The Black Sabbath song that left Roger Waters “speechless” for the wrong reasons
Pink Floyd founding member Roger Waters could never bite his tongue and restrain himself from saying precisely what was on his mind. Waters has dished out insults galore regarding other bands, and only a select few have been spared by his wrath.
Unfortunately for Black Sabbath, they know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of one of his famous verbal attacks. While they soon grew accustomed to scathing reviews, Waters’ comments came at the start of their career when they were still finding their feet. Naturally, it hurt to hear harsh words about their music from somebody as accomplished as Waters, whom they also greatly respected.
In 1970, Black Sabbath began to make significant waves in the music industry with their eponymous debut, which they followed up with Paranoid in the same year. Their second album made them one of the most exciting groups on the planet thanks to their pioneering heavy metal sound, which separated them from their contemporaries.
A month before the release of their first album, Waters was tasked with reviewing Black Sabbath’s debut single ‘Evil Woman’ for the music publication Melody Maker. American rock band Crow originally released the track before Sabbath made it their own, but the Pink Floyd guitarist was less than impressed with their effort.
In his brutally honest assessment of ‘Evil Woman’, Waters wrote: “Well, well, well… I’m speechless – well, almost. It’s got that kind of Dragnet, Peter Gunn, American detective series beginning. You keep thinking it’s going to start. You think that for the first minute, but then, if you are really perceptive, you realise it isn’t going to start, and that’s all there is.”
Few people within the music industry had an opinion that held more weight than Waters’s in 1970, who was viewed as an oracle due to his majestic work with Pink Floyd. His comments could have been enough to turn people off from listening to Black Sabbath, but thankfully, the public made up their own mind about the Birmingham band.
However, in 2017, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi opened up about Waters’ comments and revealed it hurt to read his disparaging comments about their work. Although he mistakenly remembered Waters reviewed ‘Paranoid’ rather than ‘Crow’, which was Paul Rodgers in a separate issue of the same magazine.
Iommi said: “I used to read the slaggings we’d get and I’d just think ‘Why?’. There was one moment that really hurt, and that didn’t actually come from the press. It came from Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters. He reviewed Paranoid when it came out as a single because he was reviewing the singles that week for a music paper. He gave it such a terrible review. I thought, ‘Blimey!’ Hearing that from a fellow musician seemed really harsh.”
Although Iommi misremembered the song which caught the ire of Waters, his evaluation of Black Sabbath’s debut single clearly plagued his mind, and he’s not the only one to be left saddened by cutting remarks made by the musician.
