Classical Composer Reacts to Black Sabbath's Debut Album (side 1) | The Daily Doug (Episode 449) 

So true

Absolutely!

A Beast.

Likewise, Geezer's bass was excellent and quite difficult to replicate.

he also wrote the lyrics too?

Absolutely. Good shout.

Yeah they are

As a guitarist, Tony has always been a hero but now I realise just how good they were. So much more inventive than a lot bands who took the template. Has that classic early Vertigo / Nepentha sound where a small line-up sounded huge.

Yep Bill swings.

yes, they are! Bill and Geezer keeps it all going. without them both, sabbath is not a good heavy band!

Champion

put Geezer instead of Bill in your sentence and nothing changes)

the fact theres no edits or cheesy cutting ,its raw its a jam that was so good it became an icon

It's kinda funny that Lars Ulrich is like that with Metallica. Drums always there. Can't get away from them. Dammit

Fucking cymbals

Exactly, it's like Stoned Satanic Jazz (not metal)

I've never heard that before.. Pretty cool to do 3 encores, all the same song! loll

They opened a door to a whole new world.

Ever heard of "Mars, Bringer of War"?

@@frossbog Yes, everyone knows that one and Carmina Burana are the symphonic "grandfathers" of metal.

Black Sabbath the song crystallises the essence of the band. Atmospheric, dynamic and scary.

Yes I agree Ozzy Osbourne a awesome singer and harmonica player.A awesome group

I love this song and it's so underrated.

He's a gob-iron god.

His voice was really good in the 70s. And he wrote the melodies too.

The lyrics on Black Sabbath were written by Ozzy. One of the few songs where the lyrics were all his.

The Writ from Sabotage is the only other one I can think of, and they are wonderfully acidic. Oh, and Who Are You is entirely Ozzy, I believe.

@@TyeDyeGuyRV That sounds right. Also, Am I going Insane was all Ozzy.

@@listonsen Nope, it’s written by Geezer about a nightmare he had, where he was certain that the Devil was standing by his bed.

@@kasperkjrsgaard1447 In Ozzys' autobiography, he claims Geezer told him about that nightmare he had, and that served as the catalyst for him to pen the lyrics.

Reinhardt is killer too!

@Nebby Scumbold Did he really misplayed it? I have always thought that the variation was intentional.

@@milannovotny2085 According to Geezer and Ward- ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-voGnIFw0Tkk.html

When you play that Mars riff on guitar it kicks so much ass!

I use Mars as my intro-Zen-out pre-workout song on my playlist!!!

@Nebby Scumbold I mean, harmonically, both versions make sense and achieve a similar effect. I think, in the ultimate irony, when I tried to play the riff on guitar I initially went for the root, fifth, sharp fourth version, before realizing it was an octave jump... 😂

Yes I had forgotten it!

Amen!

It is indeed an amazing song, but unfortunately for it, is sharing side with Black Sabbath, The Wizard, and N.I.B., so there's no way it wouldn't be overshadowed

Ya, it's a great song

That's why I roll my eyes at these reaction videos. Nobody listens to Black Sabbath because of the technical specifics. They listen to it because it f****** rocks.

They were down tuned on purpose to get that particular sound

@@brianrankin4550 Steve meant guitars are out of tune from one another. Kinda like a synth set at detune. And we all know how fat that sounds (we = less than 50 yolds). That actually answers decade-long question for me: why steve's music sounds so wimpy?! To be honest this sort of in-tune-but-out-of-tune sound has been turned into science by newer generation of stoners-doomers. Everyone after Sleep try to outmatch and nail that specific type of detuned sound.

@Monica Bauer: This reminds me of another quote of Ozzy´s that I´ve read a long time ago and which goes like that: "Rock critics have to be the most conservative people in the world. Whenever some guys play something new and unheard, they ditch it."

@@brianrankin4550 They down tuned because Tony Iommi had the tips of 3 of the fingers on his hand cut off and it was too painful to play unless he loosend the strings by tuning down.

