Saturday, 6 September 2014

200 Hello Ozzy Osbourne* - Paranoid



(* as  part of  Black  Sabbath )

Chart  entered : 29  August  1970

Chart  peak : 4 ( 14  on   reissue )

Number  of  hits : 17  ( including  3  as  part  of  Black  Sabbath )

Note : Black  Sabbath  have  been  stuck  on  9  hits  since  1992 . If  they  do  manage  another before we  get  to  Ozzy's  solo  debut  this  post  will  be  re-written  to  cover  the  group  as  a  whole.

Ozzy's  real  first  name  is  John. He  was  born  in  Birmingham  to  a  working  class  family   in 1948. He  did  poorly  at  school  tried  out  at  various  manual  jobs   then  spent  time  in  prison  for burglary  after  his  father  refused  to  pay  his  fine. He first  hooked  up with  Geezer Butler  in 1967 then  Tony  Iommi  and  Bill  Ward  the  following  year. After  a  number  of  name  changes  they settled  on  Black  Sabbath  after  noting  a  cinema  queue  for  the  Boris  Karloff  film  of  the  same  name.

The  quartet  first  played  as  Black  Sabbath  in  Workington  in  August  1969. They  did  a  session  for  John  Peel's  Top  Gear  and  were  signed  in  November. They  released  their  first  single "Evil  Woman"  a  cover  of  a  recent  US  hit  by  the  band  Crow, in  January  1970. None  of  them  had  made  a  record  before  so  in  that  sense  they're  the  first  "new"  band  of  the  seventies. "Evil  Woman" lays  down  the  Sabbath  template  of   granite  hard  riffing, economical  soloing, occult  subject  matter ( though  in  this  case  someone  else's ) , a  sense  of  dread  and  oppression  unleavened  by  much  melody  and  of  course  Ozzy's  diseased  wail  of  a  voice. Like  Screaming  Lord  Sutch  before  him,  Ozzy  can't  sing  in  the normal  sense  of  the word  but  he  understood  that  in  rock  you  don't  need  to  be  a  great  singer, you  can  get  away  with  a  theatrical  sneer  if  you're  loud  enough. It  wasn't  a  hit.

The  quickly-recorded  debut  album  "Black  Sabbath"  came  out  the  following  month. It's  been  widely  touted  as  the  first  metal  album, the  blues  rock  of  Cream  mutated  into  something  different  but  as  the  product  of  provincial  and  proletarian  outsiders  it  wasn't  well  received   by  the  critics  at  the  time.  Nevertheless  it  was  a  substantial  hit  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic. I'm  not  really  a  fan  of  their  music, preferring  to  get  my  doom  and  gloom  from  Joy  Division  at  the  other  end  of  the  decade,  and  Side  Two  degenerates  into  an  uninteresting  jam  but  I  can  see  why  a  significant  number  of  rock  fans  preferred  it  to   say  Atom  Heart  Mother  or  Tales  from  Topographic  Oceans.  There  were  certainly  plenty  of  Sabbath  fans  around  while  I  was  growing  up , both  at  school  and  in  the  neighbourhood.

"Paranoid"  was  their  next  recording  and  I've  covered  it  before  Radioactive .

  

1 comment:

  1. The roots of der Sabbath have some place in my native Cumbria. Iommi spent some time up our way in his earlier days, I was once told, playing in local bands. I imagine this would have give him the connections for his future outfit to play their first gig in Workington.

    In the 70s, West Cumbria was proper heavy metal land, though by my youth this had passed into a love of rave that left me somewhat alienated. Not that metal was ever my thing either!

    I also believe two young Salford lads by the names of Bernard Dicken and Peter Hook were big Black Sabbath fans, and I can certainly see some of their influence in the playing of the former in "Unknown Pleasures".

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