Original subtitles

Well , it was kind of like,

being as the Beatles got me really reWed up for music,

and it was just a magical time, I mean,

I try to tell my kids, it's like going to bed tonight in one world,

and waking up the ne morning in a completely different world.

Cos it was like, the Beatles were...

We'd had the war and then there was the Beatles.

The mania was amazing.

And they set a fire off in me which has never gone out.

All the Paul McCartney,

but I didn't really think about what a great bass player he was.

It was just like the Beatles as a band.

Then when I went to see Cream ,

I went to see it mainly for Eric Clapton, and I saw...

I'd never heard of Jack Bruce and when he started playing bass

I thought, "What the. . .?" It just blew me away.

About the most obvious ones were the Beatles, for me.

But I was brought up where my parents played a lot of American ja

every Saturday night.

So, growing up as a child,

every Saturday night the family would have a party,

and that's when all the big band ja records would come out.

The big guy for me is Gene Krupa. Still is.

That's it. Gene Krupa.

My first influence was the Shadows.

And I think the Shadows

were an influence to a lot of people from my generation.

Guitar players, anyway.

Because they were like one of the few instrumental bands in England

that you could try and copy, if you like.

So they sort of started me off.

And then affer that, I got into more...

the blues players and ja players.

We'd never been to America, so we went on the. . . with the Paranoid album .

Took us to America and opened up,

just fulfilled everything we'd ever dreamt of

and all our ambitions.

We had three seats on one side, three seats on the other,

flying the Atlantic to New York.

Steve Winwood was playing a drum on the opposite side of the plane.

And Jim Capaldi was in the seat ne to me.

He said, "Man, you guys are going to kill in the States."

It was a great experience because...

I'll never forget, as I'm going through Kennedy Airport,

that warm evening, and experiencing jetlag for the first time.

It's like you're dead, you go to sleep,

wake up four days later and it's still dark.

And you go, "What's all this about?"

We arrived in New York, went to New York, it's, you know.

Our first gig was in New York.

In fact, our first several gigs were in New York.

And...

And the PAs and the equipment that we'd brought

were totally unsuitable for America.

We didn't know that it was different electricity over here,

and we'd all brought our gear with our suitcases and stuff.

I can't believe it now, that we actually took big column speakers

in a plastic, like a plastic cover on them ,

travelling on the plane.

So when they come off the chute, of course you know,

no protection whatsoever.

So all the naivety started all over again.

We were these huge,

for a second we were these huge giants back in England, you know,

walking amidst the clouds or what have you,

and in America we were back in a club.

The first gig was bloody awful .

We played at this place called Ungano's Club in New York.

It was the worst dump I've ever seen.

The roadie we had at that time, he plugged the gear in and it all blew up

cos he didn't realise it was a different mains.

We had to borrow some amps and stuff for that night.

And we went on,

and we like, did the set, and everybody was just like...

Completely like no response.

Then we found out, later, that we were auditioning

for all the promoters and agents and everybody in America.

And we were wondering why the audience looked so weird to us.

They were all suits and short hair and everything.

And nobody had told us that we had to audition first.

So from that then, we played a couple of the university shows.

We'd never been in a college basketball stadium before,

at the university.

We were looking around, going, "Oh my God."

And the acoustics were absolutely awful ,

and the equipment that we had was completely inadequate.

We had a lot to learn and very quickly.

Then we got a break

and we played the Eastown Theater.

And the Fillmore East, which was so different, we couldn't believe it,

and we'd actually got a monitor system,

and we'd never used a monitor system in our lives.

And it was like, "Oh God, this is great."

And there we are, with our poxy PA,

which didn't even go any further than a few yards, there,

and there's all the sound, so we just used all their stuff.

And it was great.

So that was, then we were in, and we went down really well .

Then, I don't know how, but word just like spread like wildfire,

and we were there for, I think,

originally we were supposed to be in America for two weeks

and it ended up being three months.

Well , the Black Sabbath story, for Warner Brothers,

Warner Brothers was loaded with terrific acts,

but the Black Sabbath story was unique unto itself

in that there were never any returns.

When you sell a ton of records

and what is unsold gets returned.

