That was practically all I had prepared before my scheduled interview with Black Sabbath at the Holiday Inn in Providence, R.I. Interviews are okay if you have a few good questions, but I didn't have nothing but lousy titles for the article. Anyway, what the,hell kinda questions could you ask Black Sabbath?

Here's yr choice:

1) Do you consider Master of Reality vour crowning achievement?

2) Was your music at all influenced by the Mantovani beat?

3) Who do you hate most in the world?

4) If I hit you in the head with a brick, what would be yr response?

5) Who writes all yr jokes?

6) My car is busted. Could you fix it?

7) How would you spell TV?

Right off ya gotta understand that Black Sabbath are mere artifacts. Nobody can stand heavy-metal ticks anymore, and that's what B.S. was best at. But they've had it. Joining the troops of Iron Butterfly, Fever Tree, Blue Cheer, and the Cowsills. They can pull any of their fascist trix they want (Ozzy standing stage center like a statue with his fist clenched over his head, and the music throbbing war chants into yr skdll, for example), but they only look silly in the same way as that Jefferson Starship routine.' It's a parade that's passed itself by.

Except that this story takes place in Providence, a city which exists in a time warp. Everybody in Prov is a diseased gimp or so disfigured that they look like ||v a frog's tit. It's Scum Scity, U.S.A., and so dull that kids got only three places to hang out: the bus station (used to be a car wash), Sunnybrook Farms Grocery on Hope St. (used to be a psychedelic boutique) and Beacon Record Shop (where Tucky Buzzard albums go for $5.98). Kids still go for that "69-"70 mediocrity, with the sounds of the James Gang, Bloodrock,. and Grand Funk battling it out on the stereos. Sure, it's a pathetic situation, but a perfect scene for Black Sabbath.

The story goes that I dart into the Holiday Inn lobby thinking I'm late for this interview and bump into a grinning dufus who looks like he belongs to Black Sabbath. I try to place him but can't remember anybody's name in the group cept Ozzy so I just stare and ask him where they hide the road manager. I get the room no., but I forget it on the way up in the elevator. So I begin listening in at various doors that might be it. At one Of em there's this shouting match going on about local rock promoters, so I figure this is worth a knock. Egg McMuffin answers the door, and gives me the evil eye. I tell him I'm from CREEM and that my secretary had called him earlier about an interview with B.S. He sez to me, like I'm a bug up his ass, that he's their manager (all puffed up like it's a big deal) and that I want their road manager, pointing towards this Wild Man Fischer in disguise shuffling up the hall. And slams £ the door in my face pronto.

Now this guy tootsies over and shakes my hand, offers me some cold pizza, sez his name is Frank, but states the impossibility of me interviewing the entire band together. I remind him that the thing's been planned for two wks, but he shrugs and sez that Ozzy will be free in thirty min. if I just wait in the lobby. After he finishes his pizza, he promises to warn Ozzy that I'm coming.

So I wait in the lobby meanwhile and get pissed. The Blue Oyster Cult were appearing with Black Sabbath that nite, and there was a transcendental meditation convention at the hotel, and either would've made a better story. And I was about to give up and leave when this Frank guy comes off the elevator and tells me that he didn't get a chance to speak with Ozzy about the interview but that all I had to do was call him up in his room (to let him know I was coming) and he'd certainly talk with me for awhile. I asked him if he thought I could interview Ozzy in the lobby bathroom, and he smiled at me as if I was kidding.

Then, I got Ozzy's number and phoned him up. Of course, it took him forever to answer, but finally I heard someone pick up the phone and say "Huh?" so I figured I could talk. I told him who I was and spouted about a brief interview.

But old Ozzy wuzza fuzzy-wuzzy scuzz cuz he covered with, "You know, man, I can't do that. That's our road manager's business, man. Go tell him. He didn't tell me I could do no interview."

You apes can't toy with me! I was mad, but I ignored him and just asked, "Watcha watching on the tube, Ozzy baby?" cuz I could hear the TV in the background.

Ozzy then started making strange noises into the phone. I don't really know if it was to avoid my questions or because he was so wasted that's all he could do. The point was that he wasn't talking to me and that made me furious! Therefore, I kept throwing out questions at him in rapid order, so fast that it would boggle any stooge.

"Whtchawannabewhenyagrowup huh betyrmommy suxyyaoffareyaevergonna die whatdoyouthinkof RawPower what kindacardovadrivehow'sthekids dovou wannafightbetyawannabeafireman?!! " All thru this frenzy of questioning, Ozzy persisted in squawking and belching into the phone at "em.

I'm determined to get some kinda response other than that, so I rush upstairs to his room and start banging on the door. I begin shouting questions at him thru the door and then kicking it hard. I'm right there in the middle of the hall screaming out these ridiculous interview questions like "Didja eat eggshells to get yr voice in such rotten condition?!" The only answer I'd ever get was an annoyed, "Ahh, go away, motherfucker." Once, tho, when I asked him if he thought his band had had it, he threatened to call the cops. And'then suddenly at some point in this interview this tremendous muscleman crawls out of another room, sweating in his T-shirt, and acts like he's gonna toss me up against a wall so I cut out.

"It's a parade that passed itself by."

Oh well, there was still the concert. Even tho I didn't have tickets I had a backstage buddy who got me in. The diff was that he was aligned with the BOC while I was there (artificially) on Black Sabbath's case. Also, I kept bumping into B.S."s manager (Egg McMuffin) again and again. Once even, after the Blue Oyster Cult had completed their set, I ran into Egg and looked him straight in his crooked eye, while pointing to the BOC's equipment, and said, "Now that's a good band!" That was about the only shadow of revenge that I ever got.

