human voice, Sabbath was immediately loathed by critics and adored by fans in search of new ways to appall their parents. The band surfaced from war-ravaged Birmingham, England, and attacked with previously unheard aggression and ferocity. Moreover, their landmark 1970 self-titled first album was a witches’ brew brimming with lyrics about death, darkness, and the devil. Not long after Sabbath introduced the core ingredients of metal to the masses, other aggressive bands, including Deep Purple, Judas Priest, AC/DC, and KISS, conceived their own formulas for metal domination.

OZZY OSBOURNE:
When I was a kid, I was hungry. I had my ass hanging out of my pants. I hated the fucking world. When I heard the silly fucking words, “If you go to San Francisco, be sure to wear a flower in your hair” I wanted to fucking strangle John Phillips [of The Mamas & the Papas]. I was sitting in the industrial town of Birmingham, England. My father was dying of asbestos from industrial pollution and I was an angry young punk.

TONY IOMMI (Black Sabbath, Heaven & Hell):
When I first met [bassist] Geezer [Butler], he was out of his brain on acid. I saw him at the club and I thought he’d gone mad. This was before we got together. He was in a band and I was in a different band with [drummer] Bill Ward. We saw this guy trying to climb up the wall and we went, “Christ, look at him.” Little did I know it was Geez and I’d be in a band with him for the next forty years.

GEEZER BUTLER:
I wasn’t on acid. I had a big lump of hash with me. I didn’t try acid until years later. But we were quite a wild bunch. Ozzy had already [spent six weeks] in prison [for robbing a clothing store and being unable to pay the fine] when I met him. There were two old nightclubs in Birmingham back then. One was a blues club that used to be open all night long that I used to go to, and there was a soul club that Ozzy used to go to. So, at about six o’clock every Sunday morning, I’d be walking home from the blues club because I couldn’t afford bus fare, and Ozzy’d be walking home on the other side of the street from the soul club. We sort of made eye contact, but he was a skinhead and I was a hippie, so we never really talked. Then he put an advert in the music shop I used to go to saying, “Vocalist looking for a band.” I went around to his house, and it was Ozzy. So we joined up together in the Rare Breed, but we both left that at the same time because it wasn’t happening. Then one night I went around to his house and we said, “Let’s put a different band together.” He knew Tony. So we went around to Tony’s house and asked Tony if he knew any drummers. Bill just happened to be at Tony’s house that night, and we got together from there.

SHARON OSBOURNE (manager, TV personality):
Tony used to beat Ozzy up in school. Tony was big and strong, and his parents had a little bit of money. He was an only child, Ozzy was one of six. He was never a physical fighter kid, so he got kicked around. When Tony had clothes, those clothes were bought for him. He wasn’t going to school with his sisters’ knickers on. Ozzy came from an abusive home. He came from nothing. A can of soup watered down for six kids—that was dinner. Ozzy didn’t have a school uniform. He was sent to school in pajamas and Wellington boots. And they’d send him home because he wasn’t dressed properly and he wasn’t washed, so he would go sit on a bomb site because, at that time, half of England was still bombed after the war. When he
was
in school, Ozzy was the class clown because that’s how he survived. When you don’t read and you don’t write and you’re an idiot at school and everybody picks on you because you’re the dummy, you become everybody’s friend by being the clown. So he’s really learned how to work people, and that’s what he’s done his whole life.

TONY IOMMI:
Ozzy and I went to the same school and he was a year younger than me, so I used to boss him around, but that was one of those things that everybody did at school to the younger students. I don’t think we bullied him. I definitely didn’t beat him up.

OZZY OSBOURNE:
At school, Tony was, like, the bright kid. His mother had a bit more cash because she had a shop, and he was the first guy to have a car. He was always getting into fights with the friends he’d hang out with. He’d bring his guitar to school and the teachers would get really upset about it. He had a reputation for being a really great guitar player.

TONY IOMMI:
When I met Bill Ward, he was in a band called The Rest. I had an advert and they read it and came to my house [to talk] about me playing with them. I thought, “Wow, this is great. They’ve all got good equipment, and they seem like nice guys,” so I joined up. Then Bill and I came back to Birmingham and we were gonna start another band [Mythology]. We saw this one advert saying “Ozzy Zig requires gig.” I said to Bill, “I know an Ozzy but he can’t be the same one,” because he didn’t sing as far as I knew. Sure enough, we went around to the address we had and his mum answered the door, and she shouted for him and he came, and I said to Bill, “Oh, no, I know this guy from school.” A couple days later, Ozzy came to my house. We said, “Well, we’re looking for a singer and bass player,” and he and Geezer were looking for a guitarist and drummer, so we teamed up.

GEEZER BUTLER:
Ozzy was a complete nutter, which you need to be if you’re going to be a lead singer. Eventually he became a great performer, but it took him a long time. In the early days, he used to just stand there petrified, and Tony used to shake him to do something. Even more than the rest of us, he was really insecure. His parents were really down on him because he’d been in prison. They just thought he was wasting his life. So it took him a lot of time to build up confidence, because he certainly wasn’t getting it from home.

Iommi’s doom-laden guitar tone is partially due to an industrial accident he suffered in his youth. As a result, the left-handed guitarist had to alter his playing style, eventually tuning down conventional strings and combining them with lighter-gauge banjo strings, which bent more easily.