And we'd never have returns on Black Sabbath records.

I got to our production people and say, "What's the story?"

They say we have to make more records, more albums, more tapes.

That carried through their entire career with us.

They never returned a record, they just kept selling,

and, big numbers, obviously.

And the fact that the first album got to number 1 2 on the charts

was amazing,

because the air play for this band, at the normal great exposure stations,

was not there.

They made it on who they were

and what the quality of the music on those albums was.

All the riffs I'd done, I always tried to make them big and powerful

because we were only a three-piece, musically.

Oy never played an instrument so we had to make it as big as we could.

And so, that was it, really.

That was the approach on all the songs, was to try...

Also songs like War Pigs or whatever, you'd have to,

I'd let the boffom note ring to make it bigger.

And it goes through the three stages of that beginning part

where I'm hitting the open string as well to make it a bigger sound.

And then it goes, the other part, where it goes...

That's sort of where the vocal starts.

Then we do a section of doing that with Oy,

and then back into the instrumental part again.

Then it goes into another section.

Then a vocal bit.

Then a break.

Vocal .

Then it breaks down into...

Then into the solo, which, again, was hitting the bottom string

to make it sound fuller.

My approach to solos is,

I go and sit down and play and capture them in so many

otherwise it either gets worse, or it very rarely gets beffer,

but I try and do it in so many.

And just listen to it and then start playing,

and try and get the feel of it

without, sort of, geffing it to working stuff out.

If you start working...

I've never been one for, "Sit down and work out a solo".

I can't do that. I've never been able to do that properly.

So I just tend to go in and just sort of jam with it.

If a part, if I'm playing a part, say if I do six takes or whatever,

and there's a part that I thought, "I like that part,"

then I'll keep that and then try another one.

Songs like War Pigs and that. The solo became part of the theme.

So you'd end up keeping that because it was a part of the song.

But some of the others would be just, you'd try different things.

Some of the other songs, Paranoid tended to be one of the solos I kept

and done it more or less the same.

That's basically it, really, and there's not much else to it.

Electric Funeral was sort of a...

I'd done it on a wah-wah.

Again, it was the riff first,

and then, the music first and then the melody came afferwards.

But, basically, Oy followed the riff which sort of went with it,

again, like Iron Man, the same sort of thing.

It seemed to be the right sort of approach for it, I think.

But this one was a bit different cos, as I say, we used a wah-wah on it

and it just sort of made it sound a liffle bit different.

It sort of went like this.

And then where Oy come in singing, I dropped the level down

and just used the wah-wah slowly.

I couldn't keep a day job.

I hated the fact that this is it for the rest of my life.

I thought, "I'm not going to."

I remember my mother geffing me a job, for instance,

at the Lucas car plant, tuning car horns.

I believe that was my first musical job.

And I said to one of the guys in his soundproof room,

"How long have you been doing this?"

And he goes, "35 years and I get my gold watch."

I thought to myself, I remember thinking,

"I don't want a gold watch that bad,

"but if I did, I'd break a jeweller's window."

But I just couldn't stand it, and it was a good way to be with the lads,

travel around Europe, meet women, have beer, have sex,

all the rest of it, you know.

It was just, have fun while you're still ...

you ain't got no wife, no kids.

We were four lads plus a roadie

driving around Europe in a transit van.

This is a track called Paranoid.

That was the one that did it for them ,

and, again, it came, started with Tony's guitar riff.

Basically, Tony came up with the riff,

and the bass is just nailing down what Tony does.

Which is so distinctive at the front. Should we have another listen to that?

This is a track where Geezer is following the guitar all the way through.

Yeah, the bass is really providing, just broadening out the guitar sound.

And on the solo they used a tone generator on the,

actually playing on the solo to make it sound odd.

And it did sound odd.

I played it like that and got this sound on it,

which was weird, but that was a Rodger Bain idea or...

Tom Allom .

Solo with vile ring modulator on it.

Grim !

And the original vocal again with the original backing.

"You're all insane! "

Short and sweet.

I've played it with a bunch of different guys.

I had some great drummers,

some great bass players, some great guitar players.

Nobody, I don't know why, it's like,

it's like puffing this pair of shoes on a different guy.

