Black Sabbath FAQ: All That's Left to Know on the First Name in Metal

Black Sabbath FAQ

Copyright © 2011 by Martin Popoff

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2011 by Backbeat Books

An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation

7777 West Bluemound Road

Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices

33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

All images are from the personal collection of the author unless otherwise noted.

The FAQ series was conceived by Robert Rodriguez and developed with Stuart Shea.

Book design by Snow Creative Services

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Popoff, Martin, 1963–

Black Sabbath FAQ : all that’s left to know on the first name in metal / Martin Popoff. — 1st pbk. ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-87930-957-2 (alk. paper)

1. Black Sabbath (Musical group) 2. Rock musicians—England—Biography. 3. Rock groups—England. I. Title.

ML421.B57P66 2011

782.42166092’2—dc22

[B]

2011015823

www.backbeatbooks.com

For Ronnie…inspiration, encouragement, comfort, and rock giant to me since 1975

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1: Well, We Can’t Tell You That. Black Sabbath Sign with Vertigo Records

2: Oh My God—What Is That Sound?!: Sabbath’s Early Influences

What Is This That Stands Before Me? Important Dates in Sabbath History: The ’70s

3: Majors & Minors: Those Who Sang for Black Sabbath

4: Bonham and Ozzy Used to Be the Loudest Two: A Chat with Norman Hood

5: I’m the Witchfinder General! Black Sabbath Inspire a Genre Called Doom Metal

6: I Don’t Hear a Single. The Top 40 Obscure Sabbath Tracks

7: Creepy Competition: Black Sabbath, Black Widow…What’s the Difference?

8: Wicked World: Geezer the Peacenik: Geezer Butler on War

9: The Opening Act on That Show Was Bruce Springsteen: Bands Who Shared Bills with Sabbath Early On

10: Thrilling Billing: Black Sabbath’s Tour Mates Through History

11: Our New Single…This Is Called ‘Supertzar.’ Everybody Sing Along! Songs Black Sabbath Have Never Played Live

12: Oh No, You’re NOT Buying That! The Story Behind the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath Cover Art

13: Runnin’ with the Devil: Black Sabbath’s Controversial 1978 Tour with Van Halen

14: Black Sabbath’s Knob Jobs: The Sabbath Albums Ranked by Sound Quality

15: The Infamous Black and Blue Tour: Black Sabbath Versus Blue Öyster Cult

Turn Up the Night: Important Dates in Sabbath History: The ’80s

16: Roomful of Blues: The Studios in Which Sabbath Recorded

17: Puccini in Chains: Onetime Black Sabbath Manager Sandy Pearlman Genuflects on His Subjects

18: The Boys Are in the Kitchen Having a Little Chat. Craig Gruber on the Birth of Heaven and Hell

19: That’s a Wrap! Black Sabbath’s Album Covers Ranked

20: Doom Gone Solo: Key Sabbath Members and Their Solo Accomplishments—A Critique

21: "Next on American Bandstand, a Kooky Bunch All the Way from England…": The 20 Most Shockingly Radio-Friendly Black Sabbath Songs

22: Math Pt. 1: Plaque Sabbath: Some Sabbath Sales Figures

23: Math Pt. 2: With a Bullet: Black Sabbath’s Chart Positions

24: What I Think Pt. 1: Sabbath’s Studio Albums Reviewed and Rated

25: What I Think Pt. 2: Sabbath’s Live Albums Reviewed and Rated

We’ve All Grown Up. Important Dates in Sabbath History: The ’90s

26: Caught in a Heavy Metal Time Machine: Two Soundtrack Stories from the Ronnie Era

27: Slack Babbath: Bands Named After Black Sabbath Songs

28: They Wrote Every Single Good Riff…Ever. Praise for the Sabs from the Nativity in Blackers

29: Fancy a Blow?: Guest Cameos on Black Sabbath Records

30: Have You Heard About Vinny? Producer Thom Panunzio Talks Reunion

31: At Cross Purposes: Black Sabbath Songs That Sound Like Other Black Sabbath Songs

32: No Matter What Name You Get Behind It, the Fans Are Going to Know. The Birth of a Band Called Heaven & Hell

