Random Drug-Fueled, Sordid Tales From Black Sabbath's Heyday That Prove Just How Unhinged They Really W (24 items)

• 

  (#13) Elvis Presley's Dentist Injected The Band With Demerol Every Night While Recording 'Technical Ecstasy'

  Drugs were a big problem for Black Sabbath when they made Technical Ecstasy in 1976. Ozzy admitted, in a 2004 interview with Rolling Stone, that he was more focused on getting blitzed than he was on making the record.

  "Osbourne: I was f*cked up all the time, more concerned about my next bag of powder than performing. It was very sad. We wrote 'Rock and Roll Doctor' about a real person, Dr. Max, who's dead now. 

  Iommi: Dr. Max was Elvis Presley's old dentist who'd give us Demerol. He went from Elvis to Black Sabbath -- good change, innit? 

  Osbourne: We'd go see Dr. Max at seven in the evening. He'd put us in the chair, shoot us up, put on the Rolling Stones and then f*ck off."  

  Neither Osbourne nor Iommi states explicitly why Dr. Max was whacking Sabbath out on pain killers, but, reading between the lines, it seems as though it was used to knock them out, so they could get a full night's sleep. Demerol is the brand name of meperidine, an opioid is frequently prescribed as a pain medication. According to WebMD:

  "Though it helps many people, this medication may sometimes cause addiction. This risk may be higher if you have a substance use disorder (such as overuse of or addiction to drugs/alcohol). Take this medication exactly as prescribed to lower the risk of addiction."
• 

  (#17) Satanists Asked Them To Play At Stonehenge And Put A Curse On The Band When They Declined

  In 1970, Black Sabbath's fans included Satanists and various other practitioners and scholars of occult arts and science. Some such occultists invited the band to participate in rituals, something the members of Sabbath weren't keen on doing. In his autobiography, I Am Ozzy, Osbourne wrote:

  "I couldn't believe it when I learned that people actually ‘practiced [sic] the occult.’ These freaks with white make-up and black robes would come up to us after our gigs and invite us to black masses at Highgate Cemetery in London. I’d say to them, ‘Look, mate, the only evil spirits I’m interested in are called whisky, vodka, and gin.’

  At one point we were invited by a group of Satanists to play at Stonehenge. We told them to f*ck off, so they said they’d put a curse on us. Britain even had a 'chief witch' in those days… Mind you, we did buy a Ouija board once and have a little seance. We scared the shit out of each other."

  Iommi recalls another incident of the band being sought out by occult fanatics:

  "One night, after finishing a show, we returned to the hotel and found the corridor leading to our rooms completely filled with people wearing black cloaks, sitting on the floor with candles in their hands, chanting, 'Ahhhh.' So we climbed over them to get to our rooms, but could still hear them chanting. We called security, but that didn't work. So we synchronized our watches, opened our doors at the same time, blew the candles out and sang 'Happy Birthday' to them. Pissed 'em off. They freaked -- they were expecting us to help them conduct a Satanic mass and they got 'Happy Birthday' instead."

  Despite the band's lack of interest in participating in occult rites, Black Sabbath's association with Satan and the occult helped their career quite a bit. As Ozzy explains:

  "The good thing about the satantic stuff was that it gave us endless free publicity. People couldn't get enough of it. During its first day of release, [the band's first album] Black Sabbath sold five thousand copies, and by the end of the year, it was on its way to selling a million worldwide."
• 

  (#10) 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath' Was Recorded In A Haunted Castle In Wales, Where Ozzy Set Himself On Fire and Bill Ward Slept With A Dagger

  The title track from Black Sabbath's 1973 masterpiece Sabbath Bloody Sabbath has one of the heaviest damn riffs you'll ever hear, so it shouldn't surprise you to learn the album was recorded in part in the dungeon of a haunted Welsh castle. As Ozzy and Iommi revealed in an interview:

  "Iommi: So we rented a castle in Wales, which, yes, was supposedly haunted. Bill saw this ghost jump out the window in his room, so he started taking this big dagger to bed with him. He said if he saw the ghost, he was going to stab it. As if you can stab a ghost! 

  Osbourne: I was the ghost! 

  Iommi: We set up our gear in the dungeons, and it was a great vibe for coming up with ideas. When we wrote Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, all these riffs started coming out. We started using synthesizers, too - musically, we went to another level. 

  Osbourne: That, to me, was the pinnacle of Black Sabbath. I also discovered, as a singer, the best person to harmonize with is yourself -- there's no one that sounds more like you than you." 

  As you can see from the transcript, Iommi seems completely unfazed to learn (or maybe already knew?) Ozzy was, or at least believed himself to be, the ghost terrorizing Ward. While Ozzy was haunting Ward and learning to harmonize with himself, he almost died.

  "Iommi: We almost lost Ozzy. We had a room with a big fireplace. Ozzy had a big fire going but had fallen asleep when a piece of coal tumbled onto the carpet. We forced our way in, and the room was ablaze! 

  Osbourne: I'd set my foot on fire. We were so hellbent on frightening each other, we frightened ourselves! We then made a collective decision to f*cking stop this coke thing - it was destroying us."

  And how did that go? As Ozzy tells it, "I started sniffing it behind the amps, where they couldn't see me."
• 

  (#7) They Screwed "As Many Groupies As Possible" On Their First US Tour. But The Unlikelier Thing Was That They Were Thrown A Parade

  Discussing Black Sabbath's first US tour, Osbourne had fond memories of the band trying to screw as many groupies as possible, to make the most of the opportunity:

  "It's every British band's dream to play the States. When we got there finally, we f*cked as many groupies as we could. In San Francisco, they even had a Black Sabbath parade! Coming from Birmingham, England, where the f*ckin' sun never shines, it was magic to us." 
• 

  (#8) Ozzy Was So High And Drunk All The Time He Didn't Realize War Pigs Was About The Vietnam War

  "War Pigs" is the lead off track from Paranoid, Sabbath's second record, which many consider to be the band's ultimate masterpiece (and even the best metal album of all time). Before the album was released, the band intended to call the record War Pigs, in reference to the Vietnam War, but the record label prevented them from doing so. 

  As it turns out, Ozzy had no idea this was the case. The following exchange is from an interview with Rolling Stone:

  "Osbourne: We originally called the album War Pigs, after some black-magic party we read about in an Aleister Crowley book. That's why the guy on the cover is wearing a pink suit with a shield and sword: He's dressed like a pig. 

  Iommi: They wouldn't let us use War Pigs as a title. It was basically about Vietnam. 

  Osbourne: I didn't know about Vietnam. I was a dim bulb when it came to world events. I was always loaded."
• 

  (#24) A Track From 'Masters Of Reality' Was Linked To The Son Of Sam Murders

  Sabbath's Master of Reality came out in 1971 and featured the song "After Forever." Allegedly, David Berkowitz, AKA the Son of Sam, who murdered eight people in New York City during the summer of 1976, was a huge fan of the band, and was inspired by the track. 

  According to Ozzy, the band questioned whether its lyrics had gone too far into darkness and the occult when informed Berkowitz was perhaps inspired by "After Forever." Ozzy told Rolling Stone:

  "Geezer wondered if it was a bit too heavy when he wrote, 'Would you like to see the pope on the end of a rope?' in 'After Forever'; Geezer's Catholic, you know. You remember that guy from New York, Son of Sam, who was killing all the chicks? When they got into his apartment, he supposedly had the lyrics to 'After Forever' written on his wall. I thought, 'F*ck me, are we going too far?'"

  Iommi added in an interview with Guitar World: "I think the Son of Sam murders were associated with us, because he recited words from our songs when he killed people."

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking