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Black Sabbath are an English heavy metal band, formed in Aston, Birmingham in 1969 by Ozzy Osbourne (lead vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass guitar), and Bill Ward (drums). The band has since experienced multiple line-up changes, with Tony Iommi the only constant presence in the band through the years. A total of 22 musicians have at one time been members of Black Sabbath. Originally formed in 1968 as a heavy blues rock band named Earth and renamed to Black Sabbath in 1969, the band began incorporating occult- and horror-inspired lyrics with tuned-down guitars and achieving multiple platinum records in the 1970s. Despite an association with occult and horror themes, Black Sabbath also composed songs dealing with social instability, political corruption, the dangers of drug abuse and the often apocalyptic prophesies of the horrors of war.
Black Sabbath are cited, along with Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, as pioneers of heavy metal. The band helped define the genre with releases such as quadruple-platinum Paranoid, released in 1970. They were ranked by MTV as the "Greatest Metal Band" of all time, and placed second in VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" list, behind Led Zeppelin. Rolling Stone has posited the band as 'the heavy-metal kings of the '70s'. They have sold over 15 million records in the United States alone and more than 70 million records worldwide. Black Sabbath were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, and were included among Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Vocalist Ozzy Osbourne's heavy alcohol and cocaine usage led to his being fired from the band in April 1979, after which he began a very successful solo career, selling more than 55 million albums. He was replaced by former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio. After a few albums with Dio's vocals and songwriting collaborations, Black Sabbath endured a revolving line-up in the 1980s and 1990s that included vocalists Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, Ray Gillen and Tony Martin. In 1992, Iommi and Butler rejoined Dio and drummer Vinny Appice to record Dehumanizer. The original line-up reunited with Osbourne in 1997 and released a live album, Reunion. The 1979–1982 and 1991–1992 line-up featuring Iommi, Butler, Dio, and Appice reformed in 2006 under the moniker Heaven & Hell until Dio's death on 16 May 2010.
On 11 November 2011, the original band members announced that they were reuniting and recording a new album. The band are scheduled to perform a headlining slot at the Download Festival on the 10th of June 2012, followed by a world tour.
Following the break-up of their previous band in 1968, guitarist Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward sought to form a heavy blues rock band in Aston, Birmingham. The two enlisted bassist Geezer Butler and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, who had played together in a band called Rare Breed, Osbourne having placed an advertisement in a local music shop: "Ozzy Zig Needs Gig – has own PA". The new group was initially named The Polka Tulk Blues Band (after a cheap brand of talcum powder Osbourne saw in his mother's bathroom) and also featured slide guitarist Jimmy Phillips and saxophonist Alan "Aker" Clarke. After shortening the name to Polka Tulk, the band changed their name to Earth (which Osbourne hated) and continued as a four-piece without Phillips and Clarke. While the band was performing under the Earth title, they recorded several demos written by Norman Haines such as "The Rebel", "Song for Jim", and "When I Came Down".
In December 1968, Iommi abruptly left Earth to join Jethro Tull. Although his stint with the band would be short-lived, Iommi made an appearance with Jethro Tull on the The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus TV show. Unsatisfied with the direction of Jethro Tull, Iommi returned to Earth in January 1969. "It just wasn't right, so I left", Iommi said. "At first I thought Tull were great, but I didn't much go for having a leader in the band, which was Ian Anderson's way. When I came back from Tull, I came back with a new attitude altogether. They taught me that to get on, you got to work for it."
While playing shows in England in 1969, the band discovered they were being mistaken for another English group named Earth, and decided to change their name again. A movie theatre across the street from the band's rehearsal room was showing the 1963 Boris Karloff horror film Black Sabbath directed by Mario Bava. While watching people line up to see the film, Butler noted that it was "strange that people spend so much money to see scary movies." Following that, Osbourne and Butler wrote the lyrics for a song called "Black Sabbath", which was inspired by the work of occult writer Dennis Wheatley, along with a vision that Butler had of a black silhouetted figure standing at the foot of his bed. Making use of the musical tritone, also known as "The Devil's Interval", the song's ominous sound and dark lyrics pushed the band in a darker direction, a stark contrast to the popular music of the late 1960s, which was dominated by flower power, folk music, and hippie culture. Inspired by the new sound, the band changed their name to Black Sabbath in August 1969, and made the decision to focus on writing similar material, in an attempt to create the musical equivalent of horror films.