I Must Have the Bible Black: Important Dates in Sabbath History: The ’00s and ’10s

33: It Hasn’t Been a Very Happy World for a While. Heaven & Hell Unleash The Devil You Know

34: That Was The Whole Journey, Right There. Neon Nights: A Goodbye Gift to Ronnie

35: Always. Despite Heaven & Hell, Ronnie Never Gives Up on Dio

Appendix 1. ‘The Rebel,’ Take Million Twelve: Black Sabbath’s Early Demos

Appendix 2. The Mob Drools: A Sampling of Black Sabbath’s Collectible Records

Appendix 3. I’ve Got My Own Album to Do: Key Sabbath Members and Their Solo Accomplishments—A Timeline

Selected Bibliography

Photo Credits

Foreword

Black Sabbath was the first! The pioneers, the originators. They were the first heavy metal band and the first metal band to reach #1 in the UK and then also, with Paranoid, #12 in the U.S. They were the first band to record in dropped tuning, and of course everyone would follow in their wake; indeed, it’s impossible to exaggerate their influence over the whole metal scene since 1970.

I grew up with Sabbath. My older brother, Dave, introduced me to their groundbreaking first album when I was eleven years old. Listening to that opening track, Black Sabbath, on their eponymous debut was a life-changing experience. Nothing could prepare me for the unique atmosphere of entering the nightmarish world they conjured. Drama and power were equally, intensely mixed, through a mean and dark riff emphasizing the flattened fifth, accentuated by those moody verses, with a singer who sounded as though Satan himself was on his tail.

Moving forward less than a year, Sabbath’s second album, Paranoid, features one of my all-time favorite rock songs, War Pigs, which helped Sabbath achieve success in the U.S., very rare for a none-too-commercial band. As it turned out, the younger generation of Americans related to what Black Sabbath were saying with their antiwar stance at the time of the Vietnam War.

Stepping back, my brother had been learning to play the acoustic guitar since 1968, but in ’71 he went to see Sabbath at the Birmingham Town Hall and later told me, The minute Tony Iommi hit that first power chord to ‘War Pigs’ on his cherry red Gibson SG with that incredible sustain and feedback, I knew I had to buy an electric guitar. After this revelation, Dave went out and bought a cheap secondhand SG copy for £14, and this eventually became my first guitar, the guitar I formed Diamond Head with in 1976.

I recall struggling to play along to Children of the Grave from my favorite Sabbath album, Master of Reality. Unfortunately my guitar was in standard tuning (I did not know of anything else at the time), and that whole pioneering album is detuned a semitone, while, as well, the bottom E string is tuned down another whole tone, to C♯. So I could never find the chords or play along or figure out the secret as to why Sabbath sounded so much heavier than all the other bands.

I mean, there’s a riff in the ultraheavy Sabbath Bloody Sabbath…it’s a crushing song anyway, but when it gets to the 3:19 mark, it goes through the floor, finding a whole next level of heaviness like a punch in the stomach; unbelievable, and again, that section features Tony utilizing the same dropped tuning before anyone else had discovered it.

Advance through the ’70s, and the release of every Sabbath album was an event in our household. In 1974, Dave took me, fourteen years of age, to see the mighty Sabbath in the flesh on the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath tour, at the Birmingham Odeon, home turf for us and Sabbath both. I am sure this experience had a big effect on what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Seeing them live was a huge thrill; it was a wall of sheer power, harnessed by a front man who could work the crowd. When most singers were content to look cool, Ozzy was a good-time guy who wanted everyone to enjoy the evening, shown through his own enthusiasm for the cause. As well, Ozzy had a real talent for adding a melody line on top of a riff, which is something I very much appreciated and used extensively in Diamond Head.

Deep into the years of my Sabbath fandom, in 1978 my favorite riff was the one driving the verse of Symptom of the Universe, a crushing, relentlessly heavy song from the Sabotage album. I of course wanted to out-heavy it with Diamond Head and came up with the riff for Am I Evil? It was my challenge for the title heaviest riff in the world. Thanks partially to its Sabbath inspiration, that song has become a live favorite and a metal classic in its own right and was the first song Metallica covered as a B side, their version showing up on the band’s 12 Creeping Death" single from ’84.

