Ozzy Osbourne talking:

“I was standing out at the back of the club between sets and this guy says, ‘Is it true you’ve gone insane?’ I said, ‘what?’ And he says, ‘The word’s out on you that you’re mad, didn’t you hear?’ I just shook my head, ‘I dunno.’ ”

It’s the morning after. Ozzy looks like the morning after. His expression says that if he was losing his mind he would probably be the last to know. Or care. He stares into a cup of hotel coffee which has turned cold. Ozzy is exhausted. He’s been sick most of the night from the too many ups he took to get through the last show. Black Sabbath has just wound up their third American tour, a rigorous coast to coast excursion of one-nighters that’s taken its toll in the bags under Ozzy Osbourne’s eyes and in the similarly weary faces of fellow band members, guitarist Tony Iommi, drummer Bill Ward, and bass player Terry ‘Geezer’ Butler.

“Any group from England that can do an American tour deserves credit,” says Ozzy. “At home there’s no great distances to travel, no time changes and no planes to catch. It’s really very tiring here.” Last time over, Ozzy had to enter a hospital with a bad case of nervous fatigue. Proof that Sabbath is beginning to adjust to the rigors of being a visiting supergroup: all four members managed to stagger through this tour relatively intact.

Even their instruments made it. Three and a half tons of equipment which was shipped and air freighted from city to city. During this trip there were no major hitches, but the group and road manager Michael Double remember nights like the one they spent in Paramus, New Jersey earlier this year. Their equipment had been stranded at the Chicago airport and they had to work with power supplied by the local Catholic church. The concert was a disaster. After half of the first number, Ozzy led the band off the stage. Some amateur engineers came out and toyed with the equipment. The audience sat for about an hour and didn’t bitch. Finally, Sabbath returned, played an additional five songs in desultory fashion and split. Despite the disappointment of the set, they received a standing ovation. Black Sabbath fans may be a hard lot, but they’re also understanding.

It wasn’t always so. The early stages of the band’s career were marked by incidents of performer-audience confrontations. Thinking back on it now, Ozzy can manage a smile as he recalls a gig Sabbath played in Northern Scotland. “It was one of those horrible little towns, you know the type, three shops and about ten boozers. To get there we had to drive for hours over these bumpy dirt roads. There were three people in the whole club for our entire first set. Then it got to be ten o’clock and* that’s the hour when the pubs close, so pretty soon all these farmers started coming in. They were all drunk out of their minds and started shouting things like, ‘Play something we can dance to, you cunt!’ Some of them had these pennies they would heat over a flame and throw at the stage. There we were trying to play music and they were pelting us with these horrible bloody hot coins that stick to your skin when they hit you. Then they started complaining about our volume. They sent up a note ‘Turn down or ... ’ and below that was a large bloodstain.”

“What did you do?”

“We turned up!”

“We had to,” adds Geezer. “After all, we’re only in it for the volume.”

Volume. Loudness. For some that is what Black Sabbath is all about. The lights come up. The group kicks into the opening bars of “War Pigs” with bass vying with drums vying with guitar in a heads-on battle for decibel supremacy — and over all comes the insistent voice of Ozzy, loud, louder, loudest! The true fans revel, smiling as their brains are bathed in it. The uninitiated are startled (“This is loud shit.” “You mean I was supposed to play their records at high volume?”). Those whose job it is to be there even come prepared. One record company exec packs a pair of earplugs whenever he attends a Sabbath show.

“Louder than Led Zeppelin” was a line from the early promotion copy on Black Sabbath. It was only partly a puton. Loudness, particularly when accompanied by intensity, is mighty marketable, just as softness blended with innocence can be. In the agora of the record business, extremities arid aberrations turn a nice dollar. Ask Tiny Tim. If you can find her, ask Mrs. Miller.

