Black Sabbath & Ozzy Osbourne

Black Sabbath formed in 1968 in the UK.  The original memebers were

Ozzy Osbourne - vocals
Tony Iommi - guitar
Geezer Butler - bass guitar
Bill Ward - drums

They were originally called Earth but as they became more influenced by the Occult they changed their name to Black Sabbath.  They have also sung about political and social issues like war.  They were a contrast to the bands of the time which were influenced by folk and the hippie movement.  Geezer Butler noticed that people spent money to watch horror movies so they decided to make the musical equivalent of scary movies.

The bands first commercial exposure came with the album 'Black Sabbath' in 1970.  The album was criticized as discordant jams because it was a new sound but it sold widely.

The next album was paranoid and has the strong anti-war song, 'war pigs'.  This song is a protest of the Vietnam war.  The song Paranoid was completed in less than 30 minutes as a filler song for the album.  The album reached  number 12 in the US charts with virtually no airplay.  Its sound was criticized widely but it is recognised today as a defining influence of  the sound of heavy metal today.



The third album was 'Master of Reality'.  This album had "Children of the Grave" and "Sweet leaf" on

The band was heavily into drugs by now and took a break for a few years before recording Black Sabbath volume 4.  The album was originally entitled 'Snowblind' after the song which deals with cocaine abuse.
'Tomorrows dream' was released as a single.

'Sabbath bloody Sabbath' was the first album to receive favourable reviews.  The writing was done in the dungeons Clearwell Castle in the Forest of Dean which is said to have helped with creativity.  The band bought in synthesiser and string sounds on this album making it more compex.
In April 1974 the band played to an audience of 200,000 along with Deep Purple and others at the California Jam Festival and parts of the show were shown on ABC TV.

Sabotage was release in 1975 and it moved away from the technical sound of Sabbath bloody Sabbath back towards the sound of Paranoid.  The album sold 2 million copies in the USA.

Technical Ecstasy was released in 1976 and included more synthesizer sound from Gerry Woodruffe who played keyboard.  The album was more an up-tempo rock album.  The album included the song "Dirty Woman"

In 1977 Ozzy Osbourene quit the band because he found the last albums depressing and he was just doing it for the money now but had a change of heart and they recorded "Never say Die".  The band was struggling with alcohol and drugs and the band look tired.  The band decided to fire Ozzy in 1979 and he was replaced by Ronnie James Dio