In 1983, Diamond Head were lucky enough to be invited to support Sabbath on a three-week European tour promoting their shockingly grinding Born Again album, although by this time it was no longer the classic lineup, featuring instead Ian Gillan on vocals and Bev Bevan on drums. The first date in France was rained out, and so we all set off toward the Toros Monumental, Barcelona, opening to ten thousand crazy Spaniards packed into a huge bullring. I had a terrible gig, as my amp sounded thin and had no sustain; I rushed back to the amp and turned everything up full, including my distortion pedal, but it still sounded weedy—what a nightmare. I found out afterward it was because all the backline power was coming off a generator that was not giving off 240 volts. The people at the front of the stage began throwing chunks of orange shale at us, which they were collecting from the floor of the bullring. One of them hit our bass player full in the face and he shouted down the mic, Fuck off, you Spanish bastards! Another went into our keyboard player’s brand-new Yamaha DX7. I hated the gig, and it was one of those moments where I wished the ground would open up and swallow me. It did not happen again, thankfully, and the rest of the tour was a noticeable improvement. It’s a weird feeling meeting your heroes, but it was awesome to be on the road with the Sabs and getting to know Tony and Geezer, if just a little.

Fast-forward: In 1992 I was asked, Would you like to write a song with Tony Iommi? I immediately said, Oh my God, yes, please. Our record company guy, Pete Winkelman, knew Tony’s manager and arranged for me to go meet him. I arrived at his huge house in Solihull, West Midlands; the man in black welcomed me into his palatial home and made us both a cup of tea. I could not help but notice all the gold discs on the walls and asked Tony, How many albums have Sabbath sold? to which Tony nonchalantly replied, Oh, about sixty million. We sat down with our guitars and I began to wonder if I was out of my depth here, but was relieved when, when I produced my cassette with riffs on it, Tony delved into his drawer of cassettes and pulled one out too. We listened to each other’s offerings and I was reassured to hear that Tony’s tape did not sound any better than mine. After agreeing which riffs we liked best, we set about writing the song Starcrossed (Lovers of the Night). Diamond Head vocalist Sean Harris and I had been listening to Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger album from the previous year and we particularly liked their ’90s take on Sabbath, so a little of that went into the melting pot. I came up with the intro, verse, and bridge section, while Tony came up with the fast galloping middle eight and the ending ride-out riff. We tried to combine the best bits of Sabbath with a bit of Diamond Head arrangement and mood. It did not take long and, to my relief, Tony was an absolute pleasure to work with.

Once the song had been recorded—this was for the album Death & Progress—Tony kindly came down to the studio we were using in Birmingham, called the Music Station. He arrived with his guitar tech and fairly quickly got a sound to suit the track. He then proceeded to lay down a killer guitar solo right in front of my eyes. It was an unforgettable experience, and his help, talent, and time were greatly appreciated. As it turned out, Tony was, and is, easily one of the nicest guys I have ever met.

Black Sabbath forever!

Brian Tatler

Co-founder, Diamond Head

March 2011

Acknowledgments

Thanks to all these folks for making this book and this career possible!

