Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath are an English Heavy Metal band from Birmingham, who are known to be co-founders of the Heavy Metal genre. Black Sabbaths' dark and heavy music was the blueprint for todays Black Metal or Doom Metal. The original lineup consisted of Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass-guitar) and Bill Ward (drums). Since the bands formation in 1968, the lineup changed multiple times but the band is still active to the present day.

Formation

In august 1968 school friends Bill Ward and Tony Iommi formed a heavy blues band. Bassist Geezer Butler and his singer Ozzy Osbourne from the band Rare Breed joined the lineup aswell as two other musicians from Birmingham, slide guitarist Jimmy Phillips and saxophonist Alan "Aker" Clarke. The band was called Polka Tulk Blues Band or just short Polka Tulk. The band played blues and jazz until Clarke and Phillips left the band. The band was renamed into Earth and continued to play blues. The band nearly broke up when Tony Iommi joined Jethro Tull but he was unsatisfied with his job and came back to his band Earth. In 1969 they had to change their name again because another band called Earth got a record deal. They changed the band's name into Black Sabbath which was also the name of a song written by Geezer Butler. Along with the name change the musical style of the band changed from the ground up: Inspired by a nearby Horror-cinema Iommi wanted to play frightening music to scare the listeners. To make their music equivalent to a horror movie they started to use the musical tritone (blue note) , also known as "The Devil's Interval", their guitars were distorted and the dark lyrics pushed the band in a darker direction, which was a strong contrast compared to the popular music of the late 1960s, which was dominated by flower power, folk music, and hippie culture.

The Ozzy Years

Most important record of the Ozzy-lineup: Paranoid

The Split

The Dio Years

Most importand record of the Dio-lineup: Heaven and Hell

Original Lineup Reunion

Heaven & Hell Reunion

Influence On Music

Ozzy Osbourne

Tony Iommi

Frank Anthony Tony Iommi was born on february 19, 1948 in Birmingham, England. Tony Iommi is the guitarist and founder of Black Sabbath. He started to play the guitar as a teenager, inspired by Hank Marvin and played in several blues bands aswell as in Jethro Tull before he founded Black Sabbath. On a working-accident at a steel-factory he lost the fingertips on the ring and middlefinger of his right hand and being lefthanded the accident made it impossible for him to fret the guitar. He managed to maintain the guitarplaying by using plastic fingertips and became the founding father of the heavy metal guitar. He made downtunings popular but he used them to lower the string tension to help him fret chords with the plastic tips. Tony Iommi is the main songwriter in Black Sabbath, he is famous for his dark minor scale riffs and pentatonic solos. Tony plays his own Gibson SG signature with cross inlays through various Laney Amps.

Geezer Butler

Bill Ward

Ronnie James Dio

Discography

   * Black Sabbath (1970)
   * Paranoid (1970)
   * Master of Reality (1971)
   * Black Sabbath, Vol. 4 (1972)
   * Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973)
   * Sabotage (1975)
   * Technical Ecstasy (1976)
   * Never Say Die! (1978)
   * Heaven and Hell (1980)
   * Mob Rules (1981)
   * Born Again (1983)
   * Seventh Star (1986)
   * The Eternal Idol (1987)
   * Headless Cross (1989)
   * Tyr (1990)
   * Dehumanizer (1992)
   * Cross Purposes (1994)
   * Forbidden (1995)

--ZakkWylde 22:31, 19 May 2008 (CEST)