The Tapes Archive

By late fall of 1971, Black Sabbath felt burned out and exhausted. They toured relentlessly throughout the year—playing over a hundred shows worldwide—and recorded and released one of their best-selling albums, Master of Reality. Singer Ozzy Osbourne was contending with a 105-degree fever and laryngitis, guitarist Tony Iommi was down with the flu, and drummer Bill Ward and bassist Geezer Butler were both in desperate need of rest. Left with no choice, the band canceled their European tour dates for November and December. After a final U.S. show in October and a brief vacation stop in Hawaii, they returned to England for a two-month break.

Reflecting on the punishing schedule, Geezer Butler remarked, “The last year has been so hectic, perhaps the worst so far. Our way of working is very exhaustive—both Bill and I have had periods of depression. The travelling in America really gets me down.” Given that Butler didn’t eat meat, and that options were limited outside of big cities, most of his diet consisted of french fries.

Despite their depleted state, Black Sabbath had already begun thinking ahead to their next album. Just a month after finishing Master of Reality, they started writing and rehearsing new material at Rockfield Studios in May 1971. Seven months later, in January 1972, they regrouped in their hometown of Birmingham to continue polishing the new songs. This time, they wanted to focus more on melody while preserving their trademark heaviness. Only a few years earlier, no one had expected much from them; now, Black Sabbath were regularly mentioned alongside the biggest names in rock, such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.

Like the band, the stakes were high. Zeppelin had recently released their iconic untitled fourth album, and Deep Purple was pumping out classic album after classic album. Across the Atlantic, Alice Cooper had delivered two career-defining records the year before, while Grand Funk Railroad was packing arenas from coast to coast, dominating the North American circuit. With their peers producing monumental works, Black Sabbath knew they couldn’t afford to rush their next project. Gone were the days of recording an album in just three days. The band was ready to take their time and create something that would move them into the next phase of Black Sabbath.

Ozzy said: “The Master of Reality album I didn’t like at all. It was too rushed and the sleeve was a load of crap. It was so quickly done – we didn’t really have the chance to do what we wanted to do. “The first album was even worse. We did that in just two days. You know the Led Zeppelin second album—the one with all those incredible effects? Well, that was what we wanted for the album, but all we got was flat sounds. After Master of Reality, we said, ‘To hell with all of them, we’ll do it ourselves.’ We didn’t want to feel like we were putting out a load of crap.

“We were fed up with people telling us what to do. I mean, I still like the first albums, but they could have been done a lot better.” [[We’re not a bloody*downer rock band. We just play music OZZIE OSBOURNE talks to Robert Partridge 8/73]

During rehearsals, the band, minus Tony, would be at a nearby pub getting snookered while Iommi would try to come up with some new riffage to jam on. This weight on Iommi would be a constant moving forward, making him the band’s de facto leader. Each band member would offer their valuable contribution to the music, but it almost always started with a riff from the Lord of Doom. 

Iommi said: “We took quite a long time to write and rehearse for the Volume 4 album. It’s not like it was becoming harder to come up with stuff, but the pub was only a mile away, so we’d start to come up with ideas, and it was: ‘Ah, oh . . .’

And they’d all go down to the pub for ‘a’ drink.

I’d think: I’m not going to go; I’ll just sit here and try to come up with something. I’d play for a bit, an hour, two hours, three hours, and they’d all come back plastered: ‘You got anything?’

Oh, great! I felt really pressured.” [From Iommi’s book]

Around January 17th, 1972, the Sab4 went to Marquee Studios in London and recorded “Snowblind,” “FX,” “Tomorrow’s Dream,” and other backing tracks for their next album. During this recording session, Geezer told reporter Dick Meadows, “So far it’s going well. It will be a lot different from the last one. “I think more lyrical, more melodic, and not quite so heavy.” “Anyway, we’ve a lot of theories that we want to use here.” 

Ozzy said : “This album has lots of short tracks for variety. Long numbers get boring. If we want to retain our popularity we will have to make a change. We’re getting some weird effects in the studio and doing insane things. For instance, we get everybody to march to the top of this big staircase the other day, singing like the Seven Dwarfs. It was amazing. Everybody let themselves go, and we took it down on tape; everybody just let themselves go, people who wouldn’t normally do that. We took it down on tape and are thinking of including it on the album but we`re not too sure yet. It really was an incredible effect. It sounded like there were a million people there.” [MUSICAL EXPRESS, January 22, 1972: Pamela Holman talks to Ossie Osbourne]

Ozzy told Andrew Tyler the same week the reason the band for the first time would be self-producing the album instead of using the producer for the first three Sabbath albums Roger Bain. “We felt we wanted a change. So we’ll be producing ourselves. A producer can’t know our music well enough. He can only advise. We can see things that an outsider is going to miss. If you’ve got a good engineer, it’s sufficient. A producer just tells him what to do anyway – like bring up this and put that in the background. But it’s only an experiment, and if it doesn’t work out, we’ll probably get hold of somebody.”

Years later Ozzy dismissed Roger as “someone the record company gave us when we signed with the company. It was really a clash of egos. He got it into his head that he was more responsible for our hit status than we were. He wanted, to a moderate extent, to control our music.” [Popoff Sab in the seventies]

Iommi would say about Bain: “It’s not like we were fed up with Roger Bain or anything, I thought he was all right. But we had done so much studio work by then, that we felt we knew how to do it ourselves.” [Iommi’s book]

It was also reported the album would probably be out in March 1972. At this point, there was only talk of mixing the album in the US. For now, the focus was making up the canceled Master of Reality shows from two months prior.

First Tour of 1972:

Almost a year after their last British shows, Black Sabbath kicked off the second leg of their Master of Reality tour with two sold-out nights at the Town Hall in Birmingham, their hometown. Opening for them was Wild Turkey, a band led by ex-Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick, who had briefly been a bandmate of Tony Iommi during his short stint with Jethro Tull. Wild Turkey shared several connections with Sabbath: they were co-managed by Sabbath’s manager Patrick Meehan and Yes’ manager Brian Lane, and their debut album, like Sabbath’s, was produced by Roger Bain and engineered by Tom Allom. 

Through the 2500-watt PA system, Sabbath delivered classics like “Children of the Grave” and “Iron Man” while also debuting two new songs, “Snowblind” and “Tomorrow’s Dream.” The photos taken during the shows by Keith McMillan—a.k.a. Keef—would end up being the cover and gatefold images for Vol.4. Keef was the in-house designer for Sabbath’s record label, Vertigo, and the man responsible for the photography and artwork on the first two Sabbath records as well as the poster included with Master of Reality.

Five days later, they played a show that almost didn’t happen. For months, Carlisle City Council had tangled Black Sabbath in red tape over their proposed performance at the Market Hall, nearly derailing the project several times. But the band refused to give up. Ozzy said: “We want the people up there to know we haven’t forgotten them” [Andrew Tyler,Disc and Music Echo,20 January 1972] 

They saw this charity gig as something bigger than bureaucracy – a chance to thank the loyal fans from Cumbria and southwest Scotland who had believed in them from the start, back when success was just a distant dream. On January 30, that persistence finally triumphed when Black Sabbath took the stage, transforming months of frustration into a night showing why Sabbath was a band for the people.

The tour included a return to London’s Royal Albert Hall on February 17, 1972. Just one year earlier, Black Sabbath had been banned from performing at the venue for their show on January 5, 1971, with no clear reason given. Speculation suggested that their lyrics and reputation contributed to the ban. However, as Sabbath’s popularity grew, the ban was lifted, allowing them to play at the venue on April 26, 1971, where they closed out their “Paranoid” tour. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, their 1972 performance would become the last time they played at this historic venue. Two months after the show, the Royal Albert Hall’s council imposed a ban on all rock and pop concerts due to concerns about audience behavior. Although the ban was eventually lifted, Black Sabbath never returned to the venue.

Quickly forgetting the toll of their previous year’s touring, Sabbath embarked on a grueling U.S. tour, playing 32 concerts in 34 days. Dubbed the Iron Man tour, this new trip started just five days after concluding their English shows. Around this time, manager Patrick Meehan proposed that the band finish recording their album at the Record Plant in Los Angeles, California. The advantages were compelling: lower recording costs, avoidance of the UK’s 90% tax rate, a friend’s mansion where they could stay during recording, and—perhaps most enticingly—easier access to cocaine. The band was easily convinced.

The U.S. tour kicked off on March 1st, 1972 in Fayetteville, NC, and by the very next show, they were already getting slagged by the U.S. press. Critic Diane Goldblum said of their March 2nd Miami show, “What really irks me is that the audience reacted just as though it had just seen an excellent performance, rather than an awful one. Are Miami audiences so starved for live rock entertainment that even the worst noise is applauded and rewarded with large sums of money? Audiences should learn to distinguish between talent and trash.” 

Most of the U.S. tour dates featured Wild Turkey as the opening act, with the Sweathog joining for a few shows on the East Coast. Ten days into the tour, the prog-rock group Yes joined the lineup shortly after releasing their classic album, *Fragile*. This unusual combination of artists was the result of Sabbath’s manager, Meehan, and Yes’ manager, Brian Lane, co-managing Wild Turkey.