Actually, Sabbath had something else going for them in the extremities department. Witchcraft. Age old, but new gold. In England witchcraft was already sacred. There was widespread interest in Satanism and magic. The time was right for a rock and roll band which personified all the cults and rituals of the day. Let them frown into the hearts of our children. Let their lyrics play upon infant fears. Dress them in sombre raiment, iron crosses gleaming on their breasts. Give them all the darkest crayons to draw with. Have them set a funereal beat to march to. And there was Black Sabbath, just hanging out, calling themselves Earth and wondering why they hadn’t made it yet, even while they spent a good part of the time explaining that no, they weren’t Rare Earth, they were not to be confused with Mother Earth and they sure weren’t the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

The story of how they made their name change is splashed with the wash of press-agentry and gimmickry. After an unsuccessful tour of the Continent, the boys were coming back to England by boat and decided to chuck the Earth tag for something more mysterioso. Right after returning, they got Word that one of the fellow’s aunts had died. They took a trip to Holland. When they got back, you guessed it. Another relative had bit the dust. The pattern continued. The group got scared. Enter Ozzy Osbourne’s father who fashioned for them iron crosses to wear around their necks. Presto! No more family funerals. And, for extras, the band starts to prosper. The tale is a natural. Does it matter if it’s true? We’re dealing with myth here just as surely as if we were skimming a page of Homeric verse.

For a time Sabbath were confused in many people’s minds with Black Widow a group whose main claim to fame was that they simulated a black mass ritual as part of their concert act. Some, say that on special occasions Widow raped the girl serving as victim right on the stage. One ecstatic admirer of the group told me in all seriousness that one night they murdered her! Confusing the barids was far less prevalent in England than here in the U.S. where neither was really known. While Sabbath’s first LP, entitled simply Black Sabbath, established their identity for most American fans, mix-ups continued. The most striking appeared in the pages of Rolling Stone. In its April 15, 197Tissue, Sabbath’s second album, Paranoid was reviewed. After the music had been written off as “bubblegum Satanism,” the critic blew it. He launched into a put-down of “lead singer Kip Treavor.” Kip, of course, had been the vocalist with Black Widow.

New York record producer talking:

“For a long time I was just vaguely aware of Black'Sabbath. Then I heard a couple of their things and I dismissed them. You know what happeried? It’s a year later and I’m an absolute Sabbath freak! My kid sister turned me on to them.”

Black Sabbath got the predictable amount of bad press when they first came along. Predictable because the usual number of people weren’t willing to give them a chance. “Witches and devils? What is this shit?” And another album went flying into the dustpile of the rock cognoscenti. “People say they didn’t really hear what we were doing,” Ozzy laughs. “How could they not hear us?”

What critics didn’t figure on was word of mouth. Sabbath is the kind of band that a friend comes over, plunks the record on your turntable, hands you a thick joint, points you to your favorite easy chair, turns up the juice and says, “Hey listen.’’ It’s this variation on missionary zeal that has put the group over and helped them to succeed against really phenomenal odds. How phenomenal? Take the last two years. Make a list of the supergroups which have emerged during that period. Not your personal favorites, necessarily, just an objective list of the groups that sell records in the millions and fill concert halls wherever they go. Now cross out the names of all the bands which were formed as offshoots of already successful groups. Only a very few names will be left and among them will be Black Sabbath.

In the grand tradition of British groups, Sabbath came out of dead end streets. It’s a downer just to drive through Birmingham; to actually live there must be mind-strangling. It’s a factory town but with a difference it’s spread out in all directions, a big sprawling splotch in the center of England. “There are so many suburbs to it,” says Ozzy, “that there is no such thing as a ‘Birmingham sound.’” The boys were headed down the usual badass road until rock and roll bailed them out. “If I hadn’t got with a band,” says Ozzy soberly, “I really would be in prison right now.”

Of the four only Geezer had any aspirations of escaping a boring workingclass life. And he was only studying for it. Yes, Geezer wanted to be an accountant. The others were more realistic. Bill Ward alternated between lorry driving and laboring in a rubber mill. Tony Iommi fixed typewriters (“I Was also a part time bully.”). Ozzy worked in a slaughterhouse. :

“What did you do there?”

No reply. He makes a cutting motion with his fingers. He grins in what he must think is fiendish fashion. Yeah, Ozzy, you would have gone to the slam.

Lillian Roxon talking:

“If I was a little kid and I saw those four up on the stage looking like that and with those iron crucifixes, I’d be scared!”