Although Black Sabbath have gone through many line-ups and stylistic changes, their original sound focused on ominous lyrics and doomy music, often making use of the musical tritone, also called the "devil's interval". Standing in stark contrast to popular music of the early 1970s, Black Sabbath's dark sound was dismissed by rock critics of the era. Much like many of their early heavy metal contemporaries, the band received virtually no airplay on rock radio.
As the band's primary songwriter, Tony Iommi wrote the majority of Black Sabbath's music, while Osbourne would write vocal melodies, and bassist Geezer Butler would write lyrics. The process was sometimes frustrating for Iommi, who often felt pressured to come up with new material. "If I didn't come up with anything, nobody would do anything." On Iommi's influence, Osbourne later said:
Black Sabbath never used to write a structured song. There'd be a long intro that would go into a jazz piece, then go all folky... and it worked. Tony Iommi—and I have said this a zillion times—should be up there with the greats. He can pick up a guitar, play a riff, and you say, 'He's gotta be out now, he can't top that.' Then you come back, and I bet you a billion dollars, he'd come up with a riff that'd knock your fucking socks off.
Early Black Sabbath albums feature tuned-down guitars, which contributed to the dark feel of the music. In 1966, before forming Black Sabbath, guitarist Tony Iommi suffered an accident while working in a sheet metal factory, losing the tips of two fingers on his right hand. Iommi almost gave up music, but was urged by the factory manager to listen to Django Reinhardt, a jazz guitarist who lost the use of two fingers. Inspired by Reinhardt, Iommi created two thimbles made of plastic and leather to cap off his missing fingertips. The guitarist began using lighter strings, and detuning his guitar, to better grip the strings with his prosthesis, a move which inadvertently gave the music a darker feel. Early in the band's history Iommi experimented with different dropped tunings, including C♯ tuning, or 3 semitones down, before settling on E♭/D♯ tuning, or a half-step down from standard tuning.
Black Sabbath are inarguably one of the most influential heavy metal bands of all time. The band helped to create the genre with ground breaking releases such as Paranoid, an album that Rolling Stone magazine said "changed music forever", and called the band "The Beatles of heavy metal". Time Magazine called Paranoid "the birthplace of heavy metal", placing it in their Top 100 Albums of All Time. MTV placed Black Sabbath at number one on their Top Ten Heavy Metal Bands and VH1 placed them at number two on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. VH1 ranked Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" the number one song on their 40 Greatest Metal Songs countdown. Allmusic's William Ruhlmann said:
Black Sabbath has been so influential in the development of heavy metal rock music as to be a defining force in the style. The group took the blues-rock sound of late '60s acts like Cream, Blue Cheer, and Vanilla Fudge to its logical conclusion, slowing the tempo, accentuating the bass, and emphasising screaming guitar solos and howled vocals full of lyrics expressing mental anguish and macabre fantasies. If their predecessors clearly came out of an electrified blues tradition, Black Sabbath took that tradition in a new direction, and in so doing helped give birth to a musical style that continued to attract millions of fans decades later.
Metallica's Lars Ulrich, who, along with bandmate James Hetfield inducted Black Sabbath into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, said "Black Sabbath is and always will be synonymous with heavy metal", while Hetfield said "Sabbath got me started on all that evil-sounding shit, and it's stuck with me. Tony Iommi is the king of the heavy riff." Ex-Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash said of the Paranoid album: "There's just something about that whole record that, when you're a kid and you're turned onto it, it's like a whole different world. It just opens up your mind to another dimension...Paranoid is the whole Sabbath experience; very indicative of what Sabbath meant at the time. Tony's playing style — doesn’t matter whether it's off 'Paranoid' or if it's off 'Heaven and Hell' — it's very distinctive." Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian said "I always get the question in every interview I do, 'What are your top five metal albums?' I make it easy for myself and always say the first five Sabbath albums." Lamb of God's Chris Adler said: "If anybody who plays heavy metal says that they weren't influenced by Black Sabbath's music, then I think that they're lying to you. I think all heavy metal music was, in some way, influenced by what Black Sabbath did."
In addition to being pioneers of heavy metal, they also have been credited for laying the foundations for heavy metal subgenres stoner rock, sludge metal, black metal, and doom metal. Sabbath were also one of the earliest to turn gothic music into a genre.
Culturally, Black Sabbath have exerted a huge influence in both television and literature and have in many cases become synonymous with heavy metal. In the film Almost Famous, Lester Bangs gives the protagonist an assignment to cover the band (plot point one) with the immortal line: 'Give me 500 words on Black Sabbath'. Contemporary music and arts publication Trebuchet Magazine has put this to practice by asking all new writers to write a short piece (500 words) on Black Sabbath as a means of proving their creativity and voice on a well documented subject.
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