Ted Abel; Eric Alper; Jayne Andrews; Vinny Appice; the Banger Films crew (Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen, Chappy, Double I, Double T, and all at Banger); Bill Baran; Tracy Barnes; Carl Begai; Mike Bell; Dennis Bergeron; Beth and Trevor; Mike Blackburn; Akim Boldireff; Albert Bouchard; Joe Bouchard; Marc-Andre Boulay; Mary Bourke; Dan Brownell; Chris Bruni; Jessica Burr; Philip Burton; Geezer Butler; Amanda Cagan; Ernie Cefalu; the CGP crew (Rob Godwin, Ric, PG, Matt, and all at CGP); Ian Christe; John Chronis; Monte Conner; Neil Cournoyer; Joe D’Agostino; Bob Daisley; Neil Daniels; Jack David and all the crew at ECW; Jinx Dawson; Neil Deas; Wendy Dio; K. K. Downing; Jeff Dozier; Dennis Dunaway; Rob Dwyer; Dave Ellefson; Jason Elzy; Jennifer Farhood; Rory Fiorito; Jon Freeman; Rich Galbraith; Billy Gibbons; Hugh Gilmour; Bolle Gregmar; Mark Gromen; Allan Grusie; Sammy Hagar; Jeremy Mob Rules Hainsworth; Steve Hammonds; Michael Hannon and his couple o’ Dogs; John Harnden; Bill Harris; Heather Harris; Dave Harrison; Scott Hefflon; Tim Henderson; Bobby Ingram; Ioannis and Vivid George; Tony Iommi; Mitch Joel; Kevin Julie; Carol Kaye; Dan Kieswetter; King Diamond; Blaise Laflamme; Hugues Laflamme; Mitch Lafon; Trevor Lamas; Michel Langevin; Steve and John Larocque; Robert Lecker; Anna LeCoche, Pegi, and the rest of the crew at Anthem; Bob Lefsetz; Anne Leighton; Matthias Mader; Doug Maher; Bernadette Malavarca; Brandon Marshall; Tony Martin; Paul Mawhinney; Joel McIver; Shannon Mehaffey; John Merikoski; Mom, Dad, and Brad; Kate Moore; Pete Morticelli; Bob Nalbandian; Ted Nugent, Derek, Rob, and Cliff (R.I.P.); Derek Oliver; Ozzy Osbourne; Tim Ripper Owens; Sean Palmerston; Thom Panunzio; Pete Pardo; Andy Parker; Brian Perera; Dennis Pernu; David Perri; Bill Peters; Ken Pierce; Alan Poulin; Jim Powell; Randy Pratt; Mike Pritchard; Jarret Rice; Simon Robinson; Robert Rodriguez; Doug Roemer; Henry Rollins; Ronus Ron; Ross the Boss; Chip Ruggieri; Jimmy Santoro; Nancy Sayle; Myke Scavone; Trevor Shaikin; Joe Siegler; Brian Slagel; Aaron Small; Stred; Mark Strigl; David Tedds; Forrest Toop; Eddie Trunk; John Tucker; Joe Lynn Turner; Ben Upham; Loana dP. Valencia; Rob van der Bliek; Jacques van Gool; Tracy Vera; Bill Ward; Rich Ward; Polly Watson; Mike Watt; Ray Wawrzyniak; David Lee Wilson; Josh Wood; Jeb Wright; Tim Yasui.

Introduction

Never fathomed I could write a second book on any band but if there was one possible, that would be Black Sabbath, and if there was a way in and a way out, it would be this buckets-o’-fun FAQ series concept, a lively idea stuffed with elliptical ways to add richness to any tale of the tape. Why this worked, and why my enthusiasm never waned as I wrote rollickingly, is because I quickly found there was so much more to say beyond what is contained in my previous tome (Black Sabbath: Doom Let Loose—An Illustrated History), so many nooks and crannies of the band to mine for nuggets of trivia, not to mention the fact that massive developments have occurred since, namely the triumphant worldwide establishment, battle, and victory lap from a new band called Heaven & Hell, followed by the epic death of Ronnie James Dio, king among kings, all-round good guy for miles.

All of that is dealt with and more, through many (and only!) new personal interviews since my last book, plus a massive amount of freedom to pontificate and make lists and spout off and tell side-stories. What follows, then, is a surreptitious telling of the main story, complexly by pieces and by compartmentalized chapters, plus the tales beneath the skin, the goofy stuff us fans want to argue o’er, plus science, math, geography, social sciences, and maybe even a little gym class, given that we find out at the end of our trip about Tony boxing, Geezer skiing, and Ronnie running.

Like I say, it’s been a blast, because the band at hand, in all its decades-straddling variety, has always offered much music and a myriad of emotions. If you don’t like this singer, here’s another one, new era, new sound, solo diversions, the only constant being the crushing weight of Tony’s riffs.