Iommi said: “It was an extremely unlikely combination. They hated us, because I’m sure in their minds they were the clever players and we were the working class. Sometimes they talked, and other times they would walk straight past you.” [Iommi’s book]

Geezer said: “A lot of those prog bands were really snooty. They were often from middle-class backgrounds, had been to university or art school, and were usually virtuoso musicians to boot. As a result, they looked down on us working-class ‘oafs’ from the provinces, who couldn’t play our instruments properly or read music.

Ozzy said:”I don’t like going to these concerts where the band tries to baffle you with science. Hop onto a Moog, play 35 violins, it’s just nowhere for me.” [Honor thy Sabbath article]

The one band member of Yes who got along with Sabbath was keyboardist Rick Wakeman, who would later record with Sabbath and Ozzy. Rick’s son Adam would tour with Ozzy on solo and Sabbath tours. To this day, Ozzy and Rick remain friends. 

The U.S. tour didn’t take long to run into a pearl-clutching conservative who tried to censor their show. On March 7th in Spokane, Washington, Republican Councilwoman Margaret Leonard took issue with Sabbath’s tune “Sweat Leaf.” Holding a copy of Master of Reality, she said the City Council’s rental of the Coliseum to the group “was contributing to the delinquency of minors.” She suggested placing restrictions on the venue’s contracts with bands (such as preventing Black Sabbath from playing “Sweet Leaf”). If they violated the restrictions, the band would forfeit profits from the show. Councilman Del Jones felt the council would be on “very thin ice if we start singling out Black Sabbath from the other groups that perform in a public building.” Councilman Jack Winston said tickets have already been sold and arrangements made for the group’s appearance in the Coliseum. “I don’t know how we can correct that,” he said. The council then unanimously approved the rental agreements after Leonard was informed the band had volunteered not to play “Sweat Leaf” at the March 15th show. Still, she wanted a full report after the show. 

It was asked at the follow-up council meeting if the new smoking ban for the Coliseum was obeyed at the Sabbath show. Warren Butz coliseum manager responded, “It was entirely ineffective.” It was also stated that patrons of the rock concert were smoking marijuana and that those attending the show had to watch it through a “blue haze.” Councilwoman Margaret Leonard asked if the band played “Sweat Leaf,” Butz replied, “I don’t know whether they sang it or not. The music was so loud it ruptured the eardrums.” For the record, Sabbath did not play “Sweet Leaf” that night, but they did play “Snowblind.” 

The March 18th, 1972 Black Sabbath concert in San Diego would later inspire a scene in Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical film “Almost Famous.” At the time, Crowe was a 14-year-old writer for the San Diego Door, an underground publication, who also contributed to Cream magazine under Lester Bangs’ guidance. 

In his Rolling Stone review of Sabbath’s debut album, it’s worth noting that Bangs had notoriously roasted their effort, saying things like: “They even have discordant jams with bass and guitar reeling like velocitized speedfreaks all over each other’s musical perimeters yet never quite finding synch just like Cream! But worse.” In June and July 1972, Bangs made a complete 180 on the band, writing a two-part essay published in Cream magazine stating: “Despite the blitzkrieg nature of their sound, Black Sabbath are moralists. Like Bob Dylan, like William Burroughs, like most artists trying to deal with a serious present situation in an honest way. They are not on the same level of profundity, perhaps; they are certainly much less articulate, subject to the ephemerality of rock, but they are a band with a conscience who have looked around them and taken it upon themselves to reflect the chaos in a way that they see as positive.”

A quick Sabbath Almost Famous nerd sidenote. See this guy? He’s wearing a Balck Sabbath Reunion tour shirt in what is supposed to be 1972.  

The actual concert featured Black Sabbath headlining with Yes and Wild Turkey as supporting acts, though Crowe’s film adapts this detail for dramatic purposes showing the protagonist attempting to interview Black Sabbath. Crowe interviewed Yes and Wild Turkey that evening, not the headliners. However, Crowe eventually got his interview with Ozzy Osbourne when Black Sabbath returned to San Diego on September 10th, 1972. I have linked all three interviews in the description. 

The final chapter of Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality tour collided with Easter weekend, igniting a firestorm of religious controversy—not only in the United States but also in Puerto Rico.

In South Carolina, local churches rallied against the band, flooding the Carolina Coliseum with petitions demanding the cancellation of their Easter concert. The protest gained momentum when influential AM radio personality Ben Dekle took to the airwaves to condemn the scheduling of a heavy metal show on such a sacred holiday. Yet the controversy only served to fuel interest – in a twist of irony, the attempted boycott helped pack the Coliseum nearly to capacity as fans flocked to see what might be their last chance to catch Sabbath on this tour. The fusion of heavy metal and holy days proved to be an unexpectedly powerful draw, despite – or perhaps because of – the religious backlash. 

The Mar y Sol Pop Festival, held in Puerto Rico in April 1972, aimed to be a tropical version of Woodstock, complete with palm trees and ocean breezes. The lineup featured bands like Black Sabbath, the Allman Brothers, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, a young Billy Joel and many others. However, scheduling the festival during Holy Week on a deeply Catholic island led to chaos, conflict, and poor decisions. For Black Sabbath, the drama began before they were supposed to take the stage. 

The festival’s remote location and lack of traffic management resulted in gridlocked roads, leaving Sabbath stranded at their hotel in San Juan. Their manager, Patrick Meehan, assessed the situation and made the call to abandon the gig. The band had already received payment, but without helicopters, they had no practical means to reach the venue. As their crew waited in the hot sun at the festival site, unaware of the decision, the band members relaxed in the hotel bar, making escape plans. Before they fled to the airport, Ozzy, not wanting to pass up an opportunity for mischief threw cherry bombs into the bathroom of their suite.

At the festival grounds, tensions escalated as chaos took hold. Local workers hired to prepare the site faced logistical challenges as supplies failed to arrive on time. The religious locals, already irritated about hosting a festival filled with drugs, nudity, and rock music during Easter, began tearing down American flags and harassing festival-goers. Makeshift stalls selling food and water were exploiting desperate fans with exorbitant prices while machete-wielding residents added a threatening element to the atmosphere. 

Only 35,000 attendees had arrived by the second day—half of the expected crowd. Rumors of injunctions and event cancellations created panic, and many fans, who had paid $149 for a ticket package that included airfare, found themselves stranded at the site or desperately trying to reach the airport, where more confusion awaited.

Delays in chartered flights left sunburned and frustrated concert-goers stuck in military tents set up by the Puerto Rican army. Back at the festival, disillusionment hung heavy in the air. The dream of a tropical Woodstock had devolved into a humid nightmare. Equipment failures, no-shows, and an angry local populace created a dangerous environment. Promoter Alex Cooley became the target of angry fans and frustrated authorities, eventually fleeing the island, smuggling out in a trash-filled Volkswagen bus. When Sabbath’s road crew found that the band had already left the hotel, they returned to their suite, which was in disarray, and were politely informed by the hotel manager to “mind the mess.” Choosing not to deal with it, they instead hurried to the airport, joining the exodus of stranded festival-goers.

Yet, for all the chaos, uncertainty, and at least four deaths, some attendees reflect fondly on their time at Mar y Sol, recalling the once-in-a-lifetime lineup, the spirit of friendship that emerged in adversity, and the sheer uniqueness of the experience. For them, Mar y Sol wasn’t a disaster—it was a legendary, unpredictable adventure they still talk about today. 

“It alternated from being very good to being very tense, from when the music was very good to when there were rumors of local kids going through the camp cutting up people with machetes,” said a 17‐year‐old student from Manhattan, who promptly added he would always consider the festival “one of the most important events in my life.” 

For Sabbath, it was another forgotten canceled show that promoter Cooley still thought three decades later they’d played. In 2006, he said, “They didn’t play? I thought they did. Are you sure about that?… I thought they had played. I really did. But that last night, I was under so much pressure, and so many things were happening. If they say they didn’t, I’d have to take their word for it.”

Mansion:

After completing the Master of Reality tour, it was time for the band to finish writing and recording their next album. They traveled to Bel Air, California, where they stayed at a mansion owned by John Du Pont, heir to the Du Pont fortune. This is the same Du Pont family that earned $15 billion in war contracts between 1964 and 1972 and was indirectly involved in producing napalm for the Vietnam War. The situation of a liberal, working-class, anti-war band staying in the house of a conservative donor to Nixon made for an unusual pairing. However, it was a logical choice, as the lavish home was located near Record Plant, the studio where they would be recording. 

Iommi said: “It was a way to avoid the English taxman and the studio rates were better, cheaper out there as well. More important than that, we thought it would be nice to really go somewhere else to try and get a different vibe. We went to Los Angeles in May 1972. Patrick Meehan knew John Dupont.”

Vol.4 Deep Dive

Wheels of Confusion/The Straightener: 

“Wheels of Confusion,” originally titled “Illusion,” stands out as one of Black Sabbath’s most ambitious tracks. Rather than bursting with typical opener energy, it feels more like a deep cut—balancing raw power with sprawling complexity. From the first notes, Tony Iommi’s guitar tone sounds both commanding and lonely, almost like it’s crying.

Geezer’s lyrics reflect the band’s mindset in 1972. Despite massive success with Paranoid and Master of Reality, Sabbath faced pressures, excess, and disconnection from their early ideals. The nostalgic longing in “Wheels of Confusion” mirrors their shift from humble Birmingham roots to the chaotic reality of international fame. Before stardom, they were simply four lads escaping factory life. By 1972, that innocence was eroded by substance abuse, relentless touring, and commercial expectations.

