Cover Albums

 

The March 2022 issue of Classic Rock Magazine has its cover story on … covers.  “Covers” are when one musician plays a song by another musician.  Oddly, although Garage, Inc. (Metallica’s double covers album) is mentioned, there’s really no discussion of cover albums per se.  And as I can show you below, there are now plenty of them to talk about.

Morning and Evening.  When bands are starting out, they have to rely on covers until they hone the skills necessary to write acceptable quality material of their own, obviously drawing upon the inspiration of those covers.  The Beatles had gone to 100% originals by the third album, A Hard Day’s Night, but even Please Please Me (#1) and With The Beatles (#2) were less than 50% covers.  The Stones didn’t make it to 100% originals until Aftermath, their fourth album, and the first album had only one original.

Likewise, when the bands get older and run out of gas, rather than put out an album of substandard originals, it’s much easier just to do an album of covers.  Of course, it’s intriguing to hear how they put their mark on other bands’ music.  What I noticed, though, was most of these covers predate the band’s own material and – as Saxon explicitly acknowledge with the album title – were their inspirations.  What I rarely hear are any of these bands playing covers of their own peers and competitors.  Thus no Beatles covers on Blue & Lonesome, no Black Sabbath (and just a snippet of “Dazed and Confused” in a medley) on Turning to Crime, no Megadeth, Slayer or Anthrax on Garage, Inc. 

Here they are, listing the songs and the original artists.

Deep Purple, Turning To Crime.  The most recent of these.  Half are fairly obscure 50s tunes, the rest are more famous 60s tunes.

7 and 7 Is (Love); Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu (Huey “Piano” Smith); Oh Well (Fleetwood Mac); Jenny Take A Ride (Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels); Watching The River Flow (Bob Dylan); Let The Good Times Roll (Louis Jordan & the Tympany Five); Dixie Chicken (Little Feat); Shapes of Things (Yardbirds); The Battle of New Orleans (Johnny Horton); Lucifer (Bob Seger); White Room (Cream); Caught in the Act (medley including “Dazed and Confused” (Led Zeppelin), “Hot ‘Lanta” (Allman Brothers))

Ace Frehley, Origins Vols 1 & 2.  The original lead guitarist for KISS.  These were released separately in 2016 and 2020.  He claims he’ll do a Vol. 3, but the story quoting him saying so isn’t dated.

Vol #1.  White Room (Cream); Street Fighting Man (Rolling Stones); Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix); Fire And Water (Free); Emerald (Thin Lizzy); Bring It On Home (Led Zeppelin); Wild Thing (Troggs); Parasite (KISS – really a cover?); Magic Carpet Ride (Steppenwolf); Cold Gin (KISS); Till The End of the Day (Kinks); Rock and Roll Hell (KISS)

Vol #2.  Good Times Bad Times (Led Zeppelin); Never In My Life (Mountain); Space Truckin’ (Deep Purple); I’m Down (Beatles); Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Rolling Stones); Politician (Cream); Lola (Kinks); 30 Days In The Hole (Humble Pie); Manic Depression (Jimi Hendrix); Kicks (Paul Revere & the Raiders); We’ve Gotta Get Out of This Place (Animals); She (KISS)

Fu Manchu, The Covers.  I have this on vinyl, and have never seen it on CD.  It doesn’t show up on Amazon or eBay in either format, nor does their Wikipedia discography even mention it.  Apparently it was a limited release of 700 copies by the band itself.  As stoner rock bands go, FM have shorter, snappier, high tempo songs, often about skateboarding, so the punk influence is definitely front center, as the cover choices make clear. 

Who Are You (Void); Nothing Done (SSD); D.O.A. (Van Halen, not Bloodrock); When The Shit Hits The Fan (The Circle Jerks); Moving in Stereo (The Cars); Beach Blanket Bongout (JFA); Freedom of Choice (Devo); Godzilla (Blue Oyster Cult); Things Start Moving (Adolescents); Ride To Live (Live To Ride) (Twisted Sister); Six Pack (Black Flag); Words To Live By (Penance); Jailbreak (Thin Lizzy); Chevy Van (Sammy Johns).