It just doesn't fit the same, it doesn't feel the same.

It's a "version of'.

When I went back with Black Sabbath for the reunion, it was like...

Thank God. This is the only band, for me, that can play this stuff.

I always wanted to back the riff up,

to make it deeper and heavier,

so I'd like play along to the same thing that Tony was playing

and then go off on his middle eights or the choruses or whatever.

Then, when the riff came back in, play that with Tony.

A lot of the riffs are so, like, strong you can't really get off them.

Especially Iron Man.

We'd opened N . I . B. with the bass on the first album

and we wanted something to open,

for the bass to open with on the Paranoid album as well .

So Hand Of Doom was a good riff, doomy riff for the bass.

That's how we came up with it.

There was no casseffe decks or anything to record anything on back then.

We couldn't afford anything like that.

So everything that we ever did was in our heads.

So you'd be thinking of stuff

and you might have ten riffs going on.

In your mind you go, "If I put that riff with that riff."

And sometimes the song would just go from beginning to end in one session,

but other times you'd get one piece and you keep working and working,

you might not come up with anything, then a week later,

you might come up with something that will go with that one,

and piece it together like that, like a jigsaw pule.

Of course it was Tony mainly that come out with the major riff

and everybody'd put in bits around that.

And without any one of us, it wouldn't have been the same.

So we all , you know, got credits for it.

This was the first time I'd heard drums played

where it wasn't like a regular beat.

It was actually, listening to it,

and this ne track, Rat Salad, will illustrate it,

in the same way that Tony's got a lot of ja in what he plays,

Bill's technique reminds me of a lot of ja drummers that I've heard.

And the solo on this ne track does illustrate that very well.

And it's not just playing a regular beat, it's using the toms

in between the riffs and in between the bass lines that drives it so well.

Technically very good, actually.

Keeping time

when you're not playing a steady beat

is a different technique.

He's playing more in the style of, perhaps, a Ginger Baker, in a way,

much more fluent.

Of course, Keith Moon did it brilliantly.

He could only play with one band.

I suspect that, actually, Bill could probably have slotted into other bands

with his ability on drums.

But, anyway, this ne track actually does show him off eremely well .

It also illustrates how few takes that we had to do

to complete this album ,

because you hear me saying "take two" just before this.

If he only did two takes of this liffle lot,

then he was doing preffy well .

Shall we have a listen?

Take two.

Kind of interesting to have a listen to Geezer and Tony

just on their own in this ne passage.

Geezer's driving the rhythm with his line, while Tony's weaving around it.

Now we have the solo.

This is exactly the same as the finished mix,

they were just a couple of double-tracked guitar parts.

Other than that, this was it.

Second take.

That, again, came out of

when we used to do these ridiculous, eight three-quarter hour spots

when we were on in Europe.

And Bill used to fill out a whole 45 minutes

doing a drum solo just to pass, get rid of, like, that 45 minutes.

Me and Oy would probably be up at the bar getting pissed

and me and Tony would just do that quick intro to Rat Salad

and then go off, and we'd be at the bar or smoking dope or something,

or off with some tart,

and just leave Bill to it.

Bill wanted to get a drum solo in on the album , so that's what.

We did what we do on stage.

I've no idea where the title came from .

On Saturday nights, my mum would play the piano

and my dad would sing.

And the guy that played the drums, he lived about four houses down,

so he'd bring his, what was then called "traps",

he'd bring his traps around the house.

Of course, he'd be too drunk to take them home,

so on Sunday mornings, when everybody else was asleep with a hangover,

I used to come sneaking down

and I'd touch the hi-hats and touch the cymbals,

just like a kid, man.

To me, it was just like, "Oh my God. This is incredible."

I was just fascinated.

We were talking about, like just the regular triplet,

and in the song, Hand Of Doom ,

I'm doing something like that.

Before I do it and show you the different interpretations,

I have to give credit to the other musicians in Birmingham at the time

that were using this very similar type of thing.

So it's basically a...

That's preffy much what it is.

But when you add a few other things into it,

an example of that, put this into the conte of Hand Of Doom ,

there's a part where Oy's singing with, the band's playing...