100% the best song on the album, just so badass and groovy like crazy

The song is absolutely intense so much energy happening.

Total agreement!

its the time best time for music recodring

I'm assuming they're over complicating things nowadays. The recording methods in the 60s had to have been simpler than now.

Because it's not 'metal'. It's industrial music.

It's not heavy metal, it's hard rock.

It's got jazz and blues touches to it.

What a sound!

@@palefaced this song scared the crap out of me as a kid. Then there's the Type O Negative "Satanic Verses" version... ..

A awesome song and Ozzy Osbourne a awesome singer I remember in the 72when I was 6

Same.

I was 14 (1981) when I first heard this album. It never growns old. Brilliant for its time & still today.

Dave I think My speakers smoked & I got a contact HI (they're old enuf).

I was 8 yo now I am 58.

I heard this too at age 14 and now I'm 63. Still love it. Really dislike people that say I've outgrown this.

I vaguely remember Iommi or Geezer admitting that's where they took the riff from. Variations of the riff also appear in "Cocaine" and "Peace Sells", as well as others, I'm sure.

I had the same tought...

@@joenobody5631 it also sounds like in a gadda da vida

They actually didn't have a title to the song so Ozzy said that Bill Ward's beard looked like a pen nib. Hence NIB.

I bought this when it came out, I was 14 or 15. I still get goosebumps listening to it. My favorite band, especially Tony Iommi. Greetings from USA Maryland.

Cheers from NY, USA. Keep rockin, friend!

Almost identical story of how I bought this album as the 1st I purchased with money from mowing lawns. When I put it on I was mesmerized. Growing up in Lubbock Texas ( hometown of Buddy Holly, I went to school with his nephew) I had never heard anything like that before. Literally changed my life. Rock on!✌

Same to me! My first album ever and I was hook on Classic Rock music! I will turn 67 next month and I still get chills listening to it! The best era for music !

I was around the same age when it came out. I loved it.

I got my first copy of Black Sabbath on cassette in the mid-80s and definitely had the same reaction. I remember not fully understanding it. Then I listened again and everything made sense. I still absolutely adore the first Black Sabbath album to this day.

I was 8 years old in 1982 when I first heard Sabbath. My best friend's teenage sister was listening to N.I.B. while she was babysitting us. I had never heard anything like it and was hooked. I spent hours sitting in their living room listening with her. She recorded every Sabbath album she had for me on to cassette (everything from the first album through to Mob Rules). I played them until they wore out. I still love Sabbath to this day and own every album they ever produced.

I’m about six years younger than you the first time I heard this I was terrified and musically stimulated at the same time Tony Iomi is a gift

FFS dude get a life. Who had allowance at 7, and bought albums of any kind especially these.

That happened to me when i first put on Paranoid and I was 10..... it was my brothers album..... i nicked it along with Hawkwind's Roadhawks.

@@garymitchell5899 Everyone had allowance at 7! I had my first job at 9 (paper route) so the allowance stopped then. Of course we bought albums or 45's with allowance money!

SAME!!!!!!!!

My first introduction to Sabbath was two German knock-offs. They were compilations from their first three albums: Black Sabbath, Paranoid & Master of Reality.

I don't have to imagine, I can remember!

5:53

I was 24 when this album first came out. When I first listened to it on my audiophile stereo turned up very loud I was left breathless. It gave me chills. I had never heard anything like it. Now 53 years later and I am still a fan of metal.

I can remember - 1969 had some amazing music, this being but one part of it

Yes. Because this isn't metal, you dweeb.

I'ts so dirty you need a shower afterwards.

Didn't Jean-Jaques Burnel's bass tone come from a broken speaker cone as well?

Tony also uses Laney Amps. Sound great!!

Yeah, this isn't a metal album and BS weren't a metal band

It sounded best with one blown speaker and a loose license plate back in the day

Pre RU-vid I had that Paris '70 show on VHS back from the early 90s. Played the hell out of that thing! And dubbed copies for so many friends. I love all of the alternate lyrics in that thing! Eating dead rat's innards! Ha 😂

Was that gig at the odeon Romford?