Yngwie Malmsteen, Inspiration.  A few years back before the Saxon album.  YM plays large headstock Stratocasters with scalloped fretboards and took classical music into overdrive, blending it with obvious influences of Ritchie Blackmore, Uli Roth, and Jimi Hendrix, which makes their inclusion on this covers album a no-brainer.  Although he’s obviously talented and practiced those oddball scales rigorously, somehow he doesn’t seem to pull off more bluesier solos that well.  My recollection is that I got the UK album after hearing this one, the only track on the album I wasn’t already familiar with. That’s a prog super group with Allan Holdsworth (guitar), John Wetton (bass & vocals), Bill Bruford (drums), and Eddie Jobson (keyboards).

Carry On Wayward Son (Kansas); Pictures of Home (Deep Purple); Gates of Babylon (Rainbow); Manic Depression (Jimi Hendrix); In the Dead of Night (UK); Mistreated (Deep Purple); The Sails of Charon (Scorpions); Demon’s Eye (Deep Purple); Anthem (Rush); Child in Time (Deep Purple); Spanish Castle Magic (Jimi Hendrix)

Metallica, Garage, Inc.  Before this, they had “broken in” Jason Newsted with the $5.98 EP, Garage Days Re-Revisited (1987), before his bass was ignored on …And Justice For All.  Fast forward to 1998, when the band released Garage, Inc., which included the EP on disc 2 along with other previously released covers – including “Am I Evil” (Diamond Head) and “Blitzkrieg” (Blitzkrieg) which had been the b-sides of “Creeping Death” and tacked on to the Elektra version of their first album, Kill ‘Em All.  Then they went into the studio and recorded a whole CD worth of new covers, for a two disc set.  I like that they pick more obscure tunes instead of big hits.

Disc 1 (Freshly recorded):  Free Speech For the Deaf (Discharge); It’s Electric (Diamond Head); Sabbra Cadabra (Black Sabbath); Turn The Page (Bob Seger); Die, Die My Darling (Misfits); Loverman (Nick Cave); Mercyful Fate (Mercyful Fate); Astronomy (Blue Oyster Cult); Whiskey In the Jar (traditional, played by Thin Lizzy); Tuesday’s Gone (Lynyrd Skynyrd); The More I See (Discharge)

Disc 2 (previously released):  Helpless (Diamond Head); The Small Hours (Holocaust); The Wait (Killing Joke); Crash Course in Brain Surgery (Budgie); Last Caress/Green Hell (Misfits); Am I Evil? (Diamond Head); Blitzkrieg (Blitzkrieg); Breadfan (Budgie); The Prince (Diamond Head); Stone Cold Crazy (Queen); So What (Anti-Nowhere League); Killing Time (Sweet Savage); Overkill (Motorhead); Damage Case (Motorhead); Stone Dead Forever (Motorhead); Too Late Too Late (Motorhead) 

Monster Magnet, A Better Dystopia.  New Jersey's premiere stoner rock band.  Dave Wyndorf gave us this collection of mostly obscure tunes.  I would have preferred an entire album of Hawkwind covers – or least add in their earlier covers of “Brainstorm” and “The Right Stuff” – but at least he gives us the distinction of the only Hawkwind cover on any of these albums.

The Diamond Mine (spoken word intro); Born To Go (Hawkwind); Epitaph For A Head (Blackfoot); Solid Gold Hell (Scientists); Be Forwarned (Pentagram); Mr. Destroyer (Poobah); When The Wolf Sits (Jerusalem); Death (Pretty Things); Situation (Josefus); It’s Trash (Cavemen); Motorcycle (Straight To Hell) (Table Scraps); Learning To Die (Dust); Welcome To The Void (Morgen)

Motorhead, Under Cover.  Given that the man himself, Lemmy, already did “Motorhead”, “Lost Johnny” and “The Watcher” on both On Parole and Motorhead, I suppose Hawkwind songs weren’t going to show up here, though “Silver Machine” would have been cool. 

