Ozzy Osbourne – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath

Happy Early Halloween Everyone!

It doesn’t get much more Halloween than this song. Black Sabbath was a hard rock band that gets credited a lot for influencing heavy metal. That is perplexing to me…what is heavy metal and what is hard rock? When I think of heavy metal I think of some of the many heavy 80s bands with a huge processed sound on guitar. That probably isn’t what others think of though.

The song was inspired by a series of ominous and eerie experiences. According to bassist Geezer Butler, the concept for the song emerged from a frightening incident he had after reading an occult book given to him by Ozzy Osbourne. Butler claims that after leaving the book on a shelf, he saw a dark figure standing at the foot of his bed that disappeared suddenly. This experience led him to write the lyrics. The song is credited to Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward.

The album cover. It has to be the spookiest album cover ever. On one hand it looks real and on another it looks like a horror movie poster but better. At the center of the album cover is a mysterious, cloaked woman dressed in black. Her identity has been the subject of speculation for decades. Some have claimed she symbolizes a witch or an occult figure, which fits the band’s early associations with the dark arts. It’s one of rocks most iconic album covers.

Louisa Livingstone was a model that was hired for the cover. No one knew who she was until Rolling Stone tracked her down in 2020. Turns out Mrs. Livingstone is not much a fan of Black Sabbath after she finally listened to the album. It just wasn’t her type of music. She now records electronic music under the name of Indreba. Keith Macmillan is the photograhper who shot the album cover.

The album peaked at #23 on the Billboard 200, #29 in Canada, and #8 in the UK in 1970.

Keith Macmillan: “She was a fantastic model. She was quite petite, very, very cooperative. I wanted someone petite because it just gave the landscape a bit more grandeur. It made everything else look big. She wasn’t wearing any clothes under that cloak because we were doing things that were slightly more risqué, but we decided none of that worked. Any kind of sexuality took away from the more foreboding mood. But she was a terrific model. She had amazing courage and understanding of what I was trying to do.”

Louisa Livingstone: I had to get up at about four o’clock in the morning, or something as ridiculously early as that. It was absolutely freezing. I remember Keith rushing around with dry ice, throwing that into the pond nearby, and that didn’t seem to be working very well, so he was using a smoke machine. It was just, ‘Stand there and do that.’ I’m sure he said it was for Black Sabbath, but I don’t know if that meant anything much to me at the time.”

If you want to know about Black Sabbath’s album Black Sabbath VOL 4 cover… go to The Press Music Reviews.

Black Sabbath

What is this that stands before me?
Figure in black which points at me
Turn around quick, and start to run
Find out I’m the chosen one
Oh no

Big black shape with eyes of fire
Telling people their desire
Satan’s sitting there, he’s smiling
Watches those flames get higher and higher
Oh no, no, please God help me

Is it the end, my friend?
Satan’s coming ’round the bend
People running ’cause they’re scared
The people better go and beware
No, no, please God help me

John Lennon – How?

This song was on the Imagine album and I heard it in more than one documentary about him. This song is about John being vulnerable which is not as typical of him.

This song was written after the Beatles broke up plus after the primal scream therapy of Dr Arthur Janov. What is Primal Scream Therapy? I found this definition: psychotherapy in which the patient recalls and reenacts a particularly disturbing past experience usually occurring early in life and expresses normally repressed anger or frustration, especially through spontaneous and unrestrained screams, hysteria, or violence.

When the Beatles broke up, John and Paul dove headfirst into their individual careers. Paul jumped straight into pop and Lennon dived into writing what he thought was the truth and setting it to a backbeat. They were not going to veer from their respective targets. You could tell they didn’t have each other to hold the other back anymore. That is what the Beatles had as a whole that the two head Beatles didn’t anymore. George just went on… already accustomed to writing alone but John and Paul had no brakes or guard rails.

For John, it paid off in two brilliant albums off the bat that probably would not have been the same with The Beatles. With Paul, it paid off with Ram but with just an OK debut album. After these first two albums, John seemed to lose some of his edge and Paul took a while but finally gained more confidence until he made his masterpiece Band On The Run released late in 1973.

Imagine peaked at #1 on the Billboard Album Charts and in the UK. It also peaked at #2 in Canada in 1971.

I’ve always read and seen interviews where Ozzy Osbourne is a huge fan of the Beatles and John Lennon. Ozzy Osbourne released a cover of this song in support of Amnesty International during the same week John Lennon would have turned 70. Ozzy sticks very close to John’s version of the song.