@@daveskinner8765 no, it was actually in a hall at the King's Head pub, famous for blues nights at the time but also up and coming young bands. I saw Uriah Heep there twice as well. The Odeon also hosted bands as well and I saw Deep Purple there in September the same year!

@@ScottyKirk1 Yes, Walpurgis had not yet fully developed into War Pigs at that time!

Damn, I missed that gig. My local venue was the Cooks Ferry Inn, I don't recall Black Sabbath playing there, but I saw loads of good bands. Patto were my favourite and Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come. Great times, all new and exciting.

Just to clarify, Geezer wasn't sleeping/dreaming. He was wide awake. He saw a demon at the end of his bed, and it scared him half to death. It literally changed his life, and helped bring him back to his roots, i.e. the lyrics of "After Forever".

And the book he had had disappeared

@@Dirgnimai7 maybe he had sleep paralysis

@@scifiordie Perhaps. I know that demons are real, and clearly Geezer knows it, as well. Terrifying experience!

Great analysis. I started my love affair with classical, jazz, and metal around the same time, listening to Sabbath, Tchaikovsky, and Brubeck to name a few. I think the link to classical may even go back farther, maybe to the Witches Sabbath finale of Berlioz's Symphonie Phantastique. The Liszt tone poems, eg, Hunnenschlact or Prometheus have that thick, sinister sound.

Sometimes I feel the same! To re experience!

😂👍🇸🇪

As long as he avoids their POS album "Born Again" with Ian Gillan from Deep Purple on vocals.

I've come to believe that "Sabotage" and "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" are their twin peaks.

He hasn't started Sabbath with the first album. Watch the video.

aahh.. Technical and NSD get no love... loll .. I like them. They'r not quite as *Epic* as the others.. But, they'r still pretty good records! You can cherry pick some great songs from them and a handful more of keepers. Every band has a record or two like that.. But, Sabbath's standard was so high from their previous records, anything short of a groundbreaking master work just won't measure up.. Allen Clark.. I don't actually consider Born Again to be Sabbth, but it's still a good record.. It's got a few awesome cuts and most of the others are pretty kick ass.. They recently finally found the 2" multi track reels after 38 years. They're not sure what had happened to the original Master? But the audio quality got degraded somehow and now Tony is going to remix all of the songs. The rerelease cud be out soon..

@@garymitchell5899 Which other Sabbath album did he start with? Remind me.

Agreed! 😎👍

That half step in The Wizard is truly a trademark sound of Black Sabbath throughout their early days. My very first album I ever bought (age 13) was Master of Reality. My mom. had to listen to it in order to make sure I wasn't listening to some cult music. She ended up letting me listen to it, although she didn't like the lyrics that said, "Would you like to see the Pope on the end of a rope do you think he's a fool?" No, we're not even Catholic :P

Don't forget about 'Evil Woman' on the UK version of the album. Was actually a cover tune from a group of that era called Crow.

What I was thinking. Track 3 is really great though.

I first listened to both when I was 15, just after the Beatles were breaking up.

I think DP isnt about metal at all

@@phitoman6964 On speed metal: "The origin of the genre's name is the aptly named "Speed King" by Deep Purple. Recording on the song started in 1969 making it nearly a full decade ahead of the musical style being recognized. The song is not only very fast and technical but was also extremely loud creating noticeable distortion in the recording process. The title song for the band's next album, Fireball, is a further refinement of the band's influence with drummer Ian Paice's use of the double bass drum. The way the double bass drum is played in "Fireball"-uptempo "four on the floor"-became a mainstay in many heavy, speed and thrash metal songs in the years that followed." On Neoclassical Metal: "Deep Purple's Ritchie Blackmore pioneered the subgenre by merging classical melodies and blues rock." Furthermore: "AllMusic's Eduardo Rivadavia has called In Rock "one of heavy metal's defining albums"." "Canadian journalist Martin Popoff wrote that "Deep Purple's In rock, along with Sabbath's Paranoid and Heep's Uriah Heep, all in 1970, outright and triple-handedly invented Heavy Metal", with In Rock being "the flashiest, freshest and most sophisticated of the three."" "Deep Purple are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock" From various Wikipedia articles.