Breaking The Law (Judas Priest); God Save The Queen (Sex Pistols); Heroes (Bowie & Fripp); Starstruck (Rainbow); Cat Scratch Fever (Ted Nugent); Jumpin’ Jack Flash (Rolling Stones); Sympathy For The Devil (Rolling Stones); Hellraiser (Ozzy Osbourne); Rockaway Beach (Ramones); Shoot ‘Em Down (Twisted Sister); Whiplash (Metallica)

Ozzy Osbourne, Under Cover.  Yes, the same title as Lemmy’s.  Instead of Zakk Wylde, his guitarist on this is Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains.  Mike Bordin of Faith No More (who also played drums with Ozzy’s solo band, and Black Sabbath on the 1997 Ozzfest tour) is here on drums.  Ozzy gives us lots of hits from left field: a Beatles song, two John Lennon songs, King Crimson, and the hit the Moody Blues had before Justin Hayward and John Lodge joined and they became a prog band with Days of Future Passed, “Go Now”. 

Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh); In My Life (Beatles); Mississippi Queen (Mountain); Go Now (The Moody Blues); Woman (John Lennon); 21^st Century Schizoid Man (King Crimson); All The Young Dudes (Mott the Hoople); For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield); Good Times (The Animals); Sunshine of Your Love (Cream); Fire (Arthur Brown); Working Class Hero (John Lennon); Sympathy For The Devil (Rolling Stones); Changes (Black Sabbath – yes, like Ace, covering a song he was originally on)

The Rolling Stones, Blue & Lonesome.  Eleven years after their last album of original material, A Bigger Bang (9/5/05), the Stones come back with an album of exclusively blues covers.

Just Your Fool (Little Walter); Commit A Crime (Howlin’ Wolf); Blue and Lonesome (Little Walter); All of Your Love (Magic Sam); I Gotta Go (Little Walter); Everybody Knows About My Good Thing (Miles Grayson & Lermon Horton); Ride ‘Em On Down (Eddie Taylor); Hate To See You Go (Little Walter); Hoo Doo Blues (Otis Hicks & Jerry West); Little Rain (Ewart G. Abner Jr & Jimmy Reed); Just Like It Treat You (Willie Dixon); I Can’t Quit You Baby (Willie Dixon)

Rush, Feedback.  Back in 2007, fairly short – just an EP.  They did a tour for this album, which we saw, and for which some of the concert t-shirts were tie-dyes, with the 2112 Naked Man (who may or may not be the same naked guy from the Hemispheres cover) is now afraid of a peace symbol instead of a red star.

Summertime Blues (Eddie Cochran, but homage to The Who version, not the Blue Cheer version); Heart Full of Soul (Yardbirds); For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield); The Seeker (The Who); Mr Soul (Buffalo Springfield); Seven and Seven Is (Love); Shapes of Things (Yardbirds); Crossroads (Robert Johnson/Cream).

Saxon, Inspirations.  Along with Iron Maiden and Def Leppard, among the trio of most successful New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) bands to emerge from the early 1980s and not merely survive but prosper, even if they aren't quite as famous or successful as the other two.  Biff & his comrades came out with this relatively recently.

Paint It Black (Rolling Stones); Immigrant Song (Led Zeppelin); Paperback Writer (Beatles); Evil Woman (Crow); Stone Free (Jimi Hendrix); Bomber (Motorhead); Speed King (Deep Purple); The Rocker (Thin Lizzy); Hold The Line (Toto); Problem Child (AC/DC); See My Friends (Kinks)

Tesla, Real to Reel (Discs 1 & 2).  Often lumped together with Motley Crue and Skid Row as a "hair metal" band, Tesla were less about image than about the music itself, with a sincerity that was sometimes borderline naive.  Disc 1 was sold outright in CD packaging allowing for two.  The second disc was given at the shows for that tour, which I saw at the Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore.  Frank Hannon himself was at the merch booth and give me the disc – and signed the insert.

Reel 1.  Space Truckin’ (Deep Purple); Walk Away (James Gang); Hand Me Down World (Guess Who); Bad Reputation (Thin Lizzy); Thank You (Led Zeppelin); I’ve Got A Feeling (Beatles); Day of the Eagle (Robin Trower); Ball of Confusion (Temptations); Rock Bottom (UFO); Stealin’ (Uriah Heep); Bell Bottom Blues (Derek & the Dominos); Honky Tonk Woman (Rolling Stones); Dear Mr. Fantasy (Traffic)

Reel 2.  All The Young Dudes (Mott the Hoople); Make It Last (Montrose); Shooting Star (Bad Company); Not Fragile (BTO); Street Fighting Man (Rolling Stones); It’s My Body (Alice Cooper); I Want To Take You Higher (Sly and the Family Stone); Do You Feel Like We Do (Peter Frampton); Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers (ZZTop); Seasons of Wither (Aerosmith); Saturday Night Special (Lynyrd Skynrd); War Pigs (Black Sabbath)

UFO, The Salentino Cuts.  They started off with Mick Bolton on guitar for two space jam-type albums, then found Michael Schenker for five major seventies albums and a later trio of reunion albums; Vinnie Moore has been the guitarist for the last several albums.  The only constant member has been vocalist Phil Mogg, and they give us a rare gem: a LATER song, “River of Deceit” from Mad Season. 