Yep, been a Sabbath fan for, man, thirty-six, thirty-seven years, first scared and scarred by I dunno, a quick thrust and parry into Vol 4 and maybe Paranoid or Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, debut soon to follow. Weirdly, though, the most intense and egregious indoctrination would have been—I’ll never forget this—working on a school project for both days of a weekend, full days, flipping constantly in the background the four sides of We Sold Our Soul for Rock ’n’ Roll to the point of the babbling craziness of insane, furtive, scratchy repetition, to the point of the music getting between the muscle fibers of my spindly legs and pointless biceps, thirteen, fourteen at the time, and I’m sure I aced that project ’cos of my first-rate title pages. Sure, it was a who cares compilation, but there’s just something about the relentlessness of all those crusty yet monumental Sabbath tunes being drilled into me head over and over again that made that expansive rec room with the psychedelic black-and-white-circles wallpaper feel like the sweat lodge of a religious cult.

I was rehooked, or hooked in a more profound way than flashier, more pleasurable and conventional meetings with the records, and was thereafter slavering to buy every record upon release day, moment of delivery into our interior BC town of Trail or wherever, ever since, as moves for university and then work and life took me, it seems, bloody all over Canada.

Just a goofy personal story, that is, and yeah, not much more to say here other than an exhortation to all you headbangers to enjoy the spirit in which this book was written, more from a fanboy point of view, sometimes whimsical, sometimes obsessive, and less so conventionally biographical. Lots to debate, a few laughs, lots of the Sabs, and, most inspiringly, quite a few words direct from Ronnie as we wind down to the final three chapters and the closing of one big medieval door, and the opening, hopefully of another, for the mighty metal legend and energetic host with the most that is Ronnie.

Martin Popoff

November 2010

martinp@inforamp.net

1

Well, We Can’t Tell You That.

Black Sabbath Sign with Vertigo Records

It really was the golden age for British rock, the late ’60s were, or at least a bubble had been created that was about to pop, sprinkling creative pixie dust all over a rarified early ’70s, from which heavy metal would be born proper, done right. Part of the credit should go to the major labels (when was the last time you heard them congratulated for anything?), for recognizing that their majorness equated to stodginess, and that to fly high with the nation’s new breed of precocious music makers, they would have to chew their arm off and create another arm, essentially a concept known as the boutique label.

Harvest, Deram, Neon…that’s the ticket yeah, plus there were feisty indies like Island and Transatlantic to deal with. Enter one Olav Wyper, who in the following pages recounts in detail the story of the best of the lot, the heavy, the proggy, the mysterious…Vertigo Records.

"Well, in ’69, I was still at CBS. The year before that, CBS had started on a whole thing of contemporary artists, like Blood, Sweat & Tears, Janis Joplin, Sly & the Family Stone, Laura Nyro, all those acts that were taking music in a new direction. I was in New York and went to a presentation and was taken by all of it, brought them back to England, put them out as the States did, as separate albums. Nothing. Nobody was interested. Couldn’t get airplay, a little bit of late-night airplay, but we just could not make heads nor tails.

"And when the states did the next launch of those things, they released them together, as a clutch of records. And I took that idea but changed it. I was head of marketing and sales at CBS, and I withdrew them and remarketed them, under Rock Machine. And we did a sampler, which nobody did in those days, which we gave away for virtually nothing, in order to get it out there. And all of a sudden those records began to sell, and they began to get picked up by radio, because here was a new thing—Rock Machine: what does that mean?

"And so the following year, ’67, I think, we did it again. We did a campaign: ‘The Rock Machine Moves On.’ And we proved it to ourselves, at least, that the way to market records that were aimed at the same market was to launch them and promote them together, so that people would say, ‘I wonder what the next Rock Machine album is?’ They don’t know who it is, because none of these acts were known when we launched them in the UK. But people were buying them because they liked the sound and they liked the idea, and there was a lot of high-class art that went with it. And I had seen something of that with EMI, because I was with EMI prior to working for CBS, and at EMI, one of the jobs I was given was to launch the Tamla Motown label. Because all the Tamla stuff had been released on Stateside Records, which was an EMI label, that they licensed American repertoire onto. And Berry Gordy came into town and said, ‘Our deal is up, EMI,’ and they said, ‘Well, we’d like to go on with it,’ and he said, ‘Well, I want a label.’ And EMI said, ‘No, no, no, we don’t give people labels.’ And then Berry said, ‘Well, that’s okay, then I’ll do a deal with Decca.’ And Len Wood, who was the music director, said, ‘Well, perhaps we can work something out.’