“Soon the days were passing into years / Happiness just didn’t come so easy” captures their struggle for inspiration and personal happiness amid cocaine, conflict, and grueling schedules. The closing lines—“The world will still be turning when you’re gone”—show the band grappling with life’s impermanence and the fragility of success. Ozzy summed it up in 1972: “The society trip in England is that you go to school, then get a job, and at the age of 21, you get married. You work the rest of your life in a factory, and when you retire at age 65, you get a gold watch; 45 years in a factory with stinking oil, polluting the land.” [The Wit & Wisdom of Ozzy Osbourne or For the Best Coke Call Black Sabbath. By Harold Bronson]

Quick sidenote: That quote was taken by UCLA student Harold Bronson who actually went to the Record Plant to watch Sabbath record in Studio B. The band would not allow Bronson’s photographer to take any photos because Ozzy was so wasted. From the article: “Ozzy was  working on his vocals. ‘For the best coke, just ring 3-8-9-0-9-8, only 100 dollars!’ he exclaimed, grinning stupidly from behind a microphone. ‘I’m so stoned,’ he moaned while gesturing like Frank Sinatra.” Ironically, Bronson would go on to co-found Rhino Records who would later be a partner in reissuing many Sabbath albums including box sets. I will link to the article in the description. 

Vol. 4 signaled a more experimental approach for Sabbath, and the introspective depth of “Wheels of Confusion” fit right in. Originally, as “Illusion,” the lyrics had an ecological bent: “Long ago this world of ours was green, Then there was atomic wars … Man polluted everything around him.” 

Originally written as a separate song, The Straightener starts five minutes into Wheels of Confusion as its coda. The Straightener was never played in concert, but it does feature Geezer playing his electric Fender 12-string, the first time a non-Iommi guitar appeared on a Black Sabbath record.

Tomorrow’s Dream:
Black Sabbath was never particularly focused on achieving success through singles. In January 1972, Ozzy stated: “We’d like to be able to put out singles when we feel like it and not have to worry about follow-ups. But there’s a difference of opinion as to whether we should release a new single.”

Tony added: “Basically we’re an album band. and that’s why we didn’t need a single as a follow-up… A lot of people criticized us as a teenybopper group. But we’ve been able to prove in recent years that we didn’t need a single.” When asked if singles play an important role in television and radio, Tony responded: “Who is interested in television or radio? We don’t need that, we dealt with that in the early days. Now we no longer depend on the mass media.”

Nine months later, it was decided that “Tomorrow’s Dream” would serve as the single from Vol.4. It failed to achieve any significant chart success. “Tomorrow’s Dream” was reportedly among three tracks recorded in January 1972 at Marquee Studios. By the time the band reached the Record Plant in Los Angeles, it’s speculated they wanted to change the lyrics, so they re-recorded the vocals to include the new version. You can hear the alternative lyrics on various bootlegs that captured shows prior to May 1972.

Surprisingly, the final lyrics were inspired by Marc Bolan and the glam band T. Rex. As Butler explained: “Every time I’ve seen Bolan, it always reminded me how fragile everything is. He was a massive star in England but not really heard of outside of England. And it was just really about how delicate being a pop star is. Like, one day you’re massive, the next day you’re forgotten about.”

Noted Black Sabbath historian Rob Dwyer wrote: “Vol. 4 sounds as brown and resin-saturated as the carpets of their recording studio’s carpet likely was. While Eddie Van Halen might have laid claim to the ‘brown sound’ in describing his own guitar tone, Black Sabbath clearly invented it.”

The “brown sound” represents a foundational approach to guitar tone that blends distortion, warmth, and clarity. Dwyer’s observation suggests Black Sabbath pioneered a sonic landscape that would profoundly influence subsequent rock musicians.  Van Halen’s cover of Tomorrow’s Dream four years later symbolizes this musical lineage, with the band carrying forward and transforming Black Sabbath’s innovative guitar sound. By drawing a parallel between the band’s sonic texture and their physical recording environment, Dwyer highlights how Black Sabbath’s approach was more than just musical innovation—it was a groundbreaking reimagining of rock’s sonic possibilities.

Changes: 

“Changes” is one of Black Sabbath’s most polarizing songs. For some fans, it’s a bold and heartfelt departure from their signature sound; for others, it’s the track they skip when revisiting Vol. 4. Yet, despite its divisive reception, “Changes” remains one of the band’s most unique creations, showcasing their willingness to experiment and push their music into unexpected emotional territory—and its legacy has grown far beyond what anyone could have imagined.

One small revelation about the song is that Tony was not at Du Pont’s mansion when he started writing it as reported elsewhere. He was at his manager’s rented home in L.A. Iommi said in December to Go-Set magazine: “‘Changes’ just came to me while sitting at Pat Meehan’s piano in his L.A. home. I was sitting, playing, clunking at the piano, feeling down and depressed, and it just came out. That was my first try at playing piano—and the last. I enjoyed it.” 

“I think Tony is one of the most talented guys I’ve ever met. None of us have ever been to music college, and if someone put music in front of me now, well I couldn’t even read English writing let alone music writing. But Tony has this natural ability. He’d never played piano before, never before, and yet he sat down and got ‘Changes’ together at the piano after a day.” [Ozzy – Honor Thy Sabbath]

Then back at the mansion, he started plucking on it again, and Ozzy and Geezer overheard and joined in—Geezer adding texture with the Mellotron, and Ozzy improvising melodies and scratch words which Geezer later recrafted into the final lyrics.

Those lyrics reflected drummer Bill Ward’s personal struggles at the time. While recording in Los Angeles, Ward ended his relationship with his wife Thelma after meeting Melinda Strait, known as Mysti. This emotional upheaval became the core of “Changes.” Decades later, Ward reflected on its impact in Rolling Stone: “Yeah, I found out that was about me,” he said with a laugh. “I think at that time, maybe a year or two before, I’d gone through a very sad situation with my first wife and started a new relationship. I guess Geezer or maybe Ozz had seen the effect that it had on me, but I actually couldn’t see the effect it had on me.”

Ozzy himself felt a strong connection to the song, describing it in June 1972: “There’ll be a lot of gentle things on the new album. One song, ‘Changes,’ about a guy—whether he’s with a band or not, I’m not gonna say—who quits with his woman, is the ultimate in the way I feel about things. It’s more of a song rather than a frustration-reliever screamer. It’s just a pretty, slow ballad.” [The Wit & Wisdom of Ozzy Osbourne or For the Best Coke Call Black Sabbath. By Harold Bronson]

Tony Iommi’s first time playing piano with Sabbath wasn’t the band’s first song to feature piano. The band recorded “The Rebel” on August 22, 1969—just four days before they played their final show as Earth at Banklands Youth Club in Workington, England. Many people initially credited Norman Haines as the composer since he played piano on the track and worked with Sabbath’s first manager, Jim Simpson. However, Black Sabbath lyrics expert Joe Bongiorno uncovered the truth through extensive research: Cyril, Dora, and Charles Ward composed the song. Charles Ward’s niece Lisa Ward confirmed this fact, while Simpson’s own book acknowledged it wasn’t Haines, and Mott the Hoople’s release of “The Rebel” also listed the Wards as composers. Charles Ward also co-founded Rockfield Studios—where Sabbath would rehearse material for “Vol. 4.”

Three months before Sabbath recorded “The Rebel,” a band called Silence had already recorded it at Rockfield Studios as a demo titled “If Your Heart Lay with the Rebel (Would You Cheer the Underdog?).” Silence later became Mott the Hoople when Ian Hunter joined as their vocalist. 

Two months after recording The Rebel, Sabbath laid down a track that was written by Haines, a composition called When I Come Down, later retitled When I Came Down. The band didn’t feel these cover songs quite fit their sensibilities, but they went along with the sessions to provide their manager with material to pitch to record labels. 

The very first time “Changes” was covered was only months after it was released. An American band named Crystal Saint covered the song in early 1973. Oddly, they give no props to Sabbath in interviews or a writing credit on the 45, but they did list the correct song publisher.

In 2003, Ozzy and his daughter Kelly re-recorded the tune with amended lyrics, turning it into a sentimental father daughter version. The cover sold 300k units in the UK, boosted by the popularity of their MTV reality show, The Osbournes.

The Cardigans and Kelly Clarkson delivered their unique takes on the song, while Eminem incorporated a sample of it into his track “Going Through Changes.” Charles Bradley’s soulful rendition truly captivated audiences, amassing over 40 million views on YouTube. His powerful version also became the theme song for Netflix’s animated series Big Mouth.

While “Changes” divided fans in its time, its impact is undeniable. Black Sabbath broke new ground as one of the first hard rock bands to deliver a ballad steeped in personal heartbreak and raw emotion. With “Changes,” they redefined how heavy bands could express vulnerability, paving the way for a hallmark of 1980s metal: the power ballad. If the dark lords of rock could bare their souls, why couldn’t others? This shift pre-dated a wave of heartfelt tracks like Thin Lizzy’s “Still in Love with You” (1974), Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” (1975), KISS’s “Beth” (1976), UFO’s “Try Me” (1977), and many others.

