How Bill Ward’s beard inspired a classic Black Sabbath song
The story of Black Sabbath is most famous because of the band’s position as the architects of heavy metal. Taking the blues foundation of 1960s rock and making it darker and more thunderous than it had ever been, without their work, contemporary culture would be a completely different beast from what it is today.
In addition, the four longhairs from Birmingham are also famed for their notorious hellraising, which underpinned everything they did in their most crucial chapter and, perhaps more significantly, saw them fall apart. Frontman Ozzy Osbourne was kicked out in 1979 due to his substance abuse issues, with the group under more strain than they had ever been following the fraught sessions for 1978’s Never Say Die.
However, the band’s best time together, from their 1970 self-titled debut to somewhere after 1975’s Sabotage, was mostly full of hijinks. Producing many an anecdote that outlines how excited the group were to be on top of the world, fuelled by youthful naivety and all that traditional fame allowed, from taking copious amounts of drugs to the dangerous pranks played on drummer Bill Ward, the metal legends had a lot of fun during this most crucial musical period, which makes a lot of sense. Happiness and creativity have always gone hand in hand.
One thing that has always been clear is that Bill Ward was the butt of many jokes when Sabbath were at their peak. While this most famously manifested in the horrendous practical jokes they would subject on their friend, it would also materialise in more subtle ways that only the four of the band were aware of: in-jokes.
This even made its way into one of their most iconic tracks, ‘N.I.B.’, a highlight of their debut album, boasting one of Tony Iommi’s best riffs. While the song is regarded as one of the band’s definitive efforts, and although bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler wrote it about the devil falling in love and becoming a good person, the title references Bill Ward’s beard.
According to Butler, the title refers to Ward’s beard, as the band called him ‘Nibby’ because they thought it looked like the nib of a pen. This was a nickname Osbourne came up with while tripping on acid and thought the drummer was turning into a fountain pen.
Butler recalled: “Originally (the title) was Nib, which was Bill’s beard. When I wrote N.I.B., I couldn’t think of a title for the song, so I just called it Nib, after Bill’s beard. To make it more intriguing I put punctuation marks in there to make it N.I.B. By the time it got to America, they translated it to ‘Nativity in Black’.”
Listen to ‘N.I.B.’ below.