"Anyway, they did work something out, and the Motown label came to EMI and I was given the job of launching it and discovered very quickly [that] the way to do it was not to concentrate on the artist, but to concentrate on the label, the name, because people knew that if they bought Motown, they were getting a particular kind of music. So I went to Philips in ’69; Philips had been a completely moribund company, for at least a couple of years, and when they advertised for the initial post of general manager, they didn’t say who it was. And the minute the first person had applied and been to the interview it went around the business like wildfire that it was Philips. And of course nobody was interested. And so they decided to headhunt people, and I got a call saying, ‘We’d like to interview you for a job,’ and I said, ‘What job, which company?’ and they said, ‘Well, we can’t tell you that.’ And I said, ‘Well, why would I come then?’ ‘We’ll have to call you back.’ So they rang me back and said, ‘It’s actually Philips,’ and I said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t be interested.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well, because it’s Philips’ [laughs]. And they said, ‘Oh, well, Philips is going to change, and a whole new philosophy and everything.’ And I said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to be interviewed in London. I want to be interviewed in Amsterdam’ and I wanted to talk to the people who actually ran Philips and hear that from them. Because I would have certain conditions, and one of the conditions was that I had the right to hire and fire over anybody, no matter how long they’ve been there. I wanted to be given a free hand to reorganize the company. And that might include changing the A&R policy.

"Anyway, I went out, went to the interview, and got the job, and I set up with Philips, and I said to them, ‘What are you working on?’ ‘We’ve got singles coming out, we’ve got record albums coming out, but we’re not really working on anything. What would you like us to work on?’ And I said, ‘What the hell is going on here?!’ And they said, ‘We’ve been waiting for someone to come in and tell us what to do.’ And I said, ‘What happened to the David Bowie record? Space Oddity?’ Because it was supposed to be a hit and it wasn’t. And they said, ‘We tried, but it didn’t happen.’ So I said, ‘Well, since you’ve got nothing else to do, here’s a thought. The whole company for three weeks is not going to do anything but work on David Bowie.’ In those days, salesman didn’t sell singles, so, ‘Now you’re going to go in and sell singles, and you’re going to persuade the dealers to take them, and if you can’t, you give them half of his order free. The promotion people, the pluggers, only go and do one record.’

"And we had ads in all the papers. So the ads would only promote David Bowie. So it made Bowie, and we went to #5 in the charts, and it established him, and he was on Philips, and it suddenly gave the Philips name a bit of an impetus. I had a plan, because the A&R side of things was in a very dreadful state with the two elderly gentlemen who ran the two A&R labels. And one of the two moved on, or was moved on, and I brought some young people then to head up that label, and I wanted to start a new label that would give a real insight and fresh look at what was going on, because EMI’s Harvest label had started to make waves, and a lot of people were interested in the material coming out on it. But I don’t think it was quite well enough focused. So I looked at what artists we had, within the group, that I could put on this new label, and the only one we had was a jazz fusion act called Colosseum, which was Jon Hiseman’s band. And they were managed by Gerry Bron, and I knew Gerry Bron for years, and I went to Gerry and said, ‘The bands on Philips, I would like to put them on this new label, which we’re going to call Vertigo.’

Well me, actually, continues Wyper, asked as to who came up with the name of the new imprint. "I started my working life in an advertising agency, and one of the major clients, one of the clients I was put to work on, because I was the youngest person in the agency, was EMI Records. I was unusual in that I both wrote and designed the ads. Most people do one or the other, but I can do both, and one of my skills, if you like, was coming up with names for things. I had the name Vertigo, but I didn’t have any idea about what that would mean. Until I was driving home one night and the car started to steam up. I was waiting at the traffic lights, and I couldn’t see out the driver’s window, and I just drew a circle with my finger, so I could see out, and all of a sudden that and Vertigo came together.

"So I went into the office the next daya Philips was quite unique, as a record company, in having its own art department, with designers and copywriters and everything, which is very unusual in record companies, but they did, and they were very good. And Mike Stanford was the creative manager, and I got him and his team together and said, ‘Look, this isn’t what it is,’ and I just kind of drew a circle with smaller circles within it and said, ‘What I want is, kinetically, for this to move and take you in, so we call it Vertigo, and what I want is for you to come up with something that you could arguably get vertigo from by watching the record go round. So it’s going to draw you into it.