There's a lot of work that I'm puffing in there, including these.

So it's kind of like...

Sort of like so,

and most drummers, probably, will know that paffern,

and a lot of people will know that,

but to bring that into a more complex,

taking the triplet and bringing in far more complexity

can be used...

Which is what we, you know, how we drive and so on and so forth.

In Electric Funeral , there's a couple of things that I really...

Well, I enjoyed playing, obviously played all the songs,

but there was one particular thing where we go up tempo

and it's in the part where Tony played...

I blat and I come in so, I'll play you kind of where I went with that.

So that's the, that's it in its simplest form ,

but where I like to go is to add more fills in.

And, again, it comes under the heading of "nearly triplets", I guess.

So we're going...

It wasn't, it's not too,

it's not too far away from where those bass drums were going then.

It's not too far away from ...

One of my favourite songs to play on stage is still Fairies Wear Boots.

And, again,

it's very powerfully played.

But it certainly has its roots, again, in ja.

I can try and give an example.

I'll just go to the up tempo part.

So imagine that we've just played the...

And then we're going into the...

So it would be, two, three, and...

It's what reminds me of the ja in it,

is the going, the...

Going into those parts.

I kind of wish Tony was here right now so we could play it together.

But it's like, it's almost like,

it's almost, it really is like swing, with power.

And I can't say enough about

coming back to the shuffles

and a lot, I'll give credit to

the blues music that was - and especially English blues music -

that was so dominant during the mid-'60s.

The ne one's Planet Caravan,

so this is their sort of psychedelic ballad thing.

Bill Ward sits on a stool and plays bongos.

Tony's playing a nice, gentle liffle guitar part.

Very sweet.

There's a funny liffle synthy thing in there,

we've got a guide vocal from. . . from Oy,

which is, again, preffy much the final melody, but totally different lyrics.

And then there's a surprise performance later on in the track

which we'll come to in a bit,

on an instrument hitherto unheard on heayv metal .

Basically.

And this is sort of how it went, really.

That's not actually a keyboard. This is not a keyboard, at all .

It's a knob.

With a different frequency on each click.

So, I think it's Rodger,

just turning the knob.

Notice, it's the same notes going up and down.

And I think the finished thing,

with a nice liffle reverb on it, and an echo.

I think we've got Tony's solo coming up now.

Again, very much the ja influence in his playing.

Mystery instrument coming in, I think, now.

What's that?

Well , it's a piano.

Prizes offered for guessing who was playing that.

That was the engineer.

Yours truly.

I think...

Possibly my only instrumental performance

on any record I've ever recorded.

But it seemed to work with the other things

that were happening at the time.

Then, basically, it just fades out from here.

So it's, lyrically, a short song.

Well , it's actually amazing to have these boxes here on the console

ne to me here,

because it's my handwriting on them , here they are,

proof that it was done 4-track. One-inch, 4-track.

Lovely stuff.

They've survived the 39 intervening years.

Sadly, we've only got these 4-track tapes,

which are the original 4-track tapes.

And it would have been nice if we'd had the,

whether they were 8-track or 1 6-track tapes from Island.

But the fact is, we don't have them but we can hear,

by comparing what's on these 4-track tapes to the final mixes,

how liffle was actually done at Island.

The vocals obviously being the important thing, were done there,

but, I think...

I think every one of Tony's guitar solos

was present on these original 4-tracks.

He just doubled some of them

and then doubled up most of the rhythm guitar parts.

We had a few effects go on here and there,

a bit of reverb here and there,

but really, preffy much all of the album's siffing here ne to us now,

which is nice.

And inside here, there's some other session log sheets

which refer to three of the tracks on here.

"Take one. Doom . Hand Of Doom . Master."

So that was first take.

"Iron Man." Oh, we had to do three takes of that. Big deal .

For the master, and then,

as you heard me say before Rat Salad on the original thing, "Take two."

There we are, "Take two. Master."

So they didn't mess around. I mean, they were well rehearsed

and this thing went down like a dose of salts, it was wonderful .

But it really is lovely to see these boxes again.

It's a bit of a, bit of a blast, actually.

When you said you had them , I didn't totally believe you,

but there it is.