Ozzy Osbourne himself revisited this emotional terrain after leaving Sabbath. His first collaboration with Randy Rhoads, “Goodbye to Romance,” served as a poignant farewell to his Sabbath days. Later, with Jake E. Lee, he delivered the deeply resonant “So Tired,” and cemented his mastery of emotionally charged songwriting with one of his biggest hits, “Mama, I’m Coming Home,” a track that built on the foundation laid by “Changes.”

By making it cool for hard rock bands to embrace emotion, Ozzy and Sabbath inspired an entire generation of L.A. Strip bands. Power ballads became a defining feature, with groups like Scorpions (“Still Loving You”), Mötley Crüe (“Home Sweet Home”), and Poison (“Every Rose Has Its Thorn”) scoring some of their most iconic hits. What began with Sabbath’s raw introspection evolved into a genre staple.

FX
Another track on Vol. 4 that seems to get skipped a lot is “FX,” a brief audio interlude featuring sounds created when Tony Iommi’s crucifix necklace knocked against his guitar, processed through a Binson tape echo delay effect. Hence, the title FX

“FX” was recorded at Marquee Studios in January 1972 and is considered a joke and filler by its creator. Iommi said: “We were mostly naked at the time when we recorded it. When you’re in the studio for hours on end smoking dope, you go a bit mad. We started playing and were dancing around half naked, just being stupid. I hit my guitar with my cross, it went ‘boing!’ and we went: ‘Ooh!’ ‘Boing!’ ‘Aah!’ Everybody then danced past the guitar, hitting it. We were just playing about. We didn’t think of using this as a track, but they recorded it with a delay, and we thought, oh, yeah, hmmm, and we put it on the record. I always put so much work in every song, putting all the different changes in and everything, and here we had a track that came about accidentally because a couple of stoned people were hitting my guitar, and it ended up on the album. A total joke!” [Iommi’s book]

Supernaut:
Coming in like a hard rock version of the theme from Shaft, “Supernaut” has the energy to match the band’s cocaine buzz. As Ozzy himself put it: “When I listen to songs like ‘Supernaut,’ I can just about taste the stuff. The whole album’s like having someone pour a couple of lines into your ears.”

Later, during the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath recording sessions, Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham would request to play “Supernaut.” Bill Ward said: “It was one of his favourite songs. And he came to Morgan Studios in London one time when we were recording, and they wanted to jam. There was Planty and Bonham; they came down, and they were jamming, and we got together, and Bonham wanted to play ‘Supernaut,’ and he had it down.” 

For decades it had been rumored when Bonham banged out Supernaut it may have been recorded. In 2011 Ward was interviewed by Back Page magazine and said: “It all started when Bonzo comes into the studio and sits down at my drum kit and starts playing Supernaut.” “It escalated to a pretty crazy situation within about 30 minutes, because not only was Bonzo there, but Robert Plant and John Paul Jones were there as well. Jimmy (Page) wasn’t there, but I wish he had been. And Bonzo was kickin’ the crap out of my drum kit!” Ward laughed. “I can still hear him playing that intro on the hat, over and over.” “There was a moment during that jam where we all kind of got this crazy notion and said, ‘Oh, let’s just put something down on tape,’” said Ward. “But nothing transpired and no tape rolled. The bottom line is, we were just pissin’ around that day, that one and only time that Zeppelin and Sabbath were in the studio together. There was no musical crossover between the two bands, and nothing was recorded. I believe at one point, Geezer and Robert did a bit of writing together, but that was just their own personal thing, between them. But the Black Zeppelin recordings, as people like to call it, didn’t ever exist.” 

Eight years later Iommi contradicted his former bandmate by telling Classic Rock magazine: “We were really good mates with Led Zeppelin, especially Robert Plant and John Bonham who came from the Midlands. Zeppelin had wanted us to be on their label, Swan Song, but we couldn’t make it work out. “During the recording of the ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ album, Zeppelin came into the studio for a jam. John wanted to play ‘Supernaut’ but we jammed instead. “We were in the middle of recording so it fucked up the session. I know that it was recorded, and I’d love to hear it. The tape must be around somewhere.”

[Insert Ozzy yelling for Sharon: “Sharon, where’s the bloody tape?!”] 

When asked about the origin of the song’s title, Geezer Butler couldn’t recall its inspiration. The term “supernaut” was uncommon before Black Sabbath’s use, appearing mostly as a surname. However, one intriguing earlier reference exists: In 1968, Mattel released and trademarked the “Supernaut Power-Limbs Pak,” an accessory for their Major Matt Mason action figure line. This toy exoskeleton, designed for imaginary lunar exploration and mining, featured twin hook-claws and a rear-mounted crane to help children envision themselves traversing the moon’s surface. While we can’t confirm if this toy influenced Butler’s songwriting, the timing and space-age connection make it an intriguing possibility.

Interestingly, the lyrics to “Supernaut” also bring the moon into focus:
“I’m gonna climb up every mountain of the moon
And find the dish that ran away with the spoon.”

The line “And find the dish that ran away with the spoon” is an obvious tip of the hat to the vintage nursery rhyme Hey diddle diddle
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
To see such sport,
And the dish ran away with the spoon.”

One of the best-known covers of “Supernaut” was done by Ministry’s Al Jourgensen’s side band 1000 Homo DJs. The name for the band came from the record label’s owner saying: “No one’s gonna buy this. It’ll take one thousand homo DJs to play this for one person to buy it.” Their version of “Supernaut” was actually first recorded with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor on vocals. But Reznor’s record label refused to let them use it, so Jourgensen did the vocals. A couple of years later, Reznor’s version was released on Black Box – Wax Trax! Records: The First 13 Years.

In Geezer Butler’s book, he claimed Frank Zappa covered the song. “He’d done a couple of interviews in which he’d said how much he loved our song ‘Supernaut,’ and that the riff was the best he’d ever heard. I thought he must have been joking, but then I discovered he covered ‘Supernaut’ and ‘Iron Man’ onstage.” [Geezer’s book]

In June 1975, Frank Zappa did pick Black Sabbath’s “Supernaut” as his favorite song of the moment, saying at the time, “I like it because I think it’s prototypical of a certain musical style, and I think it’s well done. Also, I happen to like the guitar lick that’s being played in the background.” But Zappa never covered “Supernaut” or “Iron Man” in full. However, he did add a couple of bars of “Iron Man” to his song “Camarillo Brillo “in a few shows, and once Zappa played the riff from “Supernaut” during a rehearsal lasting 10 seconds. Sabbath also never played the entire Supernuat song live only playing part of it during a medley with other songs.

One other Zappa connection. In Feburary 1977 Zappa told Ciao 2001 magazine that he planned on producing Sabbath and that he had already been contacted for the job, he just didn’t know when to start yet. A year earlier Zappa produced Grand Funk Railroad.

Snowblind: 

Black Sabbath’s ode to cocaine, “Snowblind,” was first recorded long before the infamous almost daily deliveries of Santa’s fluff in California. The track was initially laid down in late January 1972 at Marquee Studios in London and made its live debut on January 24th at the Town Hall in Birmingham. The string quartet heard near the song’s end was drummer Bill Ward’s idea, who also tried and failed at conducting the quartet. 

 And for the record, the whispered “cocaine” you hear? That’s Geezer Butler, not Ozzy Osbourne.

“Snowblind” along with “Laguna Sunrise” were the first Sabbath songs with strings. Bill said: “Up until then, we’d used mellotrons or things like that, but we never put strings on an album. We’d never brought session players in to play strings. I wanted to put strings on at the end of ‘Snowblind.’ I could hear the strings. I thought it was a good idea. I think I was probably insistent upon it. There were some ruffles of feathers. You know, it’s like, ‘Hang on. You know, this is like different.’” [Mike Stark Oral history of Sabbath]

It should be noted that the Vol. 4 box set states “Snowblind” was also recorded at the Record Plant in May of 1972, but there’s no documented proof. It was reported in Sounds January 22, 1972: “Already they have recorded several backing tracks and have one complete track ‘Snowblind,’ and that the album should be out by March 1972.” The journalist who wrote that was literally in the studio interviewing Geezer Butler. [Dick Meadows, Sounds, 1-22-72]

The song may have already been written, but the overindulgence of the white snuff treat really kicked off once they got to L.A. in May of 1972. Both Ozzy and Tony had their first toot with the devil’s dandruff the previous year. 

Ozzy said: “You couldn’t really get cocaine in Birmingham back then, so I didn’t try it until a gig in Denver with a band called Mountain in early 1971. Mountain’s guitarist and lead singer was a guy called Leslie West, and it was him who introduced me to the old waffle dust – we called it that ‘cos it made you stay up all night, talking bollocks.” [Ozzy’s book] 

Tony said: “In England, it was all hash and dope and pills, but when we headlined the Los Angeles Forum in the autumn of 1971, I was introduced to cocaine. I said to one of our roadies: ‘I feel really tired.’ He said: ‘Why don’t you have a little line of coke?’ ‘No, I don’t want to do any of that.’ He was American, so he was familiar with it. He said: ‘You’ll be fine. Just have a little toot before you go on.’ I had a toot, and I thought, ah, this is wonderful! Let’s get on stage and play! And that was it. Bloody hell!” [Tony’s book]

It might have been harder to find krell in the U.K., but in L.A., Sabbath was getting a seemingly unlimited supply of the purest frosted powder around. The waffle dust came either in a sealed box the size of a speaker or inside a box of laundry detergent. 

