Black Sabbath (song)
| "Black Sabbath" | |
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"Black Sabbath" is a song by the hard rock/heavy metal pioneers of the same name. It was written in 1969 and put out on their debut album Black Sabbath. Ozzy often tells this story at concerts, and was retold in the VH1 documentary Heavy: The Story Of Metal: "Before we were Black Sabbath we were a band called Earth, when one day Geezer noted how people pay money to see scary movies so we should try writing scary music. So we changed our band name to Black Sabbath." (There was another band called Earth, playing a different type of music, and Black Sabbath is a movie with Boris Karloff from 1963).
The song by the lyrics appears to be about the protagonist facing the devil during the apocalypse. The protagonist is "the chosen one" and the devil causes much terror. This song is often thought of as the pioneer of heavy metal as it was "the first metal band's" first song. This song along with "N.I.B." caused the general public to think Black Sabbath as devil worshippers (which is not and never was true) and perhaps associated rock altogether with the devil, albeit aided by Sympathy for the Devil.
Another version of what the song is about as told by Geezer Butler is as follows. In the days of Earth, Geezer painted his apartment matte black and placed several inverted crucifixes on the walls. Then, one day, Ozzy brought round a book about Witchcraft, which Geezer became extremely interested in. One night, he read the book and fell asleep. He recalls waking up and seeing a black figure and, as he put it, "crapped myself". He then told Ozzy, who wrote the lyrics to what would become Black Sabbath. Hence, "What is this? that stands before me?, figure in black which points at me".
The main riff is constructed with a harmonic progression including an interval of tritone, that is to say the diminished fifth. That interval was banned from medieval ecclesiastical singing because of its dissonant quality, which led monks to call it diabolus in musica—"the devil in music." Because of that original symbolic association, it came to be heard in Western cultural convention as “evil.” Today the interval continues to suggest an "oppressive," "scary," or "evil" sound. Heavy metal has made extensive use of diabolus in musica because of these connotative qualities;And this riff is one of the most famous example of its use in heavy metal. The Black Sabbath song was one of the earliest examples in heavy metal to make use of that interval.
This part of the song was sampled on Ice T Midnight on the Original Gangster LP.
Many people believe despite Iommi not using a particular heavy guitar tone that the main riff of the song is the heaviest and scariest of all time.
Black Sabbath is used as the opening track on both of the band's greatest hits (We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll and Symptom of the Universe: The Original Black Sabbath 1970-1978 and is a regular installment of their live shows. A video for it exists and can be found on the Black Box DVD.
Along with the songs Bad Company, Bo Diddley, Iced Earth and Iron Maiden, this is one of the few popular songs where the album, artist and song all have the same name.