Heartful of Soul (Yardbirds); Break on Through (The Doors); River of Deceit (Mad Season); The Pusher (Steppenwolf); Paper In Fire (John Mellencamp); Rock Candy (Montrose); Mississippi Queen (Mountain); Ain’t No Sunshine (Bill Withers); Honey-Bee (Tom Petty); Too Rolling Stoned (Robin Trower); Just Got Paid (ZZTop); It’s My Life (Animals).

As these are all experienced professionals, I didn’t hear any songs butchered, though I didn’t hear any where I felt they had improved on the originals.  In about 20% of the cases I was unfamiliar with the source material to make any kind of comparison anyway.  As a Monster Magnet fan, though, I was dissatisfied with Wyndorf’s choices; it seems he deliberately picked extremely obscure tracks to continue cultivating his “aren’t I cool?  I wear sunglasses at night” persona. 

Tribute Albums.  I suppose the opposite of a covers album, where one band covers all sorts of different bands’ songs, is a tribute album, in which all different bands cover one band’s songs.  The most recent was Blacklist, where Metallica’s 1991 self-titled, so-called Black Album, gets cover treatment by a host of bands outside their own genre.  The sad apart about it is that almost all of them make the original versions sound that much better.  It’s almost as if the band was thinking, “well, everyone seems to think we sold out on this album, but here are versions of our songs which are far more commercial than our own.  See how you like those.” 

Never Say Die!

It’s not here because I only now discovered this album, or because I bought a new and amazing remaster that changes the game completely.  In fact, I stopped upgrading our original Paris (FNAC) purchased vinyl to 180 grain at Sabotage, so our vinyl version of this album is the one we bought in high school in the 1980s.  I do have a remastered CD (2004 Universal/Sanctuary).

I’m commenting on this because this was on my DP/LZ/BS queue and it came up to listen to.  It’s the last (#8) of the original slew of Black Sabbath albums with Ozzy Osbourne, and its tour was the last with Ozzy, Van Halen being the up and coming band opening for them.  My impression is that it’s generally held in bad repute by 1) non-fans who don’t really like Sabbath and only willing to say good things if the album, e.g. Paranoid, is so obviously musically significant that they would look like idiots if they ignored or criticized it; and 2) Black Sabbath fans who prefer Ronnie James Dio over Ozzy Osbourne.  For them, Heaven & Hell trumps any of the Ozzy albums, even Paranoid or Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath (my favorite).  Us Sabbath fans who do prefer Ozzy to Dio (like me) generally concede it’s a substandard album, but listening to it again, sober on the treadmill, I’ve come to some fresh conclusions.

First off, Bill is drumming like crazy here.  Moreover, the solos on even some of the otherwise less memorable songs is still blazing.  So whatever else might have been going badly for them at the time – e.g. Ozzy leaving and then coming back, refusing to sing any Dave Walker material – when it came time to press RECORD and PLAY THE MUSIC they stepped up and got the job done.  Were they coked up?  Strung out?  Hung over? Who knows.  Somehow they did it.

Actually, I should add a third category of NSD haters: the band itself.  Bill Ward seems to be the only one who defends it, and given his performance I’m not surprised.

Second, the prior albums were so good, that this album was doomed to suffer by comparison.  Only the Beatles seemed to rise to the occasion of consistently outdoing themselves – coming from a fan who prefers the White Album to Dr. Pepper (and I know others who prefer Abbey Road). 