With every drug imaginable at hand, their L.A. spot became the place to be — and engage in the band’s notorious love of hijinx. Geezer said “[Deep] Purple’s roadies came over, and we were having a few toots and things, a few joints, and Tony came down the stairs with a white sheet over him, going, ‘Uhhhhh.‘ And the road crew just looked at him as if he was completely nuts. And Tony was convinced that he was scaring them.”

One incident began with Ozzy mistaking a panic button for a thermostat. Alarms blared, and the entire group scattered, except for Ozzy and Frank, an assistant of Geezer Butler’s. Left alone with $10,000 worth of weed and cocaine, panic set in. They tried to flush the pot, but the toilet clogged, leaving the coke as the next problem. In true Ozzy fashion, he dumped it on the floor and began snorting it as fast as possible. Frank joined him, and between the two of them, they inhaled more than six grams before the police even arrived.

When the cops finally entered, the maid dismissed the whole thing as a false alarm. Upstairs, Ozzy and Frank held their breath, hiding in plain sight. By the time the coast was clear, Frank’s face was covered in a grotesque mix of white powder, mucus, and blood. Years later, Ozzy turned the incident into the punk-inspired track “It’s a Raid” on his Ordinary Man album.

But the police weren’t always the problem. One day, in the middle of a rowdy water fight, the owner of the house showed up unannounced. Ozzy answered the door, soaked to the bone and looking completely unhinged. The man took one look at the scene — hoses and puddles everywhere — and asked, “What the hell is going on here?” The man turned out to be the owner of the house, John Du Pont. The band would have to pay back Du Pont for all the damage they created.

In the garage, the band found varnish and gold paint and decided to coat a drunk, consenting Bill in it. What started as a joke turned dangerous when Bill collapsed. Panicking, they called emergency services. “We’ve got a naked guy painted gold who’s not breathing right,” one of them explained. Paramedics arrived just in time, scrubbing the paint off with solvent and narrowly avoiding tragedy.

Paranoia reached its peak when the group, already on edge, went to see The French Connection at a local cinema. The film’s depiction of surveillance and undercover cops left Ozzy in a panic. Convinced their drug dealer was an informant, he later confronted the man, who cryptically claimed, “The coke’s a gift.” The words only deepened Ozzy’s suspicion, sending him into a spiral of hyperventilation and frantic theorizing. In hindsight, Ozzy put it best: “We shoulda written Paranoid as the next album after Vol. 4, because we all became paranoid wrecks.” 

“We wrote ‘Snowblind’ because it was the most amazing discovery of our lives,” Osbourne says. “We thought that’s what success was, but it turned out to be our worst enemy. We were headfirst into that shit, and it was terrible. Now I think to myself, ‘What the fuck was I thinking to think that was a good night out?’ The night never ended. You’d still be going to the next morning.”

Cornucopia

All the band members’ talents shine on Vol. 4. It’s arguably one of Ozzy’s best vocal performances, as he moves into a higher vocal range, and his vocal melodies across the record are more independent of Tony’s riffing than in the past. Unfortunately, to my ears, you can’t hear Geezer’s bass as clearly as on other albums, but lyrically on Vol. 4 he continued to grow as a writer of lyrics. For “Cornucopia’s” closing lines [show on screen], Butler drew inspiration from a radio report noting “only” 25 deaths in Vietnam that week. An ironic perspective from someone indirectly benefiting from the war he condemned.

The true standouts on Vol.4, however, are Tony Iommi and Bill Ward. “Cornucopia” features some of Tony Iommi’s heaviest, sludgiest riffs and an unusual structure that combines abrupt tempo changes with thick, doomy guitar tones. In less than four minutes, Iommi lays down seven different riffs and a roadmap for all future doom metal players. For Bill Ward, “Cornucopia” was a triumph in multiple tempo changes and overcoming adversity in a drug haze.

Out in L.A., Ward could not get the drum part down, so they waited until the band returned to London to finish the song. But the problem persisted. Ward said: “I hated the song. I just wanted to play some blues. I just wanted to do some jamming. [all Ward comments from Rosen book]

It all came to a head when Ten Years After’s Alvin Lee stopped by the studio. Ward said: “Me and Alvin were sitting down in the middle of the room, doing some [drugs), and I got some pretty nasty looks from the guys in the studio… The reaction that I got, the cold shoulder from everybody, it was real bad. I went, ‘Uh-oh. Am I too far gone? Have I gone too far?’ And I was asked to leave, basically. It was like, ‘Well, just go home. You’re not being of any use right now.’ I was getting that message. I looked to Ozz, ’cause usually Ozz would say stuff like, ‘Go sit down.’ Me and him, we were just like real buddies. But he didn’t say anything.”

Since Ward didn’t own a home, he spent the night on Geezer’s lawn, unsure of what to do. Ward said: “I thought I was getting kicked out of the band. I felt really scared at that point. That was the very first indication that there was a change, because that had never happened before. It had all been fine. Suddenly, here in Volume 4, there was a change, a definite change. It really scared me… I just had this terrible resentment about ‘Cornucopia.’ There were some patterns that were just… Uggggh! It was horrible. I mean, I nailed it in the end, but there was just a hang-up about it. The reaction that I got, the cold shoulder from everybody, it was real bad.”

Thirty-nine years later, “Cornucopia” helped Ward through a rough patch while he was in the hospital in 2013. He said: “The one song I played practically every day was ‘Cornucopia.’ I was in pretty bad shape, and I wanted to listen to what I used to be like, at that time. It really helped me when I was in the hospital listening to that song.”

Laguna Sunrise:

Building upon earlier acoustic explorations like “Orchid” and “Embryo,” Tony Iommi’s instrumental track “Laguna Sunrise” provides the light and shade to add contrast between heavier songs and was the b-side to their single “Tomorrow’s Dream.”

Bill Ward’s girlfriend, Misty had friend who had a home on Laguna Beach where they would trip and hang out all night. Iommi wanted to capture that feeling on the beach as the sun rose and that turned into “Laguna Sunrise.” 

Geezer said:

“She offered me and Ozzy something called psilocybin, we of course accepted. Walking on the beach, I was seeing skeletons and all sorts. Ozzy, meanwhile, thought he was swimming in the sea but was actually flailing away in the sand, like a stranded turtle.” [From Geezer’s Book]

Iommi said: “We were up all bloody night, and I just started playing this acoustic guitar and came up with this idea.” [From Tony’s Book]

The plan was bold: they would incorporate strings into their music for the first time. “The original plan was for me and Tony to play violin and cello on ‘Laguna Sunrise,’” Geezer said. “But having procured the instruments, we soon realized that making a violin or a cello sound anywhere half decent is a lot harder than it looks.” Their initial attempts were disastrous. Tony later admitted, “The sound was fucking horrible, like someone had trodden on a cat.” [Popoff Sabbath in the 70’s]

Realizing they needed help, the band turned to Spock Wall, a roadie with a knack for writing music. Spock worked closely with Tony to figure out the orchestral parts. “I don’t know how to write music out, but Spock did,” Tony explained. “We tried to work out the notes for the orchestra to play: ‘What’s that dot there? Okay, put that down.’” Spock translated their ideas into something the string players could work with, ensuring the piece came to life.

The resulting “Laguna Sunrise” was a serene and beautiful track that captured the magic of the California beach. BBC’s famed DJ Alan “Fluff” Freeman loved it so much he began using it to open his radio show.. 

“I don’t play acoustic guitar that much, so I’m not a very good acoustic player, quite honestly,” says Tony, but the song achieves its goal, calming the band’s crazies, before the practical joke of volume kicks in with a cackle, in the form of “St. Vitus Dance.” [Popoff Sabbath in the 70’s]

St Vitus Dance:

Black Sabbath’s “St. Vitus Dance” is a brief yet captivating anomaly in the band’s repertoire. With no guitar solo, chorus, and clocking in at just under two and a half minutes, the track defies easy categorization, blending an unexpected toe-tapping energy of a hoedown that the band never played live.

The track’s lyrical approach is refreshingly direct, with Ozzy Osbourne offering straightforward advice to a friend about reconciling with an ex-girlfriend. This narrative bears a subtle resemblance to the Beatles’ “She Loves You,” possibly reflecting Ozzy’s well-known admiration for the band. It’s unknown if Ozzy wrote this with the aid of Geezer or if Geezer wrote it on his own.

“St. Vitus Dance” is a nickname for the medical condition Sydenham’s Chorea. The term originates from the Middle Ages, when episodes of involuntary, dance-like movements were associated with the patron saint of dancers, St. Vitus, and believed to be the result of a curse or divine affliction. 

There are many Sabbath fans that scratch their heads as to why Sabbath named this track “St. Vitus Dance.” It was because Bill Ward’s mom thought he had the medical condition. Ward said: “ I think I might have been about four, four or five, because my mother told me that they thought there was something wrong with me because I continually kept tapping on furniture… they said that I had Saint Vitus’s Dance, and Saint Vitus’s Dance is a common term in the midlands for somebody who can’t sit still. So, apparently I was listless and discontent like I am now. [Laughs] But I couldn’t stop tapping all the time, you know. I just was attracted to just wanting to make noise on different things.” 

