We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago….
There are very few bands that generated the love of fans and the disdain of critics more than Black Sabbath. That many critics these days have tempered that criticism and even have changed their minds on the importance of the band can’t change the vitriol they felt in 1971 when Ozzy and the boys released their 3rd studio album, “Master Of Reality.”
I’ll admit I was never a Sabbath fan although I had friends who were and I had found some of the stuff on their previous record “Paranoid” listenable. Master of Reality was different. There wasn’t anything like Iron Man or War Pigs on this record. It seemed like the band was purposely making themselves less accessible. As Mick Wall wrote in his book about the band, “the Sabbath sound took a plunge into greater darkness. Bereft even of reverb, leaving their sound as dry as old bones dug up from some desert burial plot”. Robert Christgau called it “a dim-witted, amoral exploitation”. Others said “creepy & obnoxious”. What they didn’t realize or wouldn’t admit, was that was what Sabbath fans wanted. They didn’t want safe and sterile…they didn’t want another Led Zep or even Grand Funk. They wanted the darkness and the musical sludge that the band was dishing up in songs like ‘Children Of The Grave” and “Into The Void”…even the love letter to the copious amounts of pot they were smoking ‘Sweet Leaf” works if you take away any illusions of this being deep and meaningful. Sorry Goz!
What made this sound different was that guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler downtuned their instruments 1 1/2 steps. It reduced string tension and helped Iommi play with less pain. He had severed the tips of two of his fingers in an earlier factory accident. He said it led to a “bigger, heavier sound”.
As I mentioned, fans didn’t care what the critics wrote…the LP went Top 5 in both the US and the UK. And although it didn’t produce the classic songs like “Paranoid”, a generation of musicians sat up and took notice. Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins said Master of Reality “spawned grunge” and you can certainly hear some of this sound in the music that dominated the rock scene 20 years later.
So, here you go…it’s not my cup of tea…but I know many of you like this sort of thing.
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