Sabbath played more gigs at the Star Club than the Beatles, and could play circles around their heroes when it came down to it. That was where the Beatles had honed their chops before dominating the world. Black Sabbath used to play seven 45-minute sets a night during its residency at the Star Club in Hamburg. Bands no longer apprentice themselves like they did in the Sixties. They were a devastating unit then, and they still are today. Ozzy sounds like he was gargling hot honey, and Bill Ward’s chops will make you want to cry. Tony’s leads come direct from the source. Geezer is the missing link between Paul McCartney and Steve Harris. It’s on par with any band short of King Crimson. ![]() But listen to the playing even on their debut. Hash and booze and blow did sometimes get in the way. Let me clue you in on something: Sabbath weren’t bad musicians-but they did have access to the best drugs. This was largely based on myth and the ill-considered release Live At Last. When I was in high school in the late Eighties, word on the street was that the guys in Led Zeppelin were players, but Sabbath were slouches. By Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die, the group threw in the towel and hired Hipgnosis, the masterminds behind nearly every Pink Floyd jacket. On the Sabotage cover, Bill Ward had somehow shown up for the photo shoot with no pants he ended up borrowing a pair of red rights from his wife. 4, the band had resumed its iconography with Ozzy’s fringe featured on the front, and that great sticker on Geezer’s bass in the interior photo book that nods toward the cheeky liner note thanking “the great COKE-cola company.” Drew Struzan’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’s illustration was so demonic that it was censored in Spain. We can politely gloss over the confused blur that is the war pig on the cover of Paranoid and the stony purple embossing on Master of Reality. To this day, no one knows the identity of the young woman who stands before the Mapledurham Watermill. ![]() The photograph on the cover of the first Sabbath album is enough to give you goose bumps before you’ve dropped the needle on the record.
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