Nobody is really scared of Black Sabbath but I know what Lillian means. There is a very delicious quality to fear, something that as children we understand completely but th&t we lose hold of as we get older. Sabbath, with their images of rat salad, iron men and bits of finger, get right through to the dark areas of our memory. It’s Saturday matinee, the lights go out and the horror show begins. Slip into the weird world. A doctor brings corpses from the grave. Slip back and laugh. An actor is mugging outrageously. The same combination of the vivid and the comic works for Black Sabbath.

“We are serious about our music,” declares Ozzy and he means it. “We write about things that are true.” But the send-up is there too. A person doesn’t have to look very deeply into the Black Sabbath songbook to come up grinning at some of the lyrics. “What is this that stands before me?” asks Ozzy in the opening verse of their very first song. You might well arsk, as John Lennon might well say. Sabbath is having their fun and why shouldn’t they? Wfyat the hell is rock and roll if it isn’t fun?

A closer look at their lyrics reveals that the boys have gotten their heads together and come up with some relevant ideas on topics of the day. Nothing intensely intellectual, you understand, just a few observations on the planet and mostly in their latest LP, Master Of Reality. The despair of their earlier songs has given way to a kind of cautious optimism. Children Of The Grave, probably the most relentless rocker on the album, offers the hope that love can be a force for survival:

Show the world that love is still alive, you must be bravie Or you children of today are children,of the grave.*

Another song, “After Forever,” examines survival on a personal plane and is almost religious in tone:

Perhaps you’ll think before you say that God is dead and gone Open your eyes, just realize that he is the one The only one who can save you now from all this sin and hate. Or will you just jeer at all you hear? Yes! I think it’s too late.*

The last line is pure Sabbath. When they say “it’s too late,” it’s a whole lot heavier than Carole King. It’s over! Still, the idea of the verse isn’t entirely negated by the tagline. Sabbath is asking you to believe in something.

Usually they don’t ask much. They dish it out. Cruelty has been a common characteristic of their songs. Sometimes it takes the form of judgment and retribution in a manner which is almost Galvinistic |p| in “War Pigs” the generals who have perpetrated death and destruction on the world are stripped of their power and made to crawl on their knees for mercy. Other times it is just dismissal. “Finished with my woman ’cause she couldn’t help me with my mind” is the matter-of-fact opener to “Paranoid.”

Instrumentally, too, they are uncompromising, and often when they hit on a good hard riff they will bring it back over and over. On records this can be exciting or boring, depending on your mood, but in concert when you’re primed for the Sabbath sound, it’s exhilarating. Other bands might try to entice your mind. Sabbath drives a spike into it.

Instrumentally they are really just a three man band. Occasionally, Ozzy will pitch in with a bit of harmonica, but mostly it’s a three way street as far as axes are concerned. Rarely mentioned too is the fact that Tony Iommi is fast becoming one of rock’s i]host technically proficient guitarists. What he might lack in showbusiness-y flash he more than makes up for in ability. On the last album he also emerged as a talented composer — his surprisingly gentle, almost medieval songs give a nice balance to the record.

Now that they have achieved recognition, Sabbath seems interested in widening their spectrum. They’re glad that their audience is becoming more diverse. “After we had a number one single in England,” says Ozzy, “we started attracting very young kids and nothing else. So we never followed ‘Paranoid’ up with another single. We’re not interested in just appealing to a lot of knickerwetters.” More and more, older fans like the New York record producer quoted earlier are showing up at Sabbath gigs and this has got to have an effect on which way the group will go.

“When we play, we try to get off,” explains Ozzy. “If we can get the audience off too, that’s all the better ’cause then we get a good thing going back and forth between us and we play better.”

The next album, their fourth, hasn’t been worked out yet. “We’ve got a little cottage in the country,” says Ozzy. “We’ll stay there a few weeks, get loaded all the time and write some new songs.” Look for some surprises. Sabbath worked hard to get where they’re at and they’re not about to let up. Next time you see Ozzy Osbourne, make a cutting motion with your fingers. He’ll know what you mean.