A bad show—let alone a string of bad shows—can be soul-sucking blessings in disguise for a band, and that was certainly true of the run of stinkers Black Sabbath had in Europe that helped them create the foundation for their iconic album, Paranoid. Indeed, everyone has to start somewhere. For musicians, that “somewhere” is usually an empty room.
It’s hard to imagine Black Sabbath (or its founding member and frontman, Ozzy Osbourne) performing to a desolate club, especially after watching 40,000 in-person fans and nearly six million livestreamers tuning in to see Osbourne’s final concert ahead of his retirement in July 2025.
But without those “stinker” shows in Europe in 1970, Black Sabbath might not have come up with some of their most iconic, career-defining hits.
A Bad Tour That Came On The Heels Of Worse Reviews
There’s a reason the adage, “Everyone’s a critic,” has stuck around for so long. It’s true. When you create art, you inevitably open yourself up to criticism from everyone and their grandmother, and when you’re at the forefront of a new genre people (and their grandmas) aren’t quite hip to yet, the backlash can be even worse. Such was the case for Black Sabbath, who received relatively terrible reviews for their eponymous debut album from 1970. “It wasn’t nice to read the reviews,” guitarist Tony Iommi admitted to Music Radar in 2025. “It was hurtful at first, but you learn to live with it.”
Another painful part of the industry the band quickly had to acclimate to was playing to empty rooms, which seemed to be a signature experience of their first European tour in promotion of their debut album. Iommi described a particularly soul-sucking experience playing a residency in Zurich over several weeks. “The first night we arrived there, the place was packed. It was fantastic,” he recalled. “A band was playing. It was their last night, and they had champagne. We thought, ‘This is great!’ Little did we know that they couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
“When we played the next night, the place was dead as a doornail,” Iommi continued. “We were playing to hardly anybody. Our audience was a couple of hookers and some lunatic who used to do handstands in front of the stage, and all his money would fall out of his pockets.”
Creating The Second Black Sabbath Album, ‘Paranoid’
Like it or not, Black Sabbath had a professional responsibility to uphold their end of the bargain with the Swiss venue, even if they were only playing to some ladies of the evening and an armchair acrobat. The venue expected the heavy metal pioneers to play seven sets, 45 minutes a piece, which required far more material than they had under their belts. So, they did what any band looking to fill time on stage does: they jammed. They made stuff up on the spot. If they liked what came out of their improvisational sessions, they would try their best to remember it and turn it into a real song.
“That’s where “War Pigs” came from,” Tony Iommi explained. “And some of the other tracks—from jamming.” “War Pigs” is the ominous, looming opening track to the band’s sophomore release, Paranoid. Other notable, career-defining hits to come from that album included the title track, “Paranoid,”“Iron Man,” and one of this writer’s personal Sabbath favorites, “Electric Funeral.” The album continued to pave the way for other heavy metal sludge to follow in Black Sabbath’s path, defining a new era of rock ‘n’ roll, even if the attendees (or lack thereof) in Zurich didn’t realize it at the time.
Photo by Chris Walter/WireImage
