Was Frank Zappa the reason Black Sabbath got famous?
Critics have never been known to be the biggest fans of heavy metal. Ever since the first hard rock bands began making inroads into heavier music, the critics usually turned a blind eye to it, thinking that dark music about morbid topics existed only for Neanderthals to bang their heads against the wall. Although Black Sabbath may have gotten a fair bit of spite from the critics, one of art-rock’s finest may have helped turn the tide for them.
Then again, Black Sabbath can also thank the critics for giving their signature genre its name. When talking about the first time that he heard the term “heavy metal”, Geezer Butler remembered it being used as an insult, telling Metal Evolution, “It was someone being derogatory about us. One review said it was ‘like a load of heavy metal dropped’. Not musically whatsoever”.
While Sabbath saw themselves as a heavier version of the blues-rock players they loved at the time, their doom hymns started to do damage on the charts. Much to their surprise, their debut album struck a nerve with fans looking for heavier music, with Paranoid turning the tides their way with immortal songs like ‘Iron Man’ and ‘War Pigs’.
After being ripped to shreds at first, Butler remembered the critics turning their back on Sabbath from that point forward, recalling in Classic Albums, “When we started to become successful, they were the ones that looked out of touch. So it made them look really stupid, and they’ve never forgiven us for that”.
Once the band got their traditional metal tunes out of their system, the next few albums would see them expanding their horizons, working with artists like Rick Wakeman from Yes to produce the demonic sounds on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Vol. 4. Although the critics may have had the same reaction at first, guitarist Frank Zappa thought the group sounded phenomenal, counting the song ‘Supernaut’ as one of his favourite guitar riffs.
According to Butler, Zappa helped open the floodgates for the group’s popularity, telling Westword, “At the time, Frank Zappa was really well thought of critically. I thought he was joking! (Laughs.) But he thought ‘Supernaut’ was the best riff he’d ever heard. A lot of critics went, ‘Well, if Zappa likes Black Sabbath, maybe we should give them another listen.’ So that turned some of the people”.
Zappa was so enamoured with the band that even tried to jam with the group whenever they were in the same area. As Bill Ward recalls, though, the functionality of Zappa on the stage with them at Madison Square Garden didn’t go as planned, explaining, “In Madison Square Garden Frank’s guitar, unfortunately, something blew up. So it didn’t go very far. But we were always bumping into Frank. And he would come and watch us play a couple of times”.
Despite the massive praise from Zappa, Sabbath was about to enter a dark time in their history. After working on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, the tension between Ozzy Osbourne and the rest of the group started to boil over, leading to Osbourne being ousted from the group after the album Never Say Die!. From Zappa’s point of view, though, it didn’t matter who was behind the microphone as long as the music still kicked ass.
