Birmingham’s most important band, Black Sabbath, brought on a new era for rock music as seasoned hippies ventured wearily into the 1970s.
Where the 1960s had been an era of sociopolitical transition and the popularisation of rock music across the western world, the ’70s would prove to be an era for dynamic genre propagation. Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler’s four-piece took the heavier rock of The Who, Led Zeppelin and The Beatles’ spark plug, ‘Helter Skelter’, and moulded it into a beast of their own: this beast was heavy metal.
While some pinpoint ‘Helter Skelter’ as a key turning point in the birth of heavy metal, for Osbourne, The Beatles’ ‘She Loves You’ was the game changer. Discussing the monumental influence of The Beatles in a 2016 interview with NME, Osbourne said: “I come from the backstreets of Aston in Birmingham and it wasn’t a very cool place when I was growing up. I used to sit on my doorstep and think, ‘How the hell am I going to get out of here?’ And then one day ‘She Loves You’ came on the radio.”
With its strands of blues and skiffle, the 1963 hit single was a radical step forward in the rock arena at the time. Something in John Lennon and McCartney’s intense vocal delivery ignited something in Osbourne’s mind. “That song turned my head around,” Osbourne continued. “My son always says to me, ‘What was it like when The Beatles happened?’ All I can really say to him is: ‘Imagine going to bed in one world and then waking up in another that’s so different and exciting that it makes you feel glad to be alive.’”
Following The Beatles religiously throughout the 1960s as the Liverpool band continued to stress the boundaries of artistic expression, Osbourne became adamant that the rockstar lifestyle was made for him, and he made for it. It would be a theory proven true on countless occassions as Osbourne and his band would become icons of heavy metal, laying the foundations for an entire genre to ignite itself.
But like so many tinderkegs waiting to blow, there was a serious chance that Osbourne’s talent for explosive performance could have been snuffed out before it could hit the heights. He needed a band and the spark that a group of musicians would provide him.
Osbourne’s moment arrived in 1968 when he saw an advert Geezer had posted in the local paper that sought a singer prepared to bring something new and exciting to rock music. Osbourne would prove himself to be just that man. Never appearing like a traditional rock singer, Osbourne’s presence would feel more muted than some, or perhaps more correctly put, a little more shadowy.
Robert Plant and Roger Daltrey certainly possessed a sense of power, but they wanted to be in the spotlight and shine like beacons of golden positivity. That didn’t suit Birmingham, and it certainly didn’t suit Osbourne and the band he was about to meet. They wanted something far heavier.
Of course, at this point, the notion of heavy metal wasn’t apparent outside of the periodic table, but both musicians knew they wanted to sound thunderous.
“There’s this thing at the door,” Geezer’s older brother reportedly informed him. “What do you mean by this thing,” Geezer replied. He was told to simply go to the door and behold. He was greeted by a skinhead lad wearing a brown gown with a shoe on a lead (presumably for the pun ‘I’m just walking a-boot’, but who knows?) and a chimney sweep’s brush in the other hand. This bizarre, seemingly lobotomised chimney sweep said: “Hello, I’m Ozzy” in his Brummy twang, and the rest is rock ‘n’ roll history.
The two men, alongside Bill Ward and Tony Iommi, would create one of the most formidable bands of all time, laying waste to the hippie age and welcoming in the new dawn of heavy metal.
