The Black Sabbath song created by a mistake
Rock and roll has never been widely known as the most sophisticated genre of music. For all of the great songs with refined sections throughout their runtime, there are just as many tunes that would have many composers shaking their heads as to how those so-called “musicians” make their living. As for Black Sabbath, the classic tracks often come from the happiest of accidents.
When working on their first song batch, the band was no different than the other groups arising from the British blues scene, like Cream and Led Zeppelin. While the crew had distilled their sound into tracks like ‘Wicked World’, Tony Iommi changed the course of rock history once he hit on the riff for the band’s title track.
Featuring the dreaded tritone musical interval, Sabbath were on the verge of heavy metal grandeur, crafting hymns of doom in no time in one 12-hour session for their debut album. Since they were touring nonstop throughout most of 1970, it would be until Paranoid that they truly made their mark.
Having time to hone their craft, Sabbath presented a foreboding tracklist of songs featuring heavy metal anthems like ‘Iron Man’ and ‘War Pigs’. Although ‘Electric Funeral’ was one of the few overlooked tracks from the album, Iommi remembers the whole track stemming from a technical foul-up from Bill Ward.
When discussing the track, Iommi remembered how difficult it was getting the final track finished, recalling in his book Iron Man, “When we recorded ‘Electric Funeral’… Bill would play it differently every bloody time. He didn’t know how many times to come in, and at certain parts, he plays three instead of four. We kept the three. And to this day, we still play it that way”.
Compared to the rest of the numbers on the band’s sophomore effort, it’s easy to see the rhythmic differences. Although Ward was known as one of the more powerful drummers in the rock scene then, his subtle swing of the rhythm offsets Iommi’s riff, always keeping the listener on edge whenever they listen to the track.
Given the lyrical subject matter, though, being disoriented makes a lot of sense. Throughout the tune, Ozzy Osbourne sings lyrics about nuclear assault as innocent civilians watch as bombs are dropped on them and turned to ash beneath the rubble. Considering the amount of graphic imagery in the lyrics, hearing the riff get increasingly twisted rhythmically practically illustrates the impending doom as if the song itself is being torn apart along with the civilians.
Though Ward would eventually understand the mechanics of the riff when playing the track live, he may have deliberately tried to evoke a certain feeling with his disorienting groove. When talking about his playing style, Ward had always thought his art was about creating a particular atmosphere whenever he played the drums. When that was combined with the power of Iommi’s guitar playing, Sabbath went from would-be blues rockers to one of the titans of heavy metal for decades to come.
