BLACK SABBATH -SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH @ 50

 

Marking its golden anniversary this month is the fifth studio LP from Black Sabbath, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, which was released 50 years ago in November of 1973. As the band struggled to regroup after an exhausting tour and expand their musical pallet, their eventual success created perhaps the album defining the pinnacle of their career.

On the back of the release of their previous LP, VOL. 4, the band had burned themselves out on a tour which ended up being cut short when guitarist Tony Iommi collapsed during their LA gig from a combination of overwork and overindulgence, blazing out on the tail of a massive cocaine binge which had been going on for days. The situation for the guitarist was nearly life-threatening and precipitated the band taking their first actual vacation period since the group was founded. After spending some time apart to rest and recuperate, the initial plan was to take the same approach to their next album as had been so successful on their previous, so they booked into the same LA studios and began their first attempts at buckling down and getting to work. The problem was that Tony was bone dry in the inspiration department and the rest of the band were entirely dependant on him to get the ball rolling when it came to songwriting. Other factors, like their continued substance abuse, also conspired to diffuse their focus and make it impossible to recreate the atmosphere of the previous album. Even their favourite room in the studio wasn't available as it had been overtaken by a massive synthesizer system installed by Stevie Wonder.

After floundering in frustration in LA for a month, the group decided a change of venue was in order and opted to head back to the UK where they rented Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England, in which the likes of Led Zeppelin, Mott the Hoople and Deep Purple wrote and recorded. The castle provided a suitably ominous creepiness for them to work, with the armoury and dungeon offering particularly spooky settings. Band members even reported sightings of ghostly apparitions while wandering the castle's dimly lit hallways, though given their penchant for chemical indulgence, who knows what they actually saw. The group were also prone to pranking each other in the most vicious manner, which significantly amped up the sense of fear and paranoia, resulting in some members refusing to sleep there and, in the case of drummer Bill Ward, who often seemed to get the worst of it, he insisted on sleeping with a dagger at hand.

Mayhem aside, the creative damn burst, thanks to the ominous setting, when Iommi stumbled on the riff for the album's title track. Up to that point, they were seriously starting to think that they were finished, but once they hit on that riff, they knew they were back. By this time, they were also looking to expand the diversity of their sound, so they started to incorporate more experimental elements like strings, keyboards and synthesizer. Ozzy had picked up a MOOG synth and the group even got Yes keyboardist, Rick Wakeman, to guest on Sabbra Cadabra, though he refused payment for his work and was happy to receive a few beers as compensation. The group even attempted experiments with instruments like bagpipes and sitars, but these proved unsatisfactory and were abandoned from the sessions. At one point, members of Led Zeppelin dropped in for a visit and an impromptu jam session was recorded, but never released.

Once the album was completed and released, the band were surprised to find that they actually created something the British music press were willing to acknowledge as a good album. Their previous works had notoriously been dismissed by UK critics, so it was a surprising about-face to finally receive a bit of praise from this quarter. But as Ozzy later commented, he felt like he should have called it quits from the band after this release as the writing was on the wall that their peak had been reached. Internal conflicts and tensions between the band members were about to take their tole. They were far too dependant on Iommi to get songs written and Geezer Butler was also feeling like Osborne was far too reliant on him to come up with lyrics.

The album went on to become a commercial success as well as garnering critical raves. Within the scope of the band's canon, many consider it the high water mark of their career. After this, their conflicts and personal demons would undercut their ability to work together successfully. They still had three more LPs in their pockets before the original lineup would fracture, but none of those would be considered in the same light as their first five.

BLACK SABBATH - VOL. 4 @ 50

 

Celebrating half a century on the shelves today is the fourth studio album from Black Sabbath, Vol. 4, which was released on September 25th, 1972. It’s an album created in a blizzard of cocaine and somewhat miraculous in the fact that it managed to manifest and turn out as coherent and powerful as it is.

The album was recorded in LA when the band were at the peak of their dalliance with the “snow white”. They were literally having speaker boxes shipped into the studio filled with what they described as the purest, whitest, most potent blow they’d ever seen. No one had any idea where it was coming from, but it’s best not to ask too many questions about things like this. The drug and booze consumption during the sessions meant that the recording process was fraught with difficulties as the band teetered on the brink of oblivion. Drummer, Bill Ward, recalls feeling like he was on the verge of being sacked from the band as he struggled to nail one particular drum part for Cornucopia. He hated the song and spent a great deal of time in the middle of the room, just doing drugs. He eventually managed to nail the parts, but felt the cold shoulder from the band and was expecting to get the boot after that. But being fired might have been the least of his woes as Ward nearly met his maker when the band found him passed out naked in the mansion they were staying at and through it would be a laugh to cover him in gold spray paint. The drug situation became a point of paranoia after the group attended a screening of The French Connection, a film about an undercover heroine operation, which left Ozzy hyperventilating by the end of the movie, freaked out at the prospect of the band being busted.

Despite the chaos and substance abuse, the stars were still aligned enough for the band to craft another solid slab of metal mayhem. This was the first LP the band produced themselves. In reality it was mostly down to Tony Iommi for all practical purposes, though the band’s manager, Patrick Meehan, insisted on a co-producer credit. The band recount him having negligible involvement in the actual process, however. Musically, they were starting to try out some new tricks with their style. They still maintained their heaviness, but were able to showcase a more emotionally subtle range with tracks like Changes, which has since become an iconic example of their softer side. The song was written by Iommi with lyrics by Butler and was performed on piano and mellotron. Tony had taught himself how to play piano while killing time at the mansion they were based at. Ozzy recalls that Iommi just sat down at the piano one day and out popped this gorgeous melody for the song. Ozzy started to hum a vocal counter-melody while Butler wrote a heartbreaking lyric based on Bill’s breakup with his wife. Snowblind, on the other hand, delves into the band’s cocaine indulgence and was intended to be the title track for the album, but the band’s record label balked at the thought of such a blatant drug reference for an LP title and they were forced to settled with the rather more innocuous “Vol. 4” instead.

At the time of its release, the critics were in the habit of treating the band with little respect and had a tendency to dismiss, disparage and ridicule their output, though Lester Bangs would be one of the few who was able to appreciate their achievements on this album. While he’d been harsh on their previous albums, his review in CREEM stated: “We have seen the Stooges take on the night ferociously and go tumbling into the maw, and Alice Cooper is currently exploiting it for all it's worth, turning it into a circus. But there's only one band that's dealt with it honestly on terms meaningful to vast portions of the audience, not only grappling with it in a mythic structure that's both personal and powerful but actually managing to prosper as well. And that band is Black Sabbath." He went on to compare their lyrics to the work of Dylan and Burroughs. As the decades have passed and critics have moved beyond the trendy temptation to bash the band, albums like this now find themselves frequently populating top 100 lists of all-time best rock & metal albums. Negativity from the critics didn’t dent the band’s popularity with their fans and the album became a platinum seller with easy.