John Lennon on recording the Imagine album: We recorded it at home in our studio, Phil Spector produces with Yoko and I, so as we don’t go overboard and he doesn’t go overboard – we get a balance between the three of us. It was better than the first time, because now we know each other and we’ve done quite a lot of work together and we understand each other, so we know how to work better. That’s why it’s been quicker. We did the last one in ten days and we did this one in nine.

How?

How can I go forward when I don’t know which way I’m facing?
How can I go forward when I don’t know which way to turn?
How can I go forward into something I’m not sure of?
Oh no, oh no

How can I have feeling when I don’t know if it’s a feeling?
How can I feel something if I just don’t know how to feel?
How can I have feelings when my feelings have always been denied?
Oh no, oh no

You know life can be long
And you got to be so strong
And the world is so tough
Sometimes I feel I’ve had enough

How can I give love when I don’t know what it is I’m giving?
How can I give love when I just don’t know how to give?
How can I give love when love is something I ain’t never had?
Oh no, oh no

You know life can be long
You’ve got to be so strong
And the world she is tough
Sometimes I feel I’ve had enough

How can we go forward when we don’t know which way we’re facing?
How can we go forward when we don’t know which way to turn?
How can we go forward into something we’re not sure of?
Oh no, oh no

Black Sabbath – Iron Man

I hope many of you enjoyed a long weekend!

This is a fun song. Now its popularity has risen to an all-time high with the 2008 Marvel movie Ironman. I know most serious movie fans are not big fans of the Marvel movies. I fit in there also because I don’t like watching a lot of CGI. As a music fan though, I’m glad they are sharing 60s and 70s music to a new generation.

Another song that the riff is easy for beginning guitar players to learn how to play. It was one of the first ones I learned. This was the biggest US hit for Black Sabbath. It got very little radio play but developed a cult following, which led to enough sales to give it a chart position.

Iron Man peaked at #52 in 1971 on the Billboard 100 and #68 in Canada. The song was written by all of the members of the band. It was on the album Paranoid released in 1970. The album peaked at #12 on the Billboard Album Charts, #20 in Canada, and #1 in the UK Album Charts.

They did something smart as far as singles. They followed the Led Zeppelin way of doing it. In the UK they didn’t release this as a single because they had released Paranoid the year before. People would show up in the UK wanting to hear one song…Paranoid… so they limited their single releases there.

Black Sabbath Bass guitar player Geezer Butler: “I was walking down the street one day and thought… ‘what if there were a bloody great bloke made out of metal walking about?”‘

There is debate on how Ozzy got his voice distorted in the intro. Some say he got that by singing from behind a metal fan. Others say it was him singing through a VCS-3 Synthesizer…they came out in 1969. Another rumor was a processor called a ring modulator (effects box) ran through a tremolo. Why don’t they just ask Ozzy? Uh…ok never mind! just kidding.

This is the only Black Sabbath album that I owned. I always liked it… Paranoid, War Pigs, Iron Man, and Hand of Doom I liked. One cool fact I read is Frank Zappa surprised Black Sabbath by covering this song because he knew they were in the audience.

Here is a partial list of artists who have covered this song from Songfacts: Marilyn Manson, Alice in Chains, Butthole Surfers, Add N To (X), Busta Rhymes, Therapy, NOFX, Auburn U. Band, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Tim McCarthy, Heavy Voltage, DYS, Tanzwut, EMO, Amoco Renegades, Dead Alewives, Replacements, The Cardigans, The Mats, and Offspring.

Tony Iommi: “A lot of the words in the songs – a lot of the moods of the songs – are aggressive, especially in the early days – Satanic, if you like… That was the way it felt, so that was the way we played. But it got out of hand. With Paranoid in England, for instance. There was a girl (Hillary Pollard) found dead – a nurse she was: dead in her room with our album on the turntable going round. And it was taken to court saying that it was because of the album that she was depressed and killed herself, which was totally ridiculous, I think.”

Geezer Butler: “If the moral majority don’t understand it they’ll try to put it down, or get other people to read all sorts of things into it … The moral majority sort of people picked up on the Satanic part of it. I mean, most of it was about stopping wars and that side of it, and some science fiction stuff. There wasn’t that much Satanic stuff, and what there was it wasn’t exactly for the devil or anything like that; it was just around at the time and we just brought it to people’s attention.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s7_WbiR79E

Iron Man

I am iron man

Has he lost his mind?
Can he see or is he blind?
Can he walk at all
Or if he moves will he fall?

Is he alive or dead?
Has he thoughts within his head?
We’ll just pass him there
Why should we even care?