@@phitoman6964 Flashback to 1972 and put on Purple's 'Machine Head' that had just come out at the time...please. Other than Sabbath, there was nothing heavier. Deep Purple paved the way for all the progressive metal bands going forward. Even 1970's release 'In Rock' with Speed King on it...that's as heavy as it comes to this very day.

@@sergejmiladinovic1181 thats a good point bro.but tbh I find nothing common between these songs and any typical metal song except speed. I mean you put on any BS song and yeah you hear metal in the mood of a song. you put on speed king and nothing like this.just fast hard rock. but thats just my opinion not the truth

Our family moved to Heidelberg in '69, I was in 6th grade. Dad bought a stereo system and a bunch of reel to reel tapes from a GI that included Zep I & II, Deep Purple, Jethro Tull and so on. I was there with you Mark! Music was on!! Dad took me to see Zeppelin a few years later at the Munich Olympic Auditorium. First concert. Thanks dad ❤

Nice that you mentioned Bloodrock. I've just blew some minds at a late night party when recestioning Melvin Laid An Egg, One of the heaviest riff of all time

oOoOO Bloodrock???? A new band for my ears to be laid waste to!! Yes!!! Thanks 🙂

The often forgotten ATOMIC ROOSTER was another really good band from the same time period !

@@dennisgschmidt6167 Yes. And also Hard Stuff, including Atomic Rooster members John Du Cann and Paul Hammond.

Can't believe I missed this

Sorry mate, gotta disagree with you there. Yes, playing side 2 is a must, but keep it in it's original, unadulterated, as intended form, with no addition. Sometimes adding more takes something away, which I think adding Wicked World does. Side 2 ends great, it is complete without an additional track, and is a fitting end to the album as a whole.

‘Wicked World’ was on the US version, ‘Evil Woman’ for the rest of the world. So it’s a valid point that it should be included.

Wicked World is the best track from this period. It sounds like a jazz like passage at the beginning and then the main riff kicks in that sounds nothing like jazz.

Thanks for saying this Doug. There are millions of misinformed dweebs on the interwebs who labour under the illusion that this album and band - metal. It's a real travesty because they were much more important than that.

*four

@@greghicks5960 oh come on , can You imagine rock music without Ozzy singing " sabbath bloody sabbath nothing more to do " its impossible

That's because they're not metal albums

This propels me back to the Sixth Form common room, along with . . . The Moody Blues, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Santana, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Grand Funk Railroad, Jethro Tull, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, The Groundhogs, Van Der graaf Generator, Soft Machine, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Fairport Convention, Steelye Span, Rory Gallagher, John Martyn, Atomic Rooster, The Nice, ELP, Nektar, Curved Air, Yes . . . . . much more . . . . No wonder I didn't (couldn't ) do any proper school work.

WELL, BRO, YEAH IT WAS HARD, TO CONCENTRATE ON OTHER THINGS DUE TO OUR BELOVED ROCK MUSIC ~ LET ME ADD SOME MORE BANDS I ALSO LIKE: INCREDIBLE!! URIAH HEEP / TEN YEARS AFTER / HÜSKER DÜ / MOUNTAIN / BLACK WIDOW / VANILLA FUDGE / INCREDIBLE!! HAWKWIND / BLACKFOOT / NAZARETH / COMMANDER CODY & HIS LOST PLANET AIRMEN / KISS / WITCHFYNDE GENERAL / GRIM REAPER / DIO / IRON BUTTERFLY / SCORPIONS /............! 🎉❤😊 (am 67 of age/. BERNIE GERMANY 😊

"sort of like today"..... so true!

