BLACK SABBATH - Happy Birthday!
February 12, 2010, 14 years ago
On February 13, 1970 BLACK SABBATH released their first album - the self-titled Black Sabbath - changing the face of heavy music forever.
In August 1969, the band - featuring singer Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward - changed their name from EARTH to Black Sabbath, an homage to a 1963 classic Mario Bava terror film protagonized by Boris Karloff. In December 1969 they recorded and released their debut single, 'Evil Woman'. In January 1970, the band recorded and mixed the remaining seven songs that would appear on their debut album.
Guitarist Tony Iommi tells Wikipedia, "We just went in the studio and did it in a day, we played our live set and that was it. We actually thought a whole day was quite a long time, then off we went the next day to play for £20 in Switzerland."
Iommi recalls recording live: "We thought 'We have two days to do it and one of the days is mixing.' So we played live. Ozzy was singing at the same time, we just put him in a separate booth and off we went. We never had a second run of most of the stuff."
Black Sabbath reached number eight on the UK Album Chart. Following its US release in May 1970 by Warner Bros. Records, the album reached number 23 on the Billboard 200, where it remained for over a year, selling a million copies.