Third, while I hear some jazzy stuff in there – particularly “Air Dance”, which is actually my favorite track, “Junior’s Eyes” being #2 – it still rocks.  In a sense, they wound up like Budgie, pushing in some non-rock directions to break up the monolithic mold of the prior doomy albums.  They recorded the album at Sounds Interchange in Toronto (the Canadian capital) and Rush Jr. aka Max Webster were recording Mutiny Up My Sleeve at the same time.  Kim Mitchell mentions this, though no one in the Black Sabbath camp seems to mention Max Webster.  Then again, Tony was also hanging out with Frank Zappa, who accompanied them on the tour, so perhaps yet another famous mustache-and-SG guitarist had his own influences which no one seems to acknowledge.  Frank Sabbath?  Perish the thought.

Fourth, listening to this not immediately after Technical Ecstasy (#7), but with the benefit of a few proto-Whitesnake albums by David Coverdale, returning to Sabbath was actually more of a relief and welcome rather than a disappointment.  So I may have been more predisposed to be favorable than previously.

The bottom line is that if you listen to it on its own, without trying to compare it to the prior or later albums, you might actually enjoy it.   

Randy Rhoads

Warning: I come not to praise Randy, but to bury him.

 Shortly after Classic Rock magazine featured an article about Randy Rhoads, now Guitar World is doing so as well.  I’ve reached my quota of RR articles for my lifetime.

 Background.  After Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sabbath in 1979, he had to begin a solo career by default.  His now-wife Sharon Osbourne took it upon herself to assemble a band around him:  Randy Rhoads (guitar), Bob Daisley (bass), and Lee Kerslake (drums).  They recorded Blizzard of Ozz, an excellent debut album, followed it up with Diary of Madman (Rudy Sarzo took over on bass, Tommy Aldridge on drums), and on tour for the second album, Randy was killed in a freak accident.  The tour bus driver took him up in his private plane (against Randy’s objections) and crashed the plane into the tour bus.  Night Ranger guitarist Brad Gillis took over for the remainder of the tour, eventually replaced by Jake E. Lee for two albums, then Zakk Wylde.

 I’ve mentioned before my introduction to Ozzy through Speak of the Devil, though shortly afterwards I did tape Blizzard, Diary, and Bark at the Moon, which by that time (1984) had been the most recent Ozzy album.  Listening to these albums always brings me back to memories of high school in France, listening to them on tape (remember the Walkman?) riding the school bus.

 Quiet Riot.  Before Ozzy, Randy was in this band, which only became famous AFTER Randy joined Ozzy’s band.  Their top album is Metal Health.   I never liked Quiet Riot, and I was never a big enough Randy fan to get the original QR albums (Japanese imports) with Randy on them.  From what I understand, the biggest impediment to QR’s fame and fortune was Kevin Dubrow’s unlikeable personality, off the chart even by the lofty standards of prima donna rock singers.   Randy was apparently considering leaving Ozzy after the Diary tour, but whether he would have retreated into obscurity to pursue classical music, or rejoined QR, no one seems to know.  This is part of why I consider him so overrated:  we have no idea what he would have done had he not had his talent “cut short” by his freak airplane death.   

 Blizzard of Ozz.  “Crazy Train”, “Mr. Crowley”, and “Suicide Solution” survive from this album into Ozzy’s live set, but I prefer “Revelation: Mother Earth”.  But from “I Don’t Know” through “Steal Away (The Night)” there isn’t a bad track on the album. 

 Diary of a Madman.  A good follow-up, but I really only like the title track.  “Flying High Again” is the track which survives in the set.  The rest is decent, but seems more like filler than strong songs: the consistent quality of the last album isn’t here.

 Ozzy-Randy Tribute.  Three Sabbath tunes reluctantly played with no great enthusiasm, and the rest is solo material.  This was released in 1987, five years after Randy died.  I’ve listened to it once or twice but it didn’t impress me.

 Impression.  Randy can play guitar.  Better than Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Ritchie Blackmore, Angus Young, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, David Gilmour, Frank Zappa, Robert Fripp, the Iron Maiden & Judas Priest twins, or least of all, Tony Iommi?  Not in a million years.  Randy added in a super-pretentious “acoustic/classical guitar” ingredient (which has been done by…umpteen other guitarists before him, and since), which we add to “died in freak airplane accident” results in “guitar god without equal”.  No, I don’t think so.  What I find especially damning about him was his attitude towards Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi:  “I’m MUCH better than that.”  Who did he think he was? 

