History Music / BlackSabbath

* {{Determinator}}: Tony Iommi. First he loses two fingertips on his fretting hand -- no big deal, experiment with different materials to make fake ones. After recording the first two albums in standard tuning, start tuning your guitar lower and get a signature sound [[note]] For those of you who aren't music-savvy, guitars are normally tuned from the thickest to thinnest strings to the notes of E-A-D-G-B-E, so the half-step down would be tuned to D#-G#-C#-F#-A#-D#, which has less tension to work with, making fretting / bending the strings easier for someone with less strength in those fingers while unintentionally making the music sound "darker" due to the lower notes. Over time Iommi tuned his guitars even lower. And now you know.[[/note]] (and create music history in the process). Then some 50 years later he gets lymphoma. No big deal, go back to England to continue treatment, ship your bandmates out there with you so you can still work on the album, ''and still plan to tour that summer''. Badass incarnate right there.

After the tour the band essentially broke up, with Tony Iommi returning to the studio to record a solo album with the idea of each song being sung by a different singer, but because of ExecutiveMeddling, he was forced to release ''Seventh Star'' under the Black Sabbath name (though "featuring Tony Iommi" does appear below that), and the only singer to appear was Glenn Hughes, another Deep Purple alum, but Hughes' jaw was broken in a fistfight with a roadie shortly into the subsequent tour, and a replacement was brought in. With none of the session musicians who played on the album playing on the tour, Sabbath really became "Tony Iommi and whoever", as Iommi became the only constant member (and undisputed boss) through its [[RevolvingDoorBand multiple line-up changes]] in ensuing years, with no two albums or tours featuring the exact same lineup. Subsequent albums featured Tony Martin on vocals, starting with ''The Eternal Idol'', except for 1991's ''Dehumanizer'' which featured a short-lived reunion of the Dio-era line-up, until the original four reunited in 1997 after a number of {{grunge}} artists cited the band as a key influence. As Ozzy again drifted away from the band in the mid-2000's to focus on his solo career and semi-retirement, the other members reunited with Dio and recorded and performed under the name Heaven & Hell until Dio's death in 2010.

** More recent fans could argue that if one were to see Black Sabbath performing live in the new millennium, they'd hear a vocal ''decline'' from Ozzy -- mostly from his voice cracking occasionally (which isn't helped at all by the fact that Ozzy was almost literally semi-permanently high since the 1960's with periods of sobriety peppered in between) when he attempts to hit high notes and notes that extend for longer than a few seconds. It all depends on how much rest he's gotten and how stressful the tours are, really.

* OverlyLongGag: With "Iron Man" on the ''Reunion'' tour album, Ozzy keeps trying to make the crowd chant louder. It's at 1:06 where he proclaims: "We are not going to continue until we hear the fucking roof rattle, come on!"

* SameFaceDifferentName: When the band reunited with Dio in the late 2000's, they went under the name ''Heaven and Hell'' as to differentiate between the still active Ozzy fronted line-up. That said, they weren't fooling anyone, as most called them Sabbath anyway.

* SexDrugsAndRockAndRoll: The guys in ''Black Sabbath'' did a ''lot'' of drugs back in the 1970's. Ozzy even claims that during the peak of Black Sabbath's popularity, he and Tony once did acid ''every day for a year'' just to see what would happen.

* 1975 -- ''Sabotage''

** "Sweet Leaf" is a [[DrugsAreGood pro-marijuana]] song, and opens with a loop of Tony Iommi coughing immediately after taking a hit. The band were on pretty much ''every drug'' throughout the early and mid-1970s; Iommi later stated he had once taken LSD every day for ''two and a half years straight'' during that time. Ironically, the title came from a brand of cigarettes whos slogan was "The sweetest leaf there is".

After the tour the band essentially broke up, with Tony Iommi returning to the studio to record a solo album with the idea of each song being sung by a different singer, but because of ExecutiveMeddling, he was forced to release ''Seventh Star'' under the Black Sabbath name (though "featuring Tony Iommi" does appear below that), and the only singer to appear was Glenn Hughes, another Deep Purple alum, but When Hughes' jaw was broken in a fistfight with a roadie shortly into the subsequent tour. With none of the session musicians who played on the album playing on the tour, Sabbath really became "Tony Iommi and whoever", as Iommi became the only constant member (and undisputed boss) through its [[RevolvingDoorBand multiple line-up changes]] in ensuing years, with no two albums or tours featuring the exact same lineup. Subsequent albums featured Tony Martin on vocals, starting with ''The Eternal Idol'', except for 1991's ''Dehumanizer'' which featured a short-lived reunion of the Dio-era line-up, until the original four reunited in 1997 after a number of {{grunge}} artists cited the band as a key influence. As Ozzy again drifted away from the band in the mid-2000's to focus on his solo career and semi-retirement, the other members reunited with Dio and recorded and performed under the name Heaven & Hell until Dio's death in 2010.

