Black Sabbath: Newt's countdown to The End (in Vancouver), one day to go

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      Okay, folks. This is it. One more day until Black Sabbath's final concert in Vancouver.

      Ever.

      Until the next reunion (which probably won't happen).

      This is the last of the seven daily blogs I've been posting in recognition of Sabbath being the world's best heavy metal band.

      I'm all Sabbathed out.

      Except for seeing tomorrow's show, that is.

      So I'll leave you with this little writeup I penned back in 1999, before the group's headlining appearance at Ozzfest in Vancouver. 

      Recalling those fading memories of enjoying Black Sabbath as a teenager never gets old.

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      Black Sabbath isn’t giving any interviews in advance of its headlining appearance at Ozzfest on Friday (July 16), but that’s okay with me. It just gives me an excuse to crawl back into my ’70s time machine and reminisce, home movie–style, about what the heavy-metal heroes have meant to me over the years.

      Okay, set the dials for the year of Our Lord 1972. Location: Chilliwack, B.C. Cue in the strains of Ozzy Osbourne howling along to “Paranoid”. Fade in on a longhaired bone rack in flared jeans and a lime-green Mott the Hoople T-shirt, taking his first-ever swig from a mickey of lemon gin.

      Now fade out before he pukes behind the pool hall…

      The first time I heard the words Black Sabbath I became a fan. It was just such a wicked-sounding band name, something I knew my parents wouldn’t even want to hear. They were destined to hear plenty of Black Sabbath, though, because when I was 14 I brought home Paranoid, and my favourite pastime was drumming along to “War Pigs” on the red velvet armchair in our basement.

      That old lounger also took a severe pounding thanks to the drum intro on Alice Cooper’s “Billion Dollar Babies” and Ringo’s nifty solo on the Beatles’ “The End”, but there was always a little more elbow grease involved when “War Pigs” had me tracing Bill Ward’s stop-start dynamics. I used real drumsticks, and my parents were delighted that I never graduated to a full drum kit. One Christmas my mom did get me one of those six-inch drum practice pads, though.

      She liked to keep the furniture in nice shape.

      Just when it seemed that Paranoid was the pinnacle of what legendary rock critic Lester Bangs termed “heavy metal”, Ozzy and company unleashed Master of Reality in ’71, and with it such shock-the-teacher ditties as “Children of the Grave” and “Into the Void”. The first time I heard the coughing-fit intro to that trailblazing grunge classic “Sweet Leaf”, I didn’t get the joke, because I was one of the few holdouts among my high-school buds who wouldn’t toke up. It sounds corny, but back then heavy music gave me all the buzz I needed.

      And if it didn’t, there was always lemon gin.

      As if there was any doubt, guitarist Tony Iommi proved himself riffmaster extraordinaire when the scrappy Vol. 4 came out in ’72; the relentless chords of “Supernaut” and “Wheels of Confusion” were soon embedded in my mind forevermore. About this time I started to think that getting an instrument like Iommi’s—a Gibson SG—might be the best thing in the world. Evidently, AC/DC’s Angus Young liked the idea, too, because a few years later he made that guitar an integral part of his demented-schoolboy look.

      For me, the last really great Black Sabbath LP was 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, which showcased a more musical and varied side of the band; I used to enjoy drifting off at bedtime with the headphones on, wrapped in the acoustic embrace of the mellow instrumental “Fluff”. But sometimes my mom, convinced I was asleep and concerned about the Hydro bill, would slip in and turn the power off on my compact Lloyds stereo.

      There’s nothing more troubling than the sound of a needle grating to a stop on the prized vinyl you’ve just scored with the last of your lawn-mowing money.

      I continued to pick up mid-’70s Sabbath albums like Sabotage and Technical Ecstasy, but the thrills just weren’t so readily forthcoming from those patchy LPs. Then after 1978’s Never Say Die, Ozzy did the unthinkable. (No, he didn’t bite a dead bat’s head off—that was later on.) He left Black Sabbath, to be replaced by Ronnie James Dio, whom I knew from his days with Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow and, before that, the overlooked boogie band Elf. It may seem sacrilege to some die-hard Sabbath fans, but I quite enjoyed the Dio-era group, especially on faster-than-Ozzy tunes like “Neon Knights” and “Turn Up the Night”.

      Before going to see the Dio-fronted Sabbath play the Pacific Coliseum one night in early ’82—with southern rockers the Outlaws warming up—I dropped in to the dumpy office of the then-struggling Georgia Straight at 4th and Arbutus and asked if I could review the show. I couldn’t, but the mild-mannered blond guy who scanned my clippings on local bands from the Chilliwack Progress seemed mildly amused by my enthusiasm for loud rock. He also had the idea that the popularity of heavy metal was on the rise, so he got me doing phone interviews with the likes of Swiss AC/DC clones Krokus, of “Long Stick Goes Boom” fame. That was my first encounter with Straight founder Dan McLeod, who blew me away when he made my interview with Ozzy the cover of the June 11, 1982, issue.

      I couldn’t believe I’d reached the apex of my journalism career in two short months.

      But enough sucking up to the boss—let’s get back to talking about me.

      Although Dio’s Sabbath stint was impressive, Osbourne didn’t waste any time in stealing back my affections, thanks to his discovery of exceptionally gifted guitarist Randy Rhoads. One day in the early ’80s, when I finally found my car after being hopelessly lost in the Pacific Centre parkade—yes, by this time I had discovered the effects of pot—an astounding rock noise came blasting over the car radio. It was “Crazy Train”, from Ozzy’s solo debut, Blizzard of Ozz. The metal maniac was back with a vengeance, and shortly thereafter I braved the acoustically absurd din of Kerrisdale Arena to see him and Rhoads in action. A few months later Rhoads died in a small plane that crashed after buzzing the bus Ozzy was travelling on.

      It was the worst day for rock guitar since the passing of Jimi Hendrix.

      Throughout the ’80s, the solo Ozzy had some ups (Bark at the Moon) and some downs (The Ultimate Sin), whereas, after Dio quit in ’83, the Iommi-led Sabbath had mostly downs. Ozzy’s health got shaky, and his live performances steadily more embarrassing, but in ’91, with the talented Zakk Wylde on guitar, he was back on the charts with the No More Tears CD and single. A few years later, with the 20th anniversary of the original Sabbath’s formation looming on the horizon, the first rumblings of a potential reunion were heard. In December of ’97, after almost five years of trying, the four founding members managed to put aside their differences, embrace the glory of cold, hard cash, and re-form for two shows at the Birmingham NEC Arena.

      Recordings from those gigs became last year’s double live Sabbath CD, Reunion, and led to the current tour, which has already seen 15,000 local rock nuts shell out about $70 each (including those pesky TicketMaster service charges, handling fees, and facility fees) for Ozzfest tickets. And since heavy-metal fans are notorious for looking sharp in black cotton, they’ll probably need a few Brink’s trucks to haul away the proceeds of the day’s T-shirt sales.

      With newer acts like Primus, the Deftones, and Fear Factory on the bill, Ozzfest isn’t just suited to nostalgia-crazed ’70s-rock freaks like me. But if there’s any justice, Ozzy and his mates will show thrashy whippersnappers like Rob Zombie and Slayer what a real metal band sounds like. It’s being billed as Black Sabbath’s last show in Canada, ever, so let’s hope Ozzy takes that claim to heart and tries to sing in tune—or at least complete a full set. The painful sight of him lurching to the side of the GM Place stage in ’96 and spewing, before cancelling the show after two terrible songs, still lingers in my mind.

      Guys like him should know when to lay off the lemon gin.

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