"And Linda Glover, who was a young designer there, she actually came up with the design, and the idea was to have it only on the A side, no information—that would all be on the B side. And when I was at CBS, I had made the very first pop promo in England, which was a black-and-white promo for ‘Albatross,’ the Fleetwood Mac track. Because we had Fleetwood Mac at CBS when I was there. And I had met a young guy on the shoot who was in his final year at the Royal College of Art in London, and he and I struck up a friendship, and he invited me to go to his end-of-term exhibition, when he was leaving. I had no idea he was such a good photographer, and you could look at these pictures and they told the story. He didn’t need any words; you knew by looking at what was happening. And I wanted Vertigo to have a very, very strong identity, and you may remember, all the covers were gatefold, and they had brilliant artwork, which is usually spread across the whole thing, and thoughtful. A high percentage of them were done by Keith MacMillan, who is this chap who designed as Keef.

So we had that all in place and we needed more acts to launch, and Manfred Mann, who had been a Fontana artist at Philips, had left Manfred Mann as a group, and he had now returned to his roots, which were jazz, and he had a jazz group called Manfred Mann Chapter III. So I did a deal with Manfred, so the Chapter Three album came out, and then we had another one from Gerry Bron, which was a rock band called Juicy Lucy, and we didn’t launch any of those first albums individually. We launched them together as a package.

Indeed, ads at the time (November 1969) indicate that the first three Vertigo releases were Colosseum—Valentyne Suite (VO 1), Juicy Lucy’s self-titled (VO 2), and Manfred Mann Chapter III’s self-titled (VO 3). One print piece exhorted, Watch this label* Vertigo for the sounds to listen for. Cut it out. Put it in your player. And switch on! And indeed you could, for a full-size version of the optically psychedelic experience Wyper had been seeking. Another ad pictured all three pieces followed by a huge ARE ON Vertigo.

So all the advertising, continues Olav, all the promotion, everything…and we had to launch concerts, and it was in the days when record companies used to do lavish receptions to launch anything. So we had a lavish reception and all the bands performed. And from the point that I came up with the idea of Vertigo until its launch was only three months, which was a bloody nightmare getting it organized. But we did.

Next, a quirk of fate would put Wyper in the path of a freight train called Black Sabbath.

"We were looking at the same time for where this was going to go, in terms of other acts, and I went to Birmingham for a meeting and went on the wrong day, a day early, so I had to spend a day in Birmingham. I was staying in a hotel, and I went downstairs and said, ‘Is there any music in Birmingham?’ And the chap, the concierge, said, ‘Oh, I think there’s a classical concert at the City Hall.’ And I said, ‘No, I wasn’t looking for that. I was looking for some rock music.’ And there was a young lad who worked in the hotel who said, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a pub that I pass on the way from the station to here called the Railway Arms, and they have music downstairs.’ And I went in, and there was a band playing. And in those days they used to stamp the back of your hand with an ultraviolet stamp, so if you went out and came in again, you could prove that you had already paid. And the bloke stamped my hand and did a double take and did another double take, and I thought, ‘Oh shit, I’ve been recognized.’ Which indeed I had been. But I went in, he didn’t bother me, and the band wasn’t particularly wonderful; they were coming to the end of their set, and then while they went off and the next band was getting itself ready, I suddenly noticed that the hall was filling up, the room was absolutely getting packed. Everybody who’d been at the back of the bar had all gotten fresh drinks and were all going down to the front. So they obviously knew who was coming and wanted to see it.

And that was Black Sabbath. So within a very short space of time I decided we had to have Black Sabbath. So I went, in the interval, out to the chap who stamped my hand and recognized me, and I said, ‘Are you something to do with the band or are you just promoting the gig?’ And he goes, ‘No, I’m promoting it and I’m their manager as well, Jim Simpson.’

And as so many A&R types have answered in the past, Olav wasn’t concerned about what kind of music he was hearing….