In 1979, Ozzy Osbourne was fired from the band as his increasingly erratic behaviour rendered him generally unreliable. On the advice of the band's manager, Sharon Arden (who would later become Sharon Osbourne), the group recruited Music/RonnieJamesDio, freshly departed from HeavyMithril juggernaut Music/{{Rainbow}}, as their new lead singer. Dio's tenure lasted only three years, but he was generally regarded as a brilliant front-man in his own right, and his 1980 debut with the band, ''Heaven and Hell,'' is an all-time classic.

From 1982-1984, former Music/DeepPurple singer Ian Gillan joined the band for ''Born Again'' and a notoriously mismanaged tour that most infamously included a Stonehenge prop (for use when playing the namesake song from the album) that was made at three times the intended size as the builder thought the measurements on the plan were in meters, not feet, making it too large for the tour. (This is the origin of the miniature Stomhenge bit in ''Film/ThisIsSpinalTap''.) The tour also included playing the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water" as part of the encore, an unusual move for Black Sabbath.

From 1982-1984, former Music/DeepPurple singer Ian Gillan joined the band for ''Born Again'' and a tour that most notably included the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water" as part of the encore, an unusual move for Black Sabbath.

The band saw [[RevolvingDoorBand multiple line-up changes]] (including a reunion of the Dio-era line-up in 1991) until the original four reunited in 1997 after a number of {{grunge}} artists cited the band as a key influence. As Ozzy again drifted away from the band in the mid-2000's to focus on his solo career and semi-retirement, the other members reunited with Dio and performed under the name ''Heaven and Hell'' until Dio's death in 2010.

From 1982-1984, former Music/DeepPurple singer Ian Gillan joined the ''Black Sabbath'' for ''Born Again'' and a tour that most notably included the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water" as part of the encore, an unusual move for Black Sabbath.

* DarkerAndEdgier: The reason they received little radio play and were accused by MoralGuardians of [[{{Demonization}} being satanists]].

* DrugsAreBad: "Hand of Doom" (which was inspired by returning soldiers from the UsefulNotes/VietnamWar self-medicating what we now call PTSD with heroin, with predictably disastrous results), "Killing Yourself to Live", "Snowblind" (although the latter of these could be interpreted either way; see OdeToIntoxication below), "Methademic". It really depends what drug we're talking about. It's well-known that Ozzy was stoned out of his mind while making ''Sabotage'', and all the band members were addicts for most of the 70s. Iommi once talked about the recording of ''Vol. 4'' by saying "We'd lay around in the Jacuzzi all day, absolutely fucking smashed on coke, and every now and again we'd get up and do a song."

** "Sweet Leaf" is a [[DrugsAreGood pro-marijuana]] song, and opens with a loop of Tony Iommi coughing immediately after taking a hit. The band were on pretty much ''every drug'' throughout the early and mid-'70s; Iommi later stated he had once taken LSD every day for ''two and a half years straight'' during that time. Ironically, the title came from a brand of cigarettes whos slogan was "The sweetest leaf there is".

* ProtestSong: Too many to list. Don't forget -- late '60s, early '70s rock band. [[UsefulNotes/VietnamWar I wonder what else was going on around that time...]]

** Despite claims from some parental and religious groups that Black Sabbath's music promoted Satan worship, some of their songs can be interpreted as ''pro-religious''. No, really, read the lyrics to "Lord of This World" or "After Forever" sometime.

* {{Determinator}}: Tony Iommi. First he loses two fingertips on his fretting hand -- no big deal, melt down soap bottles to make fake ones and tune your guitar down half a step [[note]] For those of you who aren't music-savvy, musical notes are assigned letters from A - G with sharps (#) or flats (b) assigned to notes halfway between the "standard" notes with the exceptions of B and E (so A, B, and C would be going up full steps, while A, A#, B, C, C# would be counting the half-steps). If a note passes G# or A, it cycles forward to an A or back to a G# respectively, albeit one octave higher/lower... Anyway, guitars are normally tuned from the thickest to thinnest strings to the notes of E-A-D-G-B-E, so the half-step down would be tuned to D#-G#-C#-F#-A#-D#, which has less tension to work with, making fretting / bending the strings easier for someone with less strength in those fingers while unintentionally making the music sound "darker" due to the lower notes. And now you know.[[/note]] (and create music history in the process). Then some 50 years later he gets lymphoma. No big deal, go back to England to continue treatment, ship your bandmates out there with you so you can still work on the album, ''and still plan to tour that summer''. Badass incarnate right there.

* SixDegreesOfKevinBacon: Thanks to collaborations, musicians are given a Sabbath number based on appearing on the same recording.
** Black Sabbath has a Sabbath number of 0, while its band members have a Sabbath number of 1.