Electric Wizards JR Moores · Reaktion, 2021

CHAPTER 02

Sabbath Phase I: Black Sabbath

Aston, Iommi’s fingertips and the riff that started it

12 works, in the order the book names them

  • 001/Film

    Apocalypse Now

    Francis Ford Coppola

    If every example were to be compiled, the resulting mixtape would be longer than the director’s cut of Apocalypse Now and in certain places a darn sight more harrowing.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 002/Album/1994

    Monster

    REM

    On their Monster album of 1969, Steppenwolf addressed America’s barefaced global immorality.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 003/Album/1970

    Paranoid

    Black Sabbath

    The album became Paranoid.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 004/Album/1972

    Vol. 4

    Black Sabbath

    ‘People feel evil things, but nobody ever sings about what’s frightening and evil,’ said Butler when promoting 1972’s Vol. 4.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 005/Album/1971

    Master of Reality

    Black Sabbath

    Reviewing 1971’s Master of Reality, he wrote, ‘Black Sabbath grind out riff after riff after unrelenting riff; even the guitar leads are riffs, and there isn’t one excessive uncalled-for guitar lead on their whole new album.’ As if Sabbath’s sound wasn’t heavy enough in the first place, it was on this third LP that Iommi began to downtune his guitar, the looser strings making it even easier for him to play.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 006/Film/1964

    Dr Strangelove; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

    Stanley Kubrick

    The ‘physical act of making love’, as General Ripper puts it in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), was followed by a ‘profound sense of fatigue, a feeling of emptiness’.
    Open in IMDb ↗

  • 007/Album

    White Album

    The Beatles

    If reviewers of The Beatles’ White Album couldn’t quite fathom how to categorize the unkempt sound of ‘Helter Skelter’, critics had an even harder time figuring out what to do with Black Sabbath.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 008/Album/1976

    Technical Ecstasy

    Black Sabbath

    Although actually quite fun to listen to if you don’t take the material too seriously, 1976’s Technical Ecstasy and 1978’s Never Say Die! do seem lacklustre, plagued as they were by indecision and a lack of focus.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 009/Album/1978

    Never Say Die!

    Black Sabbath

    Although actually quite fun to listen to if you don’t take the material too seriously, 1976’s Technical Ecstasy and 1978’s Never Say Die! do seem lacklustre, plagued as they were by indecision and a lack of focus.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 010/Album/1973

    Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

    Black Sabbath

    After purchasing The Clash’s debut album, the next record on his shopping list was 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 011/Album/2017

    New Facts Emerge

    The Fall

    Steve Pringle, author of the highly recommended Fall-based blogs The Fall in Fives and You Must Get Them All, believes that particular Fall track must have been left on the cutting-room floor, although he points out to me that ‘Fol De Rol’ from the band’s final album, New Facts Emerge (2017), shamelessly pinches its main riff from Sabbath’s ‘Zero the Hero’.
    Open in YouTube ↗

  • 012/Album/2013

    Re-Mit

    The Fall

    When promoting 2013’s Re-Mit, an album with which he hoped to ‘terrify people’, Smith declared, ‘I want my music to be as punchy and aggressive as Black Sabbath.
    Open in YouTube ↗