When Black Sabbath were questioned about making human sacrifices onstage
The whole idea behind Black Sabbath was to make rock music more macabre than listeners were familiar with at the time. After playing traditional blues rock songs in their first rehearsals, the idea was to write something a bit more bone-chilling, with Tony Iommi delivering some of the most demonic riffs ever created on songs like ‘Iron Man’ and ‘War Pigs’. Although Sabbath struck fear in the hearts of concerned parents everywhere, some of the rumours began to get a little out of hand when the band started to hit it big.
When coming up with names for the group, the band landed on the idea of ‘Black Sabbath’ after watching the film of the same name starring horror legend Boris Karloff. After having something spooky to wrap their music around, Geezer Butler had another horrifying experience when writing the lyrics to their namesake track. Going to bed after reading various books on the occult, Butler woke up to see a strange cloaked figure covered in black standing at his bedside looking onward at him.
Once Butler purged all his occult books, Sabbath’s introduction to the world was ripped straight out of an old-school horror film, with Iommi invoking the dreaded tritone known for its unsettling timbre. As they took to the road on their first tours, they soon learned that fans began to take their name a bit too literally.
Speaking to NME about their experiences on the road, Iommi found it strange that some fans were turning up thinking they were going to see something sinister take place onstage, recalling, “Everybody thinks we’re a black magic group, but we just picked the name because we like it. I agree some of the numbers on the LP are about supernatural things, but that’s as far as it goes. We don’t make a habit of playing numbers like that.”
While acts like The Beatles had already been crucified for John Lennon’s alleged blasphemous statements in the press, Sabbath was worried about how they would go down in America, especially with a name that already called to mind imagery of Satanism. It wasn’t until they played in Germany that they encountered a problem, with Ozzy Osbourne remembering, “It’s got so bad that recently a German promoter who had booked us sent return airfares for the group – and if need be, a one-way ticket if we decided on using a sacrificial victim.”
Despite their demented riffs, all Sabbath was focused on was the music, only using the supernatural elements of their lyrics as musical decoration to tell stories in their songs. That didn’t stop some of their labels from putting their foot down on their second album, though, making them change the name of the song ‘War Pigs’ from its original title ‘Walpurgis’, known to be the Satanic version of Christmas.
Regardless of their horror-tinged lyrics, Sabbath became an overnight success in America after their second album began gaining traction, with ‘Paranoid’ becoming one of their first breakout hits. Parents may have still been concerned about what their children were listening to, but this music spoke to kids who wanted something heavier whenever they turned on the radio.
