Who is coughing on the opening of Black Sabbath song ‘Sweet Leaf’?
By summer 1971, Black Sabbath had already proved foundational in heavy metal’s development.
Formed in 1968 and cutting their eponymous debut only a few short months later, an embrace of occultist subject matter and ominously tuned guitars eclipsed the gargantuan rock unleashed by the likes of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, 1970’s Black Sabbath and Paranoid’s spooky blues attack, cementing metal’s roots with little awareness of the monster they’d unearthed.
For their third album, Black Sabbath sought to avoid the breakneck recording of previous records and ensure some scope to experiment. Tony Iommi embraced classical guitar parts, Bill Ward pursued bigger drums, and bassist Geezer Butler tuned his bass down to even deeper depths of unease for 1971’s eerie Master of Reality. No longer novices, the band were growing in confidence in the studio too, marking the last time they’d work with Rodger Bain and handling production duties internally henceforth.
Packed with Black Sabbath staples including ‘Children of the Grave’ and ‘Into the Void’, it’s album opener ‘Sweet Leaf’ that captures the record’s stoner doom essence. A strung-out heavy groover that leaps out of the speakers with engulfing slack, the band’s ode to marijuana was more than just a gesture of appreciation but a full-blown love letter, an emphatic affirmation of the cannabis plant’s guidance toward creative and introspective realms. Frontman Ozzy Osbourne sings the number with bloodshot, lethargic gusto, as if a plume of thick weed smog is filling the air throughout its five-minute skulk.
“My life was empty, forever on a down / Until you took me, showed me around / My life is free now, my life is clear / I love you, sweet leaf / Though you can’t hear”.
Black Sabbath – ‘Sweet Leaf’
“I do remember writing ‘Sweet Leaf’ in the studio,” Butler told Guitar World in 2001. “I’d just come back from Dublin, and they’d had these cigarettes called Sweet Afton, which you could only get in Ireland. We were going: ‘What could we write about?’ I took out this cigarette packet, and as you opened it, it’s got on the lid: ‘It’s the sweetest leaf that gives you the taste.’ I was like: ‘Ah, ‘Sweet Leaf’!’”
Weed had become a daily indulgence in the Black Sabbath camp. Routinely sparking up in London’s Island Studios during the Master of Reality sessions, a passing of the dutchie would inspire one of the album’s most memorable quirks. Taking place during the record’s first five seconds as the introduction to ‘Sweet Leaf’, the repeated loop of someone violently coughing can be heard before its hefty riff begins its almighty bludgeon.
Always the Devil on the shoulder, it was Osbourne who handed Iommi a massive joint, resulting in the guitarist succumbing to coughing fits from the stonking bifter. In the middle of recording acoustic parts, Bain managed to capture Iommi’s throat hacking and artfully placed it as Master of Reality’s warped intro. While crafted in jest, it stood to be the perfect beckon to Black Sabbath’s third LP, a wry clue to the fringe lives they were living far removed from society’s disapproving stiffs: “Straight people don’t know what you’re about / They put you down and shut you out”.
Marijuana soon gave way to other drugs—we’ll give one guess as to what Vol 4’s ‘Snowblind’s all about—but rarely has a recreational substance been so perfectly illustrated as Black Sabbath’s ‘Sweet Leaf’, capturing all its heady epiphany with sincere affection and just the right amount of stoned silliness.
