Miami, 1979.
A dancer strips behind Ronnie James Dio. The new Black Sabbath frontman crosses the room to the DJ and puts a tape into his hands.
Moments later, the heavy, grinding riff of “Heaven and Hell” rumbles to life.
The energy in the room shifts. The strippers gyrate to the thick chorus riff. Dio’s voice soars over the heads of the bar’s patrons:
“We would go to the local strip club after we recorded one of the songs. They would play it and the strippers would dance to it. If they liked it, we knew we had a good one. “Heaven and Hell” they loved! They just absolutely loved that one, they couldn’t wait to dance to it.”
In “Heaven and Hell”, Dio explores the blurred lines between good and evil. The irony of playing it to “dancers” in a strip club wouldn’t have been lost on him.
“Fool, fool
You got to bleed for the dancer”
But here’s the thing. In 1979, Black Sabbath were set to release something very different from the sludgey, doomy metal they were famous for.
That was, if they could ever move past this…
“...highly frustrating, never-ending process”
Those are the words guitarist Tony Iommi used in his autobiography to describe the eleven months he spent in Bel-Air trying to record an album with Ozzy Osbourne.
Bill Ward, Ozzy’s best friend in the band, was the one who finally cut the cord. But now the band was left without its iconic, charismatic frontman.
Enter Ronnie James Dio.
Although shorter and quieter than Ozzy, Dio had a bellowing voice and a huge stage presence. Even still, there was a lot of pressure on his shoulders. Winning over Sabbath’s hardcore fans would be challenging. Heaven and Hell needed to be an exceptional record.
But the band’s internal issues weren’t helping matters…
The Ghost Bassist
During the recording of Heaven and Hell, bassist Geezer Butler quit Black Sabbath to finalize his divorce back in England.
The band brought Craig Gruber into the studio. Gruber spent six months with Black Sabbath, writing, rehearsing and recording. By his own account, he co-wrote most of the songs.
But it wasn’t long before Geezer wanted back in. The band paid off Gruber and erased him from the credits. But he later told Classic Rock:
"I played all the bass on it, co-wrote some of the songs and brought in ‘Die Young’”.
Geezer claimed Gruber's bassline on the title track was too "simple." So he recorded his own.
Iommi, however, maintains Butler re-recorded without even listening to what Gruber had laid down.
Nobody's quite sure whose bass you're actually hearing.
All we know is that the "simple" riff that drives the whole song is one Geezer admits he never would have written himself.
The Fire and the Fury
Meanwhile, Bill Ward was not okay.
The drummer drank himself into oblivion on a nightly basis and would "just disappear" inside the studio.
Then, to add injury to insult, Tony Iommi set him on fire.
Setting Bill Ward alight had been a Sabbath party piece for years. A little rubbing alcohol and a match and… poof!
It had always worked before. What could go wrong?
Standing in front of producer Martin Birch (who’d later produce Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast), Ward turned to Iommi and said:
"Are you going to set fire to me then, Tony?"
Iommi obliged, but he was a little too generous with the alcohol. It soaked into Ward's clothes.
"He went up like a bomb. He was rolling on the floor, shouting and screaming. I thought it was part of the joke, so I poured more stuff on him."
Here's what’s really crazy:
Ward later stated that he has no memory of any of it. Not the recording, the mixing… not even the time he “went up like a bomb.”
Then, on August 21, 1980, mid-tour, Ward picked up a phone and called Ronnie James Dio.
"I'm off then, Ron."
That was it. Without even a goodbye to Iommi.
By then, the album he can't remember had gone platinum.
“It’s Heaven and Hell”...
Thick, distorted power chords announce the song. The riff is heavy and meaty, reminiscent of old Sabbath. (Think “Iron Man”.) A marching bass riff and Dio’s voice carry the song to the chorus.
“Sing me a song, you're a singer
Do me a wrong, you're a bringer of evil”
Iommi’s guitar rumbles back in for the song’s chorus (the same one loved by the strippers.)
The guitars are recognizably Sabbath. But something has changed. There is a confidence in Dio’s bombastic performance that clashes against Ozzy’s manic zeal. The lyrics are more obscure, almost “arty”. At times, it even feels self-aware, or tongue-in-cheek:
“The closer you get to the meaning
The sooner you'll know that you're dreaming”
It feels like Dio is bringing you “on and on and on” through a journey. It’s not exactly the world we’re expecting… Rather a strange realm of kings and queens, dancers and fools, all caught between heaven and hell.
After the second chorus, there is a noticeable shift in the music. Finally we’re given some breathing room. This seems in contrast to the chaos and claustrophobia of the recording sessions and the “creative” environment in which the album was conceived.
But we’re not given too much space. A breakdown section follows that could have been written by any American band in the early noughties. It’s in this section that Dio shows off his true capacity as a vocalist. His voice leads you away from the chugging riff, back to that ethereal world of his. And – with perfect timing – Iommi breaks out into a bluesy, delay-heavy guitar solo with wide, emotive bends and expressive vibrato.
From here, the song takes an almost progressive turn. Just as we think the song is ending, it’s really just beginning. This has already been foretold…
“The ending is just a beginner”
A quasi-thrash metal drumbeat enters. As the song gallops towards the climax, the lyrics address the frantic pace:
“They say that life's a carousel
Spinning fast, you gotta ride it well”
Life had been “spinning fast” for Black Sabbath. It feels like a cathartic moment when the – figuratively and literally – battered Ward kicks into this uptempo drumbeat.
Something pent-up had been unleashed.
"The World is Full of Kings and Queens"
The song leans into uncertainty on a thematic level. Dio sings about “illusion” and “confusion”. About being “blinded” and stolen from:
"The world is full of kings and queens
Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams"
His voice is no less impressive in the final, “fast” sections of the song, but you can hear the rage when he snarls:
“And they'll tell you black is really white
The moon is just the sun at night”
Here there is a blurring between perception and reality.
This seems like an intellectual turning point for Black Sabbath. Compare the nuance of these lyrics to the hammer-blunt lyrics of an Ozzy-era song like “War Pigs”. Not to say that one song is “better” than the other, but there is a clear shift in songwriting style.
Dio grew up on Tolkien and mythology. He understood that the most powerful stories live in the grey zone – not good versus evil, but rather the impossibility of telling them apart.
“Fool, Fool”
In 1979 Dio stood in a strip club, watching dancers move to a song that implores listeners to “look for the answer”.
Dio wasn’t writing philosophy for intellectuals. He was writing for the people who worked the late shift. For the kids who liked the wrong kind of music. For all the battered and the overlooked “sinners” spinning fast on the carousel. Barely holding on.
Because Black Sabbath were barely hanging on. Nobody could quite agree on who played what on “Heaven and Hell”. One member can't remember being there at all.
But the strippers loved it.
And for now, that was good enough.
Chaos, fire and amnesia… and somehow, out of all of the chaos, an era-defining metal album was forged.
Next week I’ll be diving into a song from the Ozzy era…
Any guesses which one?
Horns up 🤘
Shane
Editor-in-Chief
The Chug Media
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