Where It All Began: The Birth of Black Sabbath

Step inside the world of Ozzy, Iommi, Butler, and Ward in the raw, unfiltered beginning of Black Sabbath.

Just one year after Woodstock and the Summer of Love, a new kind of music made its way onto the airwaves and into the hearts of millions of fans. The sound was dark, brooding, and overpowering, like the music of industrial machinery, with a banshee in the lead who shrieked out lyrics from the darkest parts of our souls. But the melodies had meaning, and the words pointed their finger at the injustices and corruption of the world, in the finest tradition of the music of the 1960s. This sound, this phenomenon became known as “heavy metal.”

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In Black Sabbath: An Oral History, Mike Stark brings us into the world of Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, and of course, John “Ozzy” Osbourne, four young men from England who changed the world with their music. Through their own words, Stark presents firsthand accounts of the history of the quintessential British heavy metal band, who influenced later bands as diverse as Metallica, Van Halen, Nine Inch Nails, Alice in Chains, and others, right up to today.

With a supporting cast of characters that includes Ronnie James Dio, Rob Halford, Eric Singer, Tony Martin, Cozy Powell, and Neil Murray, Black Sabbath: An Oral History also provides a detailed timeline of the band from 1970 to 2017, as well as an annotated album discography.

Introduction

They were hated. By everyone. Everyone, but their fans. The music community was still wallowing in the perceived peace and love of Woodstock, refusing to even accept the most obvious of the ominous signs like Altamont, the Isle of Wight and the Manson murders, all with deep musical ties. So the last thing they would want to accept is music that was so dark, so brooding, so loud. Hendrix was loud, but magical. The newly formed Led Zeppelin, although blues based, still sang “songs of hope,” and had a soul amongst the chaos. This new sound seemed soulless on the surface. Even to the music community who scoffed at the fundamentalist preachers who relentlessly would not let up on rock music, this WAS the sound of the deepest segments of hell. This WAS the completely deformed bastard child of Elvis. Unless you were a fan.

The sound. A sound that dwarfed everything that had come before. And a voice. A banshee, crying for mercy. Crying to be put out of his misery, as the thunder behind him pushed him and made the audience seem impotent. Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, and Ozzy Osbourne, the banshee. The inventors of heavy metal music. Period.

From the late ‘60s to the late ‘70s these four workhorses toured and recorded themselves to exhaustion, getting little or no respect, picking up fans and fans who, themselves, picked up instruments to become part of the future that these four men had created. But all was not right. The banshee was replaced by the sorcerer. In rock ‘n roll terms this should have been the end but Ronnie James Dio, the sorcerer, joined the band bringing a new life to the original sound. The sorcerer worked his magic for two albums, but then the cliché finally kicked in. In the mid ‘80s, the band’s original keeper of the beat, Bill Ward, could not cope with the loss of the banshee and the sorcerer left on his own fruitful journey.

Tony Iommi continued to hold on to the hope that Black Sabbath would reproduce the magic of the sorcerer or the urgent cries of the banshee. He brought in several other singers through the rest of the ‘80s and early ‘90s with mixed results. But through it all the fans came. Like Tony, the fans also held on to the original spirit.

It is in that original spirit that this book has been assembled. It contains the recollections, the emotions, the biases and, hopefully, through it all, the story of this groundbreaking band, in the words of those who lived it. From the band’s early beginnings to the reunions and near reunions of the mid-’80s and early ‘90s, the larger than life story and sound of Black Sabbath is chronicled by the banshee, the sorcerer, the original keeper of the beat, Tony, Geezer and others that contributed to the band’s long history.

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Ready to witness the birth of heavy metal from the inside? Black Sabbath: An Oral History is a raw, first-person account of the legendary band’s formation, chaos, and impact—told by Ozzy, Tony, Geezer, and the rest of the crew.

👉 Read the full story: Black Sabbath: An Oral History