Why Having a Day, a Festival, an Event that Celebrated Black Sabbath was Pretty Fuckin’ Cool
–They created a genre that grew exponentially and globally into hundreds of different factions over the last fifty years, not to mention a culture that millions of people around the world have embraced as their own.
–Their sound, which could’ve only come from a gloomy English factory town, where Tony Iommi experienced the gloomy accident of having his fingertips cut off at one of those gloomy factories, and that gloomy accident actually helped them create their unique gloomy sound.
–They took their influence from the American Blues, like thousands of other bands from England. Unlike every one of those other bands, they did something new and unique with it. No one’s accusing them of cultural appropriation like they are the Stones. They don’t imitate anyone. They are Black Sabbath.
–They go right through you. Their music penetrates your soul in the same way American Soul Music does. It has the healing power of the blues, while the gloom and the heaviness also have a cathartic power. That’s why metalheads rock out to their favorite bands. They feel cleansed of their transgressions. That started with Sabbath.
–They’re a band for all eternity. I hate when I put on a Black Sabbath record and someone says, “This reminds me of high school.” How sad. Their experience with Black Sabbath ended with high school. For the rest of us, ours started before high school and continues over forty fuckin’ years later. Our understanding of them as a band is far superior now than our understanding of them at 13. Their music still makes us want to lose our minds like it did back then, except now we have a long complex history with them that makes us love their music even more deeply.
–Their musicianship is unrivaled. No one writes better riffs than Tony Iommi. Geezer Butler is the best, most solid bassist in all of metal. Bill Ward sometimes plays jazz.
–There was a time no one was bigger than Ozzy. He rode us on the rails of the Crazy Train and his reputation of being a madman had been validated with such antics like biting the head off a bat. He was also a showman who introduced guitar heroes Randy Rhodes, Jake E.Lee & Zack Wylde to the world. Truthfully, unlike other heavy metal heroes, Ozzy didn’t always give it his all. By the mid-80s, he blew up like a ballon, as a result of his booze and drug consumption. His live performances were mediocre, with his voice cracking every other syllable. He sounded awful.
–Still, he never went away. Not through grunge or any time after. Ozzy was always there, even in forms that made us cringe, like that dreaded tv show the Osbornes, where he and his family embarrassed themselves on a weekly basis (For me, this show was especially painful because my mom, who spent most of the 80s believing Ozzy was the devil suddenly loved him because she loved the show. I was like “No, this can’t be happening”).
–He recovered by reforming Black Sabbath, one of the greatest bands to ever walk the earth. He got back to the beginning and his voice was sounding pretty decent again. They toured semi-regularly, reminding the world how fuckin’ great they were.
-They may have sounded a little sluggish at Back to the Beginning. And Bill Ward definitely couldn’t play all the fills in War Pigs. But geez, they’re in their late 70s and Ozzy has Parkinson’s for Christ’s sake. Being as great as they were fifty years ago wasn’t the point. It was a celebration of their sound, their musicianship, their career. Their musicianship alone deserves that kind of recognition, though they’re more than that. Ozzy’s voice gets into you too, penetrating you on the same way Iommi’s riffs do. People wanted to rock out with them one more time, to cleanse themselves of their transgressions and say thanks to both Ozzy and Sabbath for being there when we needed them. They truly were madmen.
Other comments on Back to the Beginning
-Slayer, at least the band, sounded incredible. Tom Araya’s vocals were way too loud in the mix. I’ve seen Slayer almost 20 times and I’ve never heard the vocals that loud before. Whoever mixed it, didn’t know the band.
-Sammy Hagar singing Flying High Again was the low point of the whole event.
-Since when has the singer for Bush been singing for Gojira?
-Most of the Sabbath covers fell short. No one does Sabbath better than Sabbath. I think Metallica played the best one with “Hole in the Sky”. They were always a great cover band.
-I’m not sure how much longer Metallica and Slayer will be doing what they do. At least Tom Araya and James Hatfield. They looked like they really had to push it as hard as they could just to do what they used to do on a daily basis. Again, Slayer sounded great. Metallica doing “Hole in the Sky” was a highlight.
