The label executive that walked out on Black Sabbath
Towards the end of the ‘60s, most of the best bands coming out of England were still rooted in the blues. Although acts like The Yardbirds started running out of steam, Jimmy Page began taking his inspirations elsewhere with Led Zeppelin, making some of the heaviest music imaginable out of their initial bluesy foundation. Rock could always get heavier, though, and Black Sabbath was on the horizon, about to deliver some of the most savage heavy metal known to man.
Or at least…that’s what they would be known for. When the band first got the ball rolling, they could hardly get any gigs between them, originally using the moniker Earth and touring the world with Tony Iommi’s feeble attempts at blues licks. The operation was so flimsy that Iommi even left the fold to join a version of Jethro Tull, playing with them on The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus before returning to Sabbath.
When the band got Ozzy Osbourne beyond the microphone, something began to shift, creating songs that had more to do with the occult and the darker elements of life. As Iommi started moving away from his bluesy roots, the classical piece ‘Mars: Bringer of War’ inspired the band’s namesake track, as Osbourne sang lyrics about a dark spirit standing in front of him and pulling him down to Hell.
Although the band had all of the elements in place, none of that translated to record label interest. When going through some of their showcases, bassist Geezer Butler recalled one showcase they had to do after a huge gig, telling Metal Evolution, “We had to play a gig and then drive all through the night to get to this showcase for a record label. So none of us had slept, and we were absolutely exhausted. And we did the gig, and the record label got up and walked out about halfway through the second song. Probably thinking, ‘What is this crap?’”.
What that executive missed out on was some of the gnarliest music ever created, which would eventually be adopted by Vertigo Records. Though the heads at Vertigo weren’t thinking in terms of heavy metal at the time, they liked the darkness in Sabbath’s music, especially the lyrics that dealt with far more difficult subjects than what The Rolling Stones were playing at the time.
Even as Sabbath started to ascend to the highest heights on the charts, most of them thought it was a joke. When they first heard themselves on the radio, Butler would eventually say that he had no idea that it was them, recalling, “We’re listening to the album charts, and the DJ goes ‘new at 13 this week is Black Sabbath’. We were like, ‘What? Is there another band called Black Sabbath?’ And then he turned it on, and it was us”.
Though Sabbath may not have been ready for their success, the next few years brought a whirlwind of different surprises, including some of the biggest albums of their career and Iommi detuning his guitar to make songs even heavier than they normally were. Despite Sabbath wanting to be a kickass hard rock band, they had no idea they had invented a whole new genre beneath their feet, with legions of metalheads having found their calling.