He was turned to steel
In the great magnetic field
Where he traveled time
For the future of mankind

Nobody wants him
He just stares at the world
Planning his vengeance
That he will soon unfold

Now the time is here
For iron man to spread fear
Vengeance from the grave
Kills the people he once saved

Nobody wants him
They just turn their heads
Nobody helps him
Now he has his revenge

Heavy boots of lead
Fills his victims full of dread
Running as fast as they can
Iron man lives again

Lemmy …A Documentary

This is about Lemmy Kilmister the founder of Motorhead. The documentary is called Lemmy: 49% motherfucker. 51% son of a bitch. His name was Ian Fraser Kilmister…better known as Lemmy.

I’m not a huge fan of Motorhead but I do like a few of their songs. Lemmy though is another matter. He is a great subject for a documentary. This was made in 2010 and it’s hard not to like the guy. He was who he was and he wasn’t changing for anyone. He reminds me a little of Keith Richards…but a rougher version.

Lemmy saw The Beatles in the Cavern and is a huge fan which surprised me. He was a roadie for Jimi Hendrix and he played with Hawkwind and later formed his band…Motorhead. They took punk and heavy metal and cross-pollinated the two forms in some ways.

This documentary was released in 2010. Some of the people in this documentary per Wiki are Slash, Duff McKagan, Ozzy Osbourne, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Robert Trujillo, Kirk Hammett, Nikki Sixx, David Ellefson, Scott Ian, Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible, Peter Hook, and Marky Ramone, as well as Nik Turner and Dave Brock of Lemmy’s former band Hawkwind. The filmmakers were also able to capture many candid moments with colleagues such as Dave Grohl and Billy Bob Thornton conversing with Lemmy in bars and recording studios.

Lemmy passed away on December 28, 2015. Even if you are not a fan…you probably will enjoy this.

This is the complete documentary.

Black Sabbath – War Pigs

I really like the sound they had at that time…it was dirty and raw.

For this song they got the idea from war stories they heard when they did a show at an American Air Force base during a tour of Europe. The four members wrote the song when they were in a grim deserted place in Zurich where they were playing for a small sum of money to an even smaller audience.

The band wanted to use this as the title of the album, but the record company thought it was too controversial and made them use “Paranoid,” another song on the album, instead. The album art, however, is a literal interpretation of a “War Pig,” showing a war “pig” with a sword and shield.

It was originally titled ‘Walpurgis’, an anniversary associated with witches and Satanists, but was changed on the recommendation of Black Sabbath’s record company. Ozzy released the original version on his 1997 album The Ozzman Cometh… the song though as the finish product was…just talk about the nightmare of War.

Geezer Butler : “Britain was on the verge of being brought into it, there was protests in the street, all kinds of anti -Vietnam things going on. War is the real Satanism. Politicians are the real Satanists. That’s what I was trying to say.”

Songfacts

This is one of many Black Sabbath songs that is often misinterpreted as evil. The song speaks out against the horrors of war.

On the US albums, this is listed as “War Pigs/Luke’s Wall.” “Luke’s Wall” is another name for the end of the song.

On the 1994 Black Sabbath tribute album Nativity In Black, Faith No More contributed a live cover version. Faith No More also covered this on their 1989 album The Real Thing.

War Pigs has been used as the name of various Black Sabbath tribute bands. We found one in Australia and another in Long Island, NY.

Ozzy’s former guitarist Zakk Wylde did a cover of this song after he went solo. Other artists who did covers: Slaves on Dope, Pig, Ether, Faith No More, Weezer, Boss Tweed, Red House Painters, Members Only, Badlands, Soulfly, Vital Remains, Ween, Sheavy, Gov’t Mule, Phish, Sacred Reich, Alice Donut, Flores Secas, Banda Arie, and Flores Secas.

This song is used for an encore in the video game Guitar Hero II for Playstation 2 and Xbox 360.

When the Sacramento band Tesla recorded this in 2007, lead guitarist Frank Hannon added a peace of Jimi Hendrix flavored “The Star Spangled Banner” to start the song.” It is the final track on Tesla’s Real To Reel 2-disk cover album, which is a tribute to Tesla’s mentors.

The song starts with the lyric, “Generals gathered in their masses. Just like witches at black masses.” Bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler was asked during a 2013 interview with Spin magazine why he used “masses” twice rather than coming up with a different word. “I just couldn’t think of anything else to rhyme with it,” he admitted. “And a lot of the old Victorian poets used to do stuff like that – rhyming the same word together. It didn’t really bother me. It wasn’t a lesson in poetry or anything.”

The song soundtracked a TV spot previewing the 2014 movie, 300: Rise Of An Empire.

War Pigs

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death’s construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh lord yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor

Yeah

Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait ’till their judgment day comes
Yeah!

Now in darkness world stops turning
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of judgment, God is calling
On their knees the war pig’s crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing spreads his wings
Oh lord yeah!