TONY IOMMI:
I had been playing guitar for a couple of years when I had the accident. I used to work in a factory and I did gas and electric welding. They used to send metal to me from the next department and I’d weld it. One day this person didn’t come in that used to bend the metal and send it to me. So they put me on this machine and I had no idea how to work it. I put my hand in to push the metal in and the machine came down on my hand. I reacted by pulling my hand back, and it just pulled the ends of the fingers off. I was due to leave my job that day. I’d joined a band called the Birds & Bees that were going to be touring Europe. There were two girl singers and they were a really good band, just like the Hollies. So I’d gotten the job with them and I was all excited and I was leaving my job. I went into work in the morning and done the first half of the day up until lunch. I said to my mother, “I’m not going to go back this afternoon.” And she said, “You go back. You finish off the day properly.” So, of course, I went back. If I hadn’t have gone back, it wouldn’t have happened. It made me look at the guitar differently, for sure. I had to come up with a different way of playing because I couldn’t play the conventional way anymore.

GEEZER BUTLER:
I used to see Tony playing in his other band around Birmingham, and I saw this thing on his hand, but I didn’t realize the tips of his fingers were gone. I just thought he had something there to protect his fingers. Then when we got together I found out his fingers had been chopped off. It was incredible. He used to spend hours and hours making the tops for his fingers.

TONY IOMMI:
I got a Fairy Liquid [soap] bottle, melted it down, shaped it into a ball, and waited until it cooled down. I then made a hole in it with a soldering iron until it sort of fitted over the finger. I shaped it a bit more with a knife, and then I got some sandpaper and sat there for hours sandpapering it down to make it into a kind of a thimble. I found this old jacket and cut a piece of leather off it. I cut it into a shape so that it would fit over the thimble and glued it on, left it to dry, and then I tried it and I thought, “Bloody hell, I can actually touch the string with this thing now!” When I go onstage I put surgical tape around my fingers, dab a little bit of Super Glue on that, and then I push the things on. Nowadays, the people at the hospital make the thimble for my ring finger. They actually make me a prosthetic limb, a complete arm, and all I use is two of its fingertips that I cut off.

CORKY LAING (Mountain):
I remember running around some auditorium in New Orleans when Sabbath was opening for us once, and we were trying to find Tony Iommi’s finger. He couldn’t go on without it. We were all on the floor looking for his finger. It had rolled under an amp.

OZZY OSBOURNE:
I said to Tony all the time, “How can you know what strings you’re touching if you have no feeling in your fingers?” It’s amazing to me. Whenever we’ve been arguing or fighting or whatever, I’ve always maintained one thing about Mr. Iommi. You will never find another soul who comes up with better hard rock riffs than him. When we’d be together I’d always be, like, there is no way he can top that riff. Then he’d beat it every time.

TONY IOMMI:
I didn’t start tuning down live until after the first album [1970’s
Black Sabbath
]. I liked it because it made the sound a bit darker. I used to experiment to see if I could get a bigger, fuller sound because there was only one guitarist [in the band]. Most other bands had another guitar player or a keyboard player. So the idea was to try to make the sound as big as it could be.

On paper, the odds of ever making a living—let alone becoming heavy metal legends—seemed heavily stacked against the future members of Black Sabbath. Iommi’s hand injury would end the careers of most guitarists; Ozzy was a juvenile delinquent and hardly an accomplished singer; and Geezer Butler started out as a guitar player, not a bassist. And the band performed an odd style of progressive blues that earned it little praise.

SHARON OSBOURNE:
Ozzy was never taught the graces in life. Literally, he was never taught that you say “thank you.” [He did] certain things that would shock you and I. Ozzy had no education. How’s he gonna earn a living? He used to go and kill animals in a slaughterhouse. And Ozzy’s totally dyslexic. He had a terrible, terrible time at school because in those days [they thought] you were just dumb [if you were dyslexic]. Nobody knew what learning disabilities were. And because Ozzy had such a tough upbringing, his parents didn’t give a shit. Ozzy’s attention span is, like, two seconds long. But he’s as sharp as a tack, and Ozzy has survived all this time on his gut instinct. He can really suss people out. He doesn’t give a fuck. He’s not looking for adulation or credibility.

GEEZER BUTLER:
The first really crazy thing I remember Ozzy doing was defecating on top of a Jaguar. We did this gig in Birmingham at a university, and the [promoter] stiffed us. So Ozzy went out and went to the toilet on top of his brand new Jaguar. That was a taste of things to come.

TONY IOMMI:
Geezer couldn’t play bass because he wasn’t a bass player when we started—he was a guitar player. But I was already playing guitar. So he switched to bass, and in our first rehearsal, Geezer was actually playing the bass notes on his Telecaster guitar. Eventually he got a bass, but even then we didn’t seem to be going anywhere. We became a six-piece band, [the Polka Tulk Blues Band]; we had a sax player and a slide guitar player, and it was a horrendous row. We decided we didn’t need a sax player and a slide player. Everybody was just trying to get solos in. But the only way we felt comfortable about removing them was to say we were going to break up. We broke up for a week and then we got back together as [Earth, and it was] just the four of us.

GEEZER BUTLER:
We used to love bands like Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Cream, and Hendrix. But we knew we had to come up with something different to get noticed. And we discovered that playing blues was a great form of music to use as a base for whatever else you want to do because it was just, like, twelve bars and three notes. You could really improvise when you were playing onstage. Getting into the heavier stuff just came as a natural progression.

Earth’s big bang happened in 1968, when Jethro Tull guitarist Mick Abrahams left the band and front man Ian Anderson asked Iommi to join. Iommi was ambivalent but decided to make the move, and appeared with Jethro Tull in the film
The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
, which remained unreleased until 1996. Iommi ultimately returned to Birmingham to continue with Earth. To this day, he credits Tull for introducing him to the kind of work ethic he brought back to Sabbath.