Under the Sun / Every Day Comes and Goes: 

“Under the Sun / Every Day Comes and Goes” is another Sabbath song with one or two names depending on which copy you own. The song roars to life with a quintessential Tony Iommi riff, embracing the band’s hallmark musical DNA — a dense, sludgy progression tuned to C-sharp, laden with ominous semitonal intervals and the diabolical flattened fifth that had become Iommi’s musical signature.

The song is another track in the Sabbath catalog where it’s hard to nail down the backstory. Some sources, including band members, say that “Cornucopia” is where Ward struggled, and they had to finish it in London. However, other sources, including band members, say “Under the Sun,” challenged Ward, and the song was completed in London. And there is Geezer who states in his book that the track “Under the Sun” was completed six months before the band ever arrived in L.A. for their Record Plant sessions. Could Ward have struggled with both tracks? Yeah, maybe, but none of the interviews ever acknowledge that it’s either one or the other. And to be fair to the band, perhaps the journalist misunderstood and misreported. In any event, here are some quotes about Ward’s trouble with “Under the Sun”:

Ozzy says that every time they played it, Bill played a different beat, and by the time they were done, they were calling the song “Everything Under the Fucking Sun.” [Popoff Sabbath in the 70’s]

“Bill had a terrible time trying to get that song,” laughs Tony. “Every time we would start to record it, start playing it, he would mess it up. And of course, after a bit, he would just lose his temper — ’Ah fuck it!’ you know? So we thought we would try another studio, because somehow the studio got blamed. So we moved to a different studio, and we tried it again. But Bill definitely had his hang-up with that one. Eventually, of course, he got it, but it did really drive us nuts. I think we tried three different studios recording that one.” [Popoff Sabbath in the 70’s]

 Popoff Sabbath in the 70’s]

Geezer’s lyrics are defiant and confrontational, marked by frustration with societal norms and a desire for personal freedom. There’s also an undercurrent of hope, as Butler encourages self-belief and living authentically. It’s on par with “After Forever.”

As the final track on the album, UNDER the Sun it serves as a monumental farewell, encapsulating the raw, heavy essence of the band’s classic era and providing a powerful punctuation mark to their transitional fourth record.

Lost tracks:

I could only find one song that could have been a bonus track from the Volume 4 sessions. The Bill Ward sung tune “It’s Alright” was demoed but not added to the album. Iommi said. “Bill and myself did this number a long time ago,” Iommi revealed, speaking of the period during the making of Vol. 4., “we went in the studio and done it. This must have been four years ago. We put it down but then we just scrapped it. We decided to rerecord it again in Miami and it came out differently.” “Black Sabbath: Technical Knock-out,” Steven Rosen, Sounds, 1/22/77.

The song would be released on Technical Ecstasy and later covered by Guns n Roses.

And here you can include anything from Rob Caiger.

Post

The recording of Vol. 4 spanned the first half of 1972, with the band moving between multiple studios. They began at London’s Marquee Studios in January, then shifted to the Record Plant in Los Angeles for sessions in May and June. Back in London, they utilized both De Lane Lea and Island Studios that June. Mixing started at Island Studio and concluded while the band toured at the Record Plant in July 1972. [Info from Billboard July 1972]

Ozzy was asked why they cut it at the Record Plant in Los Angeles? “What a studio for depth and bass! You’ll notice that the volume of this album is a lot higher than the others, and the crispness is so much better. This album is a completely new step for us because it’s a new era for Black Sabbath. We’re no longer going to use a producer. We experimented a lot on this album. It was like a party, with people around at the studio.”  [Honor thy Sabbath]

Most of the mixing and production was done by Iommi, Spock, and engineers Vic Smith and Colin Caldwell. Patrick Meehan added his name as a producer but did next to nothing to produce the record other than ripping the band off. 

U.S. Tour part 2:
Black Sabbath’s sixth U.S. tour faced numerous setbacks throughout 1972. Originally scheduled to begin June 16th at Cincinnati Gardens, the tour’s first month of shows had to be rescheduled due to Ozzy Osbourne’s throat problems. The tour finally kicked off on July 13th at Chicago’s Arie Crown Theater, followed by a July 15th show in Flint, Michigan.

The tour’s lineup of opening acts changed as well. The Groundhogs were forced to withdraw due to an injury and replaced by Ramatam, featuring former Jimi Hendrix drummer Mitch Mitchell. Other supporting acts throughout the tour included J. Geils Band, Blue Öyster Cult, Black Oak Arkansas, and Gentle Giant (who shared management with Sabbath through Meehan).

Further complications arose when drummer Bill Ward was diagnosed with hepatitis on July 23rd. A week later, Ward suffered an asthma attack while in Rhode Island and flew back to England. This forced Sabbath off the road for a month, until they finally returned on August 25th to play their twice-postponed Louisville, Kentucky show.

Ward told the BBC: ”’I got serum hepatitis from narcotic abuse and alcohol abuse.’ Until then, he said, ‘I thought I was invincible … I didn’t feel so invincible after that.’ Despite doctors’ warnings, though, as soon as the jaundice subsided, he went straight back into doing what he was doing. It was 1972, and that was simply ‘what you did.’ He paused, grimaced and added, ‘I’m pretty lucky to be alive, to be honest.’”

Ozzy’s voice would continue to be an issue throughout the tour due to his continued cocaine use. Ozzy said: “The coke was fucking up my voice, good and proper. When you’re taking heavy-duty amounts of cocaine, this white gunk starts to trickle down the back of your throat, and you find yourself doing that phlegm-clearing thing all the time… So I went to see a doctor…’Holy mother of Christ!’ he said. ‘How in God’s name did you do that? Mr Osbourne, your epiglottis is the size of a small light bulb, and it’s glowing almost as brightly.’ ‘Can you fix it?’ ‘I think so,’ the doctor said, writing out a prescription. ‘But whatever it is you’ve been doing, stop doing it.’” [Ozzy’s book]

Satan Drama:

By 1972, Black Sabbath had said in multiple interviews they wanted nothing to do with worshipping the devil or dabbling in black magic. Yet before a planned August concert for the Kentucky State Fair, the tax-funded entity put out a press release stating that Black Sabbath were satan worshippers, saying things like “Sociologists may ponder what makes teenagers idolize young musicians who profess that the world is ruled by the Devil, and that one of the group is Lucifer himself. Bassist Geezer Butler proclaims, ‘It’s a satanic world. The Devil’s more in control now, and happier than ever before.’” and “The other worshippers are John ‘Ozzie’ Osbourne, Tony Iommi, and Bill Ward. Their lyrics talk about a doomed world, hell on Earth, man’s frustrations, atomic tides, and through it all, the Devil laughing, all this set to ‘painfully loud and dirge-like music.’” 

One columnist Karen Rice said in response “Let’s just pray that not all the young people truly believe that the Devil rules the world! If that ever happens, God have mercy on us.”

These loons took quotes from Sabbath’s first Rolling Stone article and tried to reframe the comments from Geezer, his bandmates, and the writer to fit their narrative that Sabbath was a bunch of self-proclaimed satanists. Bible-thumping propaganda 101. 

One of the “in jest” comments from Ozzy and Geezer:

Ozzy:  “I’m going to make as much money as I can, then shoot myself.” 

Geezer: “I wonder which one of us will die first?”

Ozzy: “Oh, it will be me definitely, I’ll die before I’m 40.”

Soda Pop Festival:

The biggest shit-show of the tour was a concert they wisely avoided altogether.

The Erie Canal “Soda” Pop Festival, held from September 2-4, 1972, took place on Bull Island — a stretch of land technically in Illinois but on the Indiana side of the Wabash River. It was pitched as a revival of the massive rock festivals of the past — a last-ditch effort to reignite the weary but still tantalizing spirit of Woodstock. Instead, it may have outdone even Altamont and Woodstock 2 in sheer chaos and violence.

The lineup featured some of the biggest acts of the era, including Black Sabbath, Joe Cocker, The Allman Brothers, and Cheech and Chong. Promoters anticipated a crowd of 40,000 to 50,000, but an overwhelming 250,000 to 300,000 people showed up. The event was catastrophically unprepared on every front.

Knife-point robberies, poisonous drug sales, and brutal beatings became the norm. Thousands of gatecrashers, some in gangs armed with knives and axes, overwhelmed security guards to force their way in. One person was found dead in a shallow grave, and another died from an overdose as friends frantically tried to get him to a hospital. Boric acid was sold as cocaine, and pure strychnine was passed off as LSD.

When Black Sabbath’s manager, Patrick Meehan, arrived and saw the chaos, he pulled the band from the lineup. The promoters later blamed Sabbath’s withdrawal on greed, but Meehan countered days later, stating the festival was so poorly organized that there wasn’t even a proper stage for the bands to perform on. The financial dispute, he said, was merely a “secondary hassle.”

Ozzy said: “On this last tour, we went to an open-air festival on Labour Day, which is a big holiday. This guy didn’t expect what he got. There were half a million people there. We couldn’t even get to the gig because, for ten miles along the freeway, there were abandoned cars. Some cars were turned over in the river. It was like someone had said, ‘You’ve got ten seconds to get out of the city before it’s destroyed.’ Half a million people! There were like three toilets for half a million people! It was terrible.” [Honor thy Sabbath article]

Most headliners followed Sabbath’s lead and pulled out, leaving only Cheech and Chong to perform. Reflecting on the event, Cheech Marin remarked, “You come two thousand miles. You sit in the mud. You get poisoned with shitty dope. Your old lady gets raped by the Hells Angels. And all in the name of peace and love. It’s fuckin’ incredible!”