"My judgment, a lot of it, was based on what the audience’s reaction was. If the audience loved them, then they had something. And on Vertigo, we didn’t sign any band that wasn’t a working band and that couldn’t deliver live. And the great thing about Sabbath was they had an instant communication. This was their very early days, their first album, and they had an instant communication with the audience. They had very good songs, very good rhythms, Tony Iommi, the guitar player, was absolutely stunning. His solos were just brilliant. Ozzy was obviously a good singer. The whole thing just worked brilliantly.

And they were very important to the label because we instantly got them off, continues Wyper. It wasn’t a huge, huge hit, but it was a big enough hit, and importantly, Europe absolutely loved them. The two biggest bands we had in terms of international success were certainly Black Sabbath and Uriah Heep. And Uriah Heep, which was another Gerry Bron act, Uriah Heep and Black Sabbath were very much the same sort of market. They were metal, sort of heavy metal stuff, and the Germans absolutely went berserk for them. There was always quite a bit of difference between them. In Uriah’s stuff, there was an element of pop music being treated in a progressive rock way, whereas I don’t think you could ever say that Sabbath had elements of pop in them. I think they both started out from a slightly different position. But for the first time in a long time, the Philips international company were suddenly very interested in what we were doing in London, because hitherto, their success was international acts, and international acts could only come from the UK or America. And the Philips company in America in those days were Mercury Records, who in those days were completely crap. So the Philips company internationally was suddenly very interested in everything that was coming out of England. It was deemed to be good, only because they put out some records and suddenly they were selling.

Asked as to why Birmingham seemed to have launched a goodly number of heavy metal artists, Wyper expands the territory, saying, Well, the Midlands of England did. There were a number of heavy metal magazines, curiously, and they were all from the Midlands. There certainly was a very strong heavy metal movement that grew out of the Midlands of the UK. Quite why, I don’t know. I mean, you might think it could be deemed to be factory music. The Midlands and England were traditionally where all the heavy engineering went on. And it might have somehow been inspired by that.

Oddly, Black Sabbath’s first bit of product, a single featuring the band’s cover of Crow’s Evil Woman (issued a month before the debut album), would emerge on Fontana, not Vertigo.

We had to put something out quick, contends Wyper, before we could put out the album, because we didn’t have an album and we wanted to create some interest in the marketplace for that. So that’s why it came out on Fontana. Fontana was the sort of…there were two labels—there was Philips, which was the sort of establishment acts, and Fontana, which was the pop acts and the more speculative things. But Fontana we very quickly got rid of after that; they became our midprice label.

Olav disagrees that Evil Woman came out on Fontana because Philips didn’t do singles on Vertigo.

"We did do singles on Vertigo. We absolutely did, and a year later, when Paranoid, which was the second Black Sabbath album, [came out], the album went to #1 and so did the single, and that was on the twelfth-month anniversary of the launch of the label. I left shortly after that, and went to RCA."

On the odd choice of a cover track, Evil Woman, as a single, Olav figures, It was just a very…it was one on their live act, that really, really came out. The way the A&R department was then organized, I had Dick Leahy looking after the singles and Mike Everett looking after the albums. Now they were sort of a matched pair, musically. But people had to have responsibility. One was doing one and one was doing the other, but of course this was all one department and they both worked for me, so at the end of the day, it was my decision. But they were the ones that did all the hard graft and got it all together.

The success of the Paranoid album quickly had Vertigo repromoting the self-titled debut, issued earlier the same year.

Further adding to the label muddle was the fact that in the U.S. and Canada, Sabbath albums emerged on Warner Bros. rather than the more likely Mercury. In those days, explains Olav, "I’m not sure I necessarily would have done it now, but I was so concerned about Mercury Records, and their ability to deliver, that I used to do deals with the act’s management where they kept the rights to North America. But they cut us in. We got a percentage of what they got in America, because I felt that we could do better than if it came out on Mercury. Mercury were not interested in hooking up with Vertigo Records. They would pick the individual artist, cherry-pick the individual artist to put them out, if they liked them, and they would come out on Mercury. Everywhere else, the company launched Vertigo, and put out virtually everything we did—if not everything. So I wasn’t up for that at all, because I knew that part of the success we had was the look of it, the look of the labels, the way we did the advertising, the sleeves, all the rest of it. And Mercury were not…Mercury wouldn’t subscribe to that concept at all. They were only interested in the music. I said to people like David Platz, who in fact, I did the deal