It wasn't ALL 'hippy drippy' stuff. There was definitely already a move towards a heavier sound, with acts such as Led Zeppelin, Cream, Pink Floyd, Iron Butterfly, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Deep Purple, Free etc. In fact, flower power had pretty much died a death by the time this album was released...

"People wanted to live in dream worlds". Utter nonsense, what exactly is your experience of 1960's England that this assessment is based on?

Ozzy said he was tired of the hippy dippy happy music that was popular, especially in the US at the time. Because that was not his life in Birmingham. He was eager to scare the shite out of all the flower power hippies.

@@garymitchell5899 Go ahead and look up the top 100 songs of 1969 and tell me which of those you think is “dark”. Lol. This album was released in Feb 1970. I don’t know anyone who was into music at that time that didn’t think Black Sabbath was totally different than all other bands. Zeppelin was great but they were way more blues based than they were dark. Kids back then only learned about Sabbath from the “freaks” of the neighborhood. They were not played on the radio like the other bands codex cites.

That's funny but also tragic for the 15 year old you. There aren't many albums where the opening track left me "wow" on first listen. This was one. Night at the Opera (Prophet Song, yes I know) was another. Rainbow Rising too.

Did you say "You ruined my record man, I just bought it".

I used to have that concert on a video tape back in the day...........Like a dummy I loaned it to someone and never saw it again

The peak? Nah

This is just the start - a great one indeed

Into the Void is the peak

@@bigdingus7198 Uhm, yes.

Ditto for me -- I'm a 70-year rock & classical bassist. Every time I hear Doug here, or Elizabeth Zharkov on "The Charismatic Voice" RU-vid channel, review what I think of as "the classics" and enjoy them, I almost feel like a proud papa, knowing there's a future for tunes from my youth amongst these folks' reaction videos. Maesteo Doug, many thanks for lending your critical listening skills to the tunes you cover here. I enjoy hearing music professionals dissect musical genres which have not likely been part of their original skill sets.

Check out the cover by Voivod! Great stuff! Also they did a great version of Astronomy Domine! 😉 👌

Another proto- metal song is Helter skelter by The Beatles from 1968.

And also to add: KC's 21st Century Schizoid Man

I was born 20 years before you, and can't fully understand it either.

I was a high school student when this came out and this was absolutely fresh and different to our ears…and it was great.

One should make a list of such phenomena, I'd totally want to hear them all.

Rainbow almost did it, they were just trying to catch the rainbow that time.

@@jggouvea Iron Maiden did it too. Bad Religion had an EP called Bad Religion with the same song name. I think the only album, song & band combo’s have been BS, Bad Company, & Iron Maiden.

Homogeneous is the perfect word for popular music today. 👍🏼

You might like Dragonaut by Sleep or Superbug by King Gizzard.

check out stoner rock / metal genre, its basically playing Black Sabbath and quite popular

Yeah, looped music becomes boring pretty quick. The best thing about BS debut album is the drumming, absolute jazzy an dynamic, as the other rock drummers of the era. We need something new and dynamic, played by people, but not the same overplayed pentacrap blues rock done by millions of bands. Please no.

I don't. As if your 'rock/blues/metal' sound wasn't even more ubiquitous than the genres you just slated. Get a grip.

Yes 1st and 2nd albums are standard tuning

@@RITH5150 Yes 7th and 8th, too

and it's only 2 songs on MoR

@@tommihommi1 MoR is mostly C# except for After Forever and maybe Solitude, which wud be D standard. afaik? I'm not sure about Embryo or Orchid.. Edit: It's been a while since i actually looked at the track list and although I knew embryo and Orchid were little subsections of other songs, i forgot which songs and how they went. Had to check them out again.. Orchid is definitely in C# bcs it precedes lord Of This World which is in C# and Embryo isn't really much of a song to consider its tuning..

@@tommihommi1 no it is all of it. I played Phoney Iommi (yes - left handed SG owning) in a Sabbath concept band and while you can get away with playing some of them in standard tuning they really ring out detuned....