Return of Black Sabbath, 1974

A Creem record review of "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath"

When my daughter Elizabeth began attending the State University of New York at Binghamton (class of 2012), she got a chance to bring her eclectic musical enthusiasms to the college radio station, for one semester. I used to listen to it stream, and I was delighted by her range. She liked the emo bands of her era: when she was in high school I took her two years in a row to the Van's Warped Tour, which always seemed to occur on the most oppressively hot and dusty days in New York. But she'd also play oldies from my generation, from "All Along the Watchtower" to early Black Sabbath songs such as "Sweet Leaf," which I recall sounding less like the foundation of heavy metal than a kind of genteel English folk music. I especially liked her inclusion of a signature artist for her show, outside the usual boundaries. Murray the K on WINS used to open his "Swinging Soiree" a Frank Sinatra tune. Symphony Sid would almost always play Nina Simone's "Four Women" amid his bop and salsa playlist in the 1960s. Liz would throw in an Ella Fitzgerald song every show, because she could.

But she had trouble getting along with the sexist boys club that ran the station, and she lost her show. So in the manner of some of the inspirational speeches heard in Chicago the last few days, she focused her energy elsewhere. A political organizer forged by summer jobs at the synonomous-with-dysfunction NYC Board of Elections, she ran for Executive Vice President of the Student Government, and was elected outright, without a run-off. One of her responsibilities was funding student clubs and organizations, including the radio station. She approved the money for the radio station, of course, but I know she got a special kick out of the boys who had dismissed her having to come to her office to request the next year's operating expenses. With the proper paperwork, of course. She is now a wife, a mom, and a labor lawyer.

Anyway, Black Sabbath, its music and shenanigans, was essential to the Creem magazine for which I wrote regularly and was on the masthead from 1971-1975. This review of Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath, in the April 1974 issue, was written while I was the titular-only "New York editor." It represents the original Creem style in quintessence: mockery and self-mockery, praise and insult, sarcasm and honesty, fiction and fact, and it was up to the reader to decide which was which. One thing for which the original Creem had no tolerance for was rock star "privilege." Everything was subject to lampoon by harpoon.

Black Sabbath: Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath (Warner Bros.)

Wayne Robins, Creem, April 1974

THE QUESTION, Sabs, is where you been so long? So highly irresponsible was their disappearing act over a year ago that heavy metal almost vanished from the face of the earth.

Unlike every other gang of electric warriors, Black Sabbath alone retains ultimate dignity.

Would they ever let Todd Rundgren produce them to get a hit record? You know that answer. Would they ever do a reggae to get some cheap airplay, like Jimmy Page and the Blimp That Pissed in the Continental Hyatt House? No way, man. The Sabs got integrity.

So we've been stuck here, putting automatic throwaways like Atomic Rooster in the "maybe" pile, and reluctantly dealing with imitators like Uriah Heep, Martin Mull, Captain Beyond and Helen Reddy. Of course, the Sabs have had more important things to do than lay the only metal on us. It's been suggested that Tony Iommi went back to college, got his degree in anthropology, and thought about becoming a teacher. And everyone knows that Ozzie (sic) Osbourne went to Hollywood, only to get stuck with the worst new TV series of the year. Every time I watch Ozzie's Girls I just can't believe they did it to us. [ed. note: This was not a vision anticipating the Osbourne family's 21st century reality TV ubiquity. Ozzie's Girls was an attempted 1973 sequel to the 1950s white picket fences-with-music TV phenomenon Ozzie and Harriet with their boys David and Ricky Nelson.]

How to cope? One day for a lark Dave Marsh suggested listening to Master of Reality at 45 r.p.m. You know what it sounded like? The Allman Brothers! So for the last few months we've been reversing the process, listening to Brothers and Sisters at 16 r.p.m. But the thrill is wearing thin, since that ruined two $55 cartridges, and hey, man, I'm running outta Placidyls. And 'Ramblin' Man' certainly ain't no 'War Pigs'.

Finally, salvation. Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath is here, and you know, they didn't let us down. Even if when you put it on, and get engrossed in conversation for what seems like a half hour, you find out the first song is still going. Even if we had extended discussions with authorities when they found this kid in my English class on the sidewalk, having splattered in the parking lot from the third floor of our school. He did say that 'Spiral Architect' was "Kahlil Gibran for Satanists," didn't he? The dude's lucky he can still drink through a straw.

No questions asked of the Sabs, though. They've been too busy making their most ambitious album to date. There is actually a chord change on 'Who Are You', and a certain amount of melodic inventiveness that some of the more Cro-Magnonesque elements of Sab culture might have a hard time dealing with.

The most difficult aspect of all this to relate to is the appearance of Yes' Rick Wakeman on some kinda screwy keyboard. You know what that smells like to me: Attempted Artistic Achievement, and if the Sabs ever fall for that, they're sunk.

Fortunately, no such disaster has occurred on this album. Wakeman makes it as an honorary Sab with the same ease that sensitive smart guy Curt qualified for membership in the Pharoahs in American Graffiti. They still write songs with lines like "God knows as your dognose/Bog blast all of you..." Can there be any doubt about who is back in town? Sabbra Cadabra!

© Wayne Robins, 1974, 2024