Two months later, when lawsuits began piling up, promoter Bob Alexander admitted, “When we started work on the idea of a rock festival, we wanted to make a ton of money. We were bucking all the odds, and we lost.”

Hollywood Bowl

The September 15th, show at the Hollywood Bowl would end Sabbath’s 1972 tour a bit prematurely. First, let’s discuss the song “Changes.” According to Geezer, the band attempted and failed to perform “Changes.” Geezer said, “We did the song ‘Changes’ for the first and only time, and Tony’s piano was miles out of tune. Not only that, but somebody had dropped the Mellotron, a fragile keyboard that creates string sounds via tapes, and broken it. I had to keep pressing the keys to keep the string part going. Ozzy was looking at the both of us as if we’d gone nuts. And about halfway through the song, I looked at Tony and said, ‘Should we just stop now?’ He quickly agreed, and we abandoned the song, much to the confusion of the twelve thousand or so fans.” [Geezer’s book]

There is a possibility that Geezer is merging memories of two different performances. While photographs confirm Sabbath’s presence at the Hollywood Bowl earlier in the day with the piano and Mellotron, no concrete documentation proves they played “Changes” that evening. In fact, evidence suggests they did not perform the song. For one, the bootleg recording of the show does not include the track. Now, admittedly, it could be the sole unrecorded song. However, the review of the concert raises significant doubts. The journalist detailed other songs performed but conspicuously omitted to mention the debut of an unprecedented ballad for Sabbath. The review covered “Tomorrow’s Dream,” “Snowblind,” “Under the Sun,” “Wheels of Confusion” but not Changes? This inconsistency seems suspicious. 

Further, Geezer’s claim that this was the only time they played “Changes” is demonstrably false. Historical records confirm performances in New Zealand and Australia, with audio evidence to support these shows. Even Black Sabbath’s Vol. 4 box set states that the New Zealand and Australian shows “are notable for the only known live performances of ‘Changes.'”

My hypothesis is that while writing his book, Geezer saw soundcheck photographs from the Hollywood Bowl, which triggered memories of their Australian performance. If you listen to the Autralian bootleg recording of Changes you will hear an abrupt and awkward ending that aligns with Geezer’s description of the Hollywood show’s attempted performance of the song.

After I wrote this, I did find an interview with Iommi from August 1973 where he states they played the Mellotron in L.A. but does not say if they used it live. He said: “We did do it in L.A., but it was so much aggravation, having the piano tuned up before anybody comes in and then getting the Mellotron in tune and sort of the different sort of temperatures out there. It was going out of tune, so we got fed up.”

At the end of Sabbath’s Hollywood Bowl show, Iommi walked off the stage and collapsed. Ozzy said: “Tony had been doing coke literally for days – we all had, but Tony had gone over the edge. [Ozzy’s book] Iommi said: “That particular night I thought I was going to die, I couldn’t move at all. It was nervous exhaustion and stuff like that. I’m under the doctor now for three months on a course of pills, taking it easy” His Blackest Sabbath Mark Plummer

Ten days later, Vol. 4 would be released. The album originally titled Snowblind would do well, but not as strong as their previous album Master of Reality. The album would reach number 13 in the U.S. and number 8 in the U.K. It achieved gold status in less than a month and was the band’s fourth consecutive release to sell one million copies in the United States.

Fifteen days before the release, Ozzy still wasn’t sure about the name of the album. When Cameron Crowe asked him about it, he said: “One week, I’m up on stage saying, ‘We’re gonna do a track off our new album Snowblind.’ Then they tell me, ‘The name’s been changed. It’s called Volume Four.’ So I announce it on stage, then the next night they tell me it’s been changed again. At this point, I have no idea what the name of the album is. It’s either Snowblind or Volume Four. Take your pick.”

Young Crowe also asked Ozzy if he was happy with the album: Ozzy said: ”I know I sound like I’m blowing my own trumpet, but… our new album, to us, is our first album. It is the most truthful album we’ve made. I mean a lot of our albums had had a lot of truth, lyrically, but this album is a more truthful representation of Black Sabbath musically. It’s also a lot more personal lyrically. In the past, our lyrics have said what other people feel, but the words of our new one is what we feel.”

Iommi told reporter Mark Plummer: “”I thought maybe we’d get some good reviews for this album, but no. We thought at the time we’ve got to get the old ‘Black Sabbath go soft thing.’ When we recorded the album we wondered what the reaction would be, we thought we were letting ourselves in for another slagging. But why, when it’s the best album we’ve done? Making the album was like doing a new thing for us,, we were totally involved with the whole album. With us in control for the first time, we ended up with a sound we wanted.

In the album credits, everyone knows how Sabbath thanks “the great COKE-Cola Company of Los Angeles” but misses that they slipped another drug reference. Black Sabbath’s newly minted publishing company was dubbed Rollerjoint. When asked about the drug references, Iommi said at the time: ”You can take that Coke thing two ways. We did an advert for Coca Cola for the TV. I don’t want to say more than that actually. It can be taken two ways. ‘Rollerjoint,’ that’s also something that can be taken any way. I think it was Lord Patrick Meehan who thought of that – our manager. It was his marvellous idea to ‘roll a joint.’” [Black Sabbath: Satan, The Bomb And Geezer’s Dreams Charles Shaar Murray,New Musical Express, 28 October 1972]

It’s fascinating that Tony Iommi mentioned Black Sabbath doing a Coca Cola commercial. While the idea of them creating a jingle might seem crazy, it wasn’t uncommon in those days. Groups like Vanilla Fudge, Three Dog Night, The Moody Blues, and many more wrote songs for Coke. Perhaps a lost Sabbath Coke jingle is still out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered!

Less than a month after the release of Vol. 4 Black Sabbath’s manager Patrick Meehan announced the band was done touring in the U.S., claiming it was too big a strain on the group to “carry on visiting America so often.” Meehan also suggested that the North American market had become saturated with working bands.

Iommi was asked about this announced two-year lay-off? “Well, two years, what’s that? It’s just got to the stage where we’ve done so many tours over there in the last couple of years, so we’re just going to take a break ’til April… We’ll do one in April, and after that, we don’t know. It’s because of too much mental and physical strain.” [Black Sabbath: Satan, The Bomb And Geezer’s DreamsCharles Shaar Murray,New Musical Express, 28 October 1972]

Ozzy said in October 1972: “Well, America is the most satanic country in the world. They do anything for a dollar. If you’ve got a dollar, you’re in; if you haven’t, you’re out. You’re not human over there — you’re just another punch card in a computer. It’s unheard of to say ‘thank you.’” [Mark Plummer Honor thy Sabbath]

A year earlier, Ozzy said: “I just can’t stand the place, man. Everyone’s nuts over there. I’ve met some beautiful people in Los Angeles, but you get a lot of loonies too. You talk about the drug scene — you want to go to Los Angeles and see the drugs out there. Everyone’s freaked out.” [Go set Feb 13 1971]

Black Sabbath would not return to the states for almost a year and half. 

January 1973:

After one of their longest breaks since 1969, Sabbath flew for 55 hours to play in New Zealand at The Great Ngaruawahia Music Festival on January 7th, 1973. Bruce Coburn, a young concert promoter from New Zealand, landed Sabbath for the gig as long as he agreed to book them for Australia as well. (Which he did.) But the interesting part is that he met with Don Arden to book the shows. Don Arden would later become Sabbath’s manager and Ozzy’s father-in-law. See my Sabotage video for more info on Arden. It’s unclear how Arden fit in the Sabbath camp while Meehan was still their official manager. Coburn also told me Ozzy had him build a tall wooden cross that would be set ablaze as Sabbath took the stage. 

Iommi said: “At this Ngaruawahia Festival, somebody erected a huge cross on a hill and set it on fire. I don’t know why he did this, but it looked really good. I can’t remember much else about that. The trip to it is still etched on my mind, but the memory of the gig itself must have gone up in flames together with that cross.” [from his book]

This would be one of the few confirmed shows where “Changes” was played live.

Sabbath then flew to Australia to play five shows including at Kooyong Stadium in Melbourne. Australia was one of the few countries where “Changes” was getting regular airplay. Sabbath would again play the song in concert. [Show the postcard Tony sent Norman] This postcard was sent to Iommi’s business partner Norman Hood.

Necromandus:

After returning from Australia in late January 1973, Tony Iommi quickly resumed work on a project that had been in motion since 1971. That year, Iommi, Birmingham promoter Norman Hood, and Ten Years After drummer Ric Lee joined forces to form Tramp Entertainment, later named International Management Agency (IMA). The agency was created to support emerging talent in the rock scene, with Iommi playing a key role in guiding and promoting new acts.

One of IMA’s early projects was Necromandus, a rising, quasi-prog rock band from Cumbria. In February 1973, he brought Necromandus into Morgan Studios to record their debut album, Orexis of Death, under a deal he helped secure with Vertigo Records. Iommi produced the album and contributed guitar to the song originally titled “Leavin’ The Depot”, later renamed to Orexis of Death.

In March 1973, Necromandus gained further exposure by opening for Black Sabbath on ten tour dates.

IMA also managed Judas Priest, connecting Iommi to the band long before their rise to fame. Iommi was asked: Judas Priest emerged in Birmingham around the time Black Sabbath released its first album. Were you aware of them back then?

