Iommi, Osbourne, Butler and Ward Credit : Birmingham Mail
A river of vinegar streamed down the streets of Aston, the northern industrial suburb of Birmingham, just before Christmas in 1956. The torrent came from a burst vat in the HP Sauce factory, one of a holy trinity of imposing structures that gave an otherwise relentlessly bleak, poverty-ridden area some pride: the others were Aston Hall, one of the finest Jacobean structures in England, and Villa Park, home of what was then still the most successful football club in the country, on the verge of a seventh record-breaking FA Cup victory, at a time when the trophy still mattered. Spaghetti Junction was yet to arrive.
Seven-year-old Terry Butler, known to his friends as Geezer, was a thoughtful child, one of seven from a devout Irish Catholic family “with no money whatsoever”, who trod those tough streets with glimpses of beauty and a world beyond, where the vinegar run was big news that left a bad smell. Ten years on, he would form a friendship with a local lad even poorer than he was: John “Ozzy” Osbourne, a shoeless skinhead with whom Geezer, by then an unlikely trainee accountant, formed a band, heavy into the blues and the Beatles. They called themselves Rare Breed.
Geezer’s girlfriend knew a bloke called Tony Iommi, already an experienced guitarist, with a roster of bands behind him. The three of them then met a drummer, Bill Ward, also from Aston, now calling themselves Earth. But Geezer’s brother was a big Dennis Wheatley fan, who had seen the Hammer horror film Black Sabbath, which Geezer thought would make a better name.
Geezer usually wrote the lyrics to Black Sabbath’s music, but the opening lines of the eponymous opening track of their self-titled debut, released 50 years ago today, were written by Ozzy. “What is this that stands before me? Figure in black that points at me”, run the opening lines, the only lines in the history of British pop and rock music that created an entirely new, world-conquering genre: heavy metal. Black Sabbath can claim to be second only to the Beatles in the influence that a British band has had on the world.
The track “Black Sabbath”, one of seven songs recorded in a 12-hour session on 16th October 1969, opens with the sound of rain, before the diabolus in musica of Tony Iommi’s genre-defining riff bends up and down as Butler and Ward, as fine a rhythm section as any in rock, play with the space behind, a bewildering echo of the drop-forges, chain-making and sheet steel works that dominated the aural landscape of Birmingham and the Black Country in their pomp before the Thatcherite assault on manufacturing.
It was not just the sound of the surroundings that created heavy metal, but the dangers of the physical creation of metal and dirt. As a 17-year-old, Iommi had lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his right hand in an accident at his final shift at a sheet-metal factory in Lozells, after returning from a European tour with one of his first bands. He almost bled to death in hospital, where the tips of his fingers were returned in a matchbox by a colleague.
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SubscribeGreat article on the founders of metal, thank you. The true test of art is its power to outlast its own time and cultural milieu and become timeless, and the music of Black Sabbath has met that test brilliantly. The lyrics of War Pigs are as relevant today as they were 50 years ago, even if our wars are now more psychological than physical.
Iron Man was my awakening to rock and roll. Some grade school friends and I were walking along a river trail listening to a transistor radio. Iron Man came on – if I’d heard it before I didn’t notice. I had to have that record. I still own it.