Black Sabbath Shows Off: not a bad concert. Smack in the middle of the circus is this cross suspended by chains. Ozzy prances around underneath it like a real marble, and every time he dips the audience simply moos in ecstacy. The band's on fire, too, and never have their drones sounded so much like something Jack LaLanne would shimmy to. They run the whole gamut: "Paranoid," "Into the Void," "Sweet Leaf," "Iron Man," and then stuff from the last album. It's this new material that's frightening. There's a pervading blandness in it; a tendency to fixate too much on a single image. Also, there's the feeling that Black Sabbath could churn this oatmeal out forever, and nobody would notice. Originally their fascination relied on their ability to restrain from any sorta chord change. Now, when they wanna play socko heavy-metal crackle, it sounds like everybody else trying out for Sir Lord Baltimore stardom. A total waste as they imply in one of the more mentionable songs ("Killing Yourself to Live") from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath:

Well people look and people stare Well I don't think that I even care

You work'your life away and what do they give?

TURN TO PAGE 77.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 34.

You're only killing yourself to live Killing yourself to live

According to Black Sabbath, ya oughta just suck mercury or stick a pair of scissors in yr head. That's three times worse than the old "downer rock" plague they used to get away with.

Cuz one thing that Black Sabbath could do at one time was use decent lyrics (trashy, ya know). In high school (dating "em back to hi-skool proves that they're only mere artifacts), I can remehiber editing this underground newspaper in which you were enlightened if you knew about Captain Beefheart or Cecil Taylor. But the kids who submitted manuscripts to the rag did not groove on that kamikaze jazz chat. Mostly they sent in imitation Black Sabbath poem/songs like "Iron Pig Crush U," "War Machine Destroys Rats," "Doomed to Die," or "Paranoid/Schizoid: Into the Void." Yeah, Black Sabbath were the poets of an era. It's the great lines on Master of Reality, fr inst, that makes it a perfect album for meditative rainy daze (when life's little problems give ya the rumbles and the new Stones album is no good) and a distinguished representative of an era that could produce, say, Machine Head:

Rocket engines burning fuel so fast

Up into the night sky they blast

Through the universe the engines whine

Could it be the end of man and time.

Had enough?

Back on earth the flame " of life burns low

Everywhere is misery and woe

Pollution kills the air, the land, the sea, Man prepares to meet his destiny.

That's Poetry? Sure it is, and that used to be the seed that propelled Black Sabbath to success each time a new album was coughed up.

However, , during their concert in Providence, it was none of the above. The crowd stood on chairs, and one mob tried to demolish the arena from the outside (fifty kidz cartooning around by battering in metal doors to the place). Fights were constantly being proposed, and hot dogs were forty-five cents apiece. Bfack Sabbath tore around with all the gall of a stampeding army of rhinos, but still they managed to shut "em down like they wuz novacaine nubs or something. I finally had made it to the last row and was fuming. I kept hoping every kid there would fall off his chair and eventually one did.

I never caught his name, but you knew he musta had Guess Who posters on his walls and that this was a big evening for him cuz he was wearing these checkered pants that glowed in the dark. He flopped into lhs girl; he shook his hair and waved his clenched fist, mounting the position of Superman on the loose; he slapped his hams and guffawed whenever Ozzy zeroed to the front of the stage. And finally he got so worked up that he fell off his perch and smacked his ugly mug on the concrete floor and bled and then bled some more, but not before he'd had time to shout a salute to Black Sabbath with the enigmatic phrase, "Hey, they're meaner than a junkyard dawg!" Watching him bleed, I thought, "Hmmm, I've heard that someplace before," but couldn't place it. The guy's girlfriend was crying. Black Sabbath was doing the same song over and over and over and...

After the cohcert, I went home completely depressed — another day wasted. No interview, no story, no insights, absolutely nuttin" had happened, and nothing to say. Flipped thru the TV Guide and checked out the garbage. There was Day of Discovery, about how "the destructiveness of vandals is illustrated in a visit to a graffitimarred cave in Bloomington, Ind." Or there was a drama starring James Earl Jones and Ruth Buzzi about life in Harlem and one night a rat bites their baby. But the best bet was a taped tribute to Jim Croce, so I turned it on.

Twas good. The Carpenters spoke reverently of the ole boy, Loggins and Messina chatted about Jim's ability to make a story come alive, and Randy Newman sang his personal tunes, dedicating them to his everlasting soul. There were baby photos of Jim, home movies of his family, and a few film clips of recent concert appearances.

But the surprise came when Jim sang "Bad Bad Leroy Brown," and out popped the lines "he's meaner than a junkyard dawg." Suddenly the cosmos clicked! Both Jim Croce and Black Sabbath were the champions of bad lyrics. Their words stink of bad rhyming and trivial commentary. Then, they both base every song they do on an identical riff. But more than that, they're both artifdx.

Black Sabbath is still with us, tho, and they'll probably cash in on their image til they get so old that their skin begins to stink. At least Jimbo had the decency to croak before he really started getting on everybody's nerves! But Black Sabbath ain't gonna do it. The bums are gonna stick it, out until everyone's so sick of their corny tactics that somebody introduces the possibility of simply shooting Ozzy in the head.

And soon Jim Croce comes on the set and faces you and begins telling this charming little story. It's about when he was a teacher in high school. It seems that the kids were so bad and evil that each time they passed his car they'd give it a swift, but firm kick in the side, until finally it began to resemble a raisin. A good joke from Jim Croce.

Thanx, Jim, you were a great cat. m