“Yes. I was aware of them. I had started up an agency to try to help bands. Ric Lee from Ten Years After and I put some money together to rent some offices and hire some booking agents. We tried to help local bands, and Judas Priest was one of the bands that came to us. I gave them some equipment and helped them get some work. “

Despite Iommi’s efforts with Necromandus, his increasing commitments to Sabbath’s global success limited his involvement. By late 1973, setbacks, including the departure of Necromandus guitarist Baz Dunnery, led Vertigo to shelve their album indefinitely, leaving it unreleased for decades.

Necromandus’ road manager, Dave Tangye, later joined Black Sabbath’s team as Ozzy Osbourne’s personal assistant and co-authored How Black Was Our Sabbath, a detailed account of the band’s history. In 1977, during Ozzy’s brief departure from Sabbath, he asked Tangye to connect him to the former Necromandus members Barry Dunnery, Dennis McCarten, and Frank Hall.

The original incarnation of Blizzard of Ozz was in an enviable position. Ozzy was a globally known figure, and with Baz Dunnery, the quartet had a world class guitarist. Drummer Hall said, “Ozzy had a lot of offers on the table from a few record companies. The potential was just huge at that point because the press would jump on any new Ozzy album. Ozzy was really keen to show the world how good Baz was too. The band was called Blizzard of Ozz right from the start. There was one label in particular who were talking about very large advances, not just for Ozzy, but for all of us.” [The fight for Sabbath]

The musical persuasion of the inaugural Blizzard of Ozz was not what the average Black Sabbath fan would have ever anticipated, though, as Frank elaborates: “Necromandus was always a kind of progressive, jazzy type rock band. We didn’t actually change much when we worked up the songs with Ozzy. Some of the material was extremely complex, lots of time changes, and it sounded great. Ozzy, of course, wanted heavyweight detuned guitars all the time, but the combination really was striking.” [The fight for Sabbath] 

The band spent over a month working up 15 new songs, enough to be whittled down for a full album. The chaotic circumstances prevailing in Ozzy’s personal and business life would take their toll, though. “Ozzy was having a really hard time dealing with a lot of Black Sabbath stuff, his personal life, and management troubles, too. [The fight for Sabbath] Ozzy’s loon-like behaviour was too much for guitarist Baz Dunnery, so he left and the band fell apart. I should mention here Hall also stated the songs were recorded but havent been heard since and may be lost.

Before the end, according to drummer Hall while rehearsing with Ozzy, they visited John Bonham’s house, where he noticed a drum kit with a slightly damaged floor tom. Offhandedly, Hall mentioned how much he liked the kit, and Bonham told him he could have it. The green Ludwig drum is rumored to be the very kit Bonham had used for his audition with Led Zeppelin. Hall played the kit for five years before selling it for only $50. Years later, it ended up in the hands of The Verve drummer, Peter Salisbury. It is now likely worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Live at Last:

On the tail end of their Vol. 4 tour, Black Sabbath hit European stages with the Rolling Stones’ 16-track mobile studio in tow, capturing most of the performances. The shows recorded kicked off on February 25th, 1973, in Winterthur, Switzerland, and wrapped up on March 17th at London’s Rainbow Theatre. Behind the mixing board was Tapani Talo, recruited on the recommendation of Beatles producer George Martin after Sabbath’s sound engineer failed to appear for the gig.

According to Mick Wall’s Black Sabbth book, the plan was to release a live album that summer. But when Tony Iommi reviewed the tapes, he scrapped the idea. As Wall recounts Iommi found the recordings too loud, too raw—more like the old Sabbath sound they were trying to move past. Instead, they opted to focus on their next studio project.

But Tapani Talo remembers it differently. According to him, the decision to abandon the live album came from the record label, not Iommi or Osbourne. Midway through recording the shows, label executives reportedly heard the tapes and vetoed the release, reasoning that the live versions sounded too similar to Sabbath’s studio albums. At the time, live records hadn’t yet become the industry staples they would later be, with rare exceptions like Live at Leeds by The Who or Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! by The Rolling Stones. Even Deep Purple’s iconic Made in Japan had only seen the light of day due to pressure from Warner Bros.’ Japanese division.

Ozzy comments on the decision a few months later to me sounds like it might be record label talking points. He said: “We were going to do a live album about three months ago, but then we thought, what’s the point of that? People would be paying just to hear us on stage. So that idea’s been shelved for the moment.” (Record Mirror, August 1973)

Behind the scenes, the band’s frustration with their manager, Patrick Meehan, was starting to show. Talo recalled the growing tensions during the tour. After one concert, an argument got heated between Meehan and the band, fueled by suspicions of financial mismanagement. Sabbath accused him of siphoning money to bankroll his lavish lifestyle. It was a warning sign of what was to come.

Fast forward to July 1980: Meehan capitalized on Sabbath’s ongoing popularity by reissuing their back catalog and releasing Live at Last—a live album cobbled together from recordings at Manchester’s Hardrock and the Rainbow Theatre. Meehan still controlled the rights to much of Sabbath’s catalog, even as the band flourished with Ronnie James Dio and Ozzy thrived in his solo career. The release blindsided Sabbath, especially Ozzy, who stated in 1980:

“I denounce that live album. I took the record company into a legal battle because I was so angry. It was nothing to do with me, and I never was approached before it was allowed out. We recorded about 20 concerts, and they put out the worst of the lot. It was probably the worst gig we ever played. Now they’ve gone and re-released Paranoid. It’s only been done to compete with Sabbath’s and my own new records.”

Adding insult to injury, Ozzy’s name was misspelled as “Ossie” on the album.

Have you ever wondered what’s up with the Live at Last album cover? Surprisingly, that was Ozzy’s idea. The designer of the album cover Dave Field told me he actually met with the group sometime in 1976 or 1977. He was hired by the record company to meet up with the band to get their input for the cover. Ozzy told him he wanted something with space and a satellite. Ozzy didn’t tell him why. So Field contacted NASA and bought the image you see as the Live at Last album cover and added the text. The misspelling of Ozzy’s name came from the record label. Field also drew the new version of Paranoid since the band did not like the original image.

Critics and fans remain divided on Live at Last. Some appreciate its raw energy, while others dismiss it as sounding no better than a soundboard bootleg. One of the critics of how the album sounds is the man who recorded it, Tapani Talo. Talo told me back then what you heard in Rolling Stone’s mobile studio would sound completely different in another environment due to the mobile studio’s incorrect acoustics and speaker combo. What he heard while recording Sabbath shows sounded amazing; what everyone else heard he thought was dry and not great. He speculates that whoever had the tapes next did not know how to adjust for how it was recorded, or maybe the person with the recordings was never given the master and worked off a mixed-down version. It should be noted that post the Sabbath tour Talo told the man behind the mobile studio, Ian Stewart, about the issue, and Stewart financed it immediately and got everything fixed. 

Live at Last included an early but incomplete version of “Killing Yourself to Live” and the seeds of a potential track called “Sometimes I’m Happy,” which has been called an “unreleased song” for lack of better descriptions, but was really just an unfinished idea that had evolved during the improvisational section of “Wicked World.”  This could be compared to the section in Zeppelin’s live rendition of “Dazed and Confused” where Plant begins singing “If you’re going to San Francisco…”  The musical ideas underneath were later used for “Achilles Last Stand.”  Later, “Sometimes I’m Happy” would morph into the coda on Sabbath’s song “Symptom of the Universe.”

The Live at Last album shipped over 100,000 pieces and was on the charts 17 weeks hitting #5 in the U.K. It was such a success that both Ozzy and Sabbath would have their own live albums within a few years. By the end of 1980 the Sabbath’s reissues would move almost a million units, including Paranoid hitting 14 on the singles charts. 

Live at Last would be re-released with the bands approval in 2002 as disc one on their Past Lives album. And then an expanded, remixed version with 3 tracks replaced with different live performances for the Vol. 4 box set. 

Ending

The first three Black Sabbath albums were forged in urgency—raw, unfiltered, and recorded with a speed that bordered on reckless. But Vol. 4 was different. It wasn’t just another step forward but a headfirst dive into excess, a band trying to outpace its own momentum. The cocaine, the mansion, the paranoia, the experiments that worked and the ones that didn’t—it all bled into the music. And somehow, despite all of it, they made something that still stands as a classic album.

Vol. 4 is the sound of Sabbath pushing past its limits, chasing something more significant than doom-laden riffs and ominous lyrics. It’s where their music took on new textures—strings, pianos, amd layered harmonies—without losing the primal heaviness that defined them. The chaos behind the scenes wasn’t just a side effect of the recording process; it was the recording process.

But the real takeaway from Vol. 4 isn’t just what it led to—it’s what it represents. A band at the peak of their reckless creativity, too deep into their vices to stop, too driven to fail. Yet instead of crashing and burning, they took the chaos, the excess, and the lessons learned, and somehow—against all odds—turned it into their next album, a masterpiece: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

We’re only here for a short time. We know that. In three years time or even next week, they could be saying ‘Who the hell are Black Sabbath?’ [Ozzy Jan 1972 Andrew Tyler,

Disc and Music Echo,]

Quotes:

That was the peak of our lunacy- Geezer [Poppoff Doom]

We were totally mental – Geezer [Poppoff Doom]