 Wylde v. Randy.  This is why I prefer Zakk Wylde.  He doesn’t believe that acknowledging Tony’s genius takes away from his own talent, such as it is.  I don’t think of Wylde as being so much as 5% less than Randy, but since Wylde is still alive, we can’t criticize Randy, so Wylde ends up relatively underrated between the two.  For that matter, Jake E. Lee isn’t any worse than Randy.  Undeniably, Rhoads was certainly the most likeable of Ozzy’s solo guitarists.  He was shy, good-natured, and rarely indulged in the decadent rock excesses of his peers – a polar opposite from someone like Michael Schenker.  For his part, Wylde strikes me as fundamentally down-to-earth and unpretentious, even if he does pile on the Yankneck (CSA from New Jersey) and biker images a bit thick.  Black Label Society is essentially a Motorhead tribute band.  If you’re not going to do anything truly original on your own, why not just stay with Ozzy?  Like I said, however, I’m not convinced Rhoads would have blazed a unique, revolutionary new guitar trail had he survived the Diary tour.    

 Bottom line:  Randy’s role in Ozzy’s career can be safely appreciated without ignoring Tony, Jake or Zakk.  Let’s keep him in perspective and enjoy his albums, but not elevate him to a (guitar) god or saint he never was.

Black Sabbath Revisited

A few weeks ago my brother uttered the blasphemy of blasphemies, heresy of heresies: that the albums Heaven And Hell and The Mob Rules were superior not only to Technical Ecstasy or Never Say Die, but ANY album Black Sabbath released with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals.  Much as I acknowledge the high quality of those two Ronnie James Dio albums, and recognize the relatively (!) low quality of the last two albums with Ozzy Osbourne, I cannot agree with this bold assertion.  But it does make an album-by-album analysis appropriate at this…juncture.

 Black Sabbath.  The debut album was released on Friday, February 13, 1970 in the UK, June 30, 1970 in the US.  The “popular” songs are “Black Sabbath”, “The Wizard”, and “N.I.B.”  European versions of the album featured “Evil Woman” instead of “Wicked World”, though I prefer the latter song.  The lengthy “Warning” was a track I learned to play along to by ear in college, on a recently purchased Gibson SG, without following any tablature; this is the “underrated gem” on the album, but “Behind the Wall of Sleep” also applies.  I bought this one on vinyl along with Paranoid, copied both to a 90 minute tape, and listened to them on the train ride up to The Hague for Model United Nations in high school (January 1985).  The Deluxe Edition features an alternate take of “The Warning”.

Paranoid.  Released September 18, 1970 in the UK, January 7, 1971 in the US. The second album is often considered the best, though I feel that SBS (below) deserves that distinction.  The “popular” songs are “War Pigs”, “Paranoid”, “Iron Man” and “Fairies Wear Boots”; the hidden gems are the balance: “Planet Caravan”, “Electric Funeral”, “Hand of Doom”, and “Rat Salad”.  A typical Sabbath set would open with “War Pigs”, close with “Paranoid” as the encore, and feature “Iron Man” somewhere in between, so clearly this album is crucial to a Sabbath collection.  The Deluxe Edition features a DVD-Video version of the complete album in 5.1 Surround (quad).

Master of Reality.  Released July 21, 1971.  I got this on cassette from the PX at Henderson Hall, the Marine Corps base next to Arlington Cemetery in northern Virginia, in summer 1984.  The other choice was Sabotage.  Since this album had two tracks from Speak of the Devil, “Sweet Leaf” and “Children of the Grave”, whereas Sabotage only had one, “Symptom of the Universe”, this one made the cut.  The album name provided the source for Chris Goss’ band name – Goss is known as a stoner rock idol, and closely associated with Josh Homme and Queens of the Stone Age.  The popular songs on this album are as noted above; the hidden gems are really the balance:  “After Forever” (a pro-religion song the fundies seem to ignore or just be completely unaware of), “Lord of this World”, “Solitude” – another haunting slow song – and “Into The Void”, covered by Soundgarden with completely different lyrics.  “Solitude” alone makes this a “Ok, now I want to kill myself” album.  Shouldn’t every Sabbath album qualify as such?

Vol. 4.  Released September 25, 1972.  I seem to recall buying this on vinyl along with Master of Reality, though for the latter it was simply rounding out the collection as I already had it on tape, whereas with this album I hadn’t heard it at all.  The popular song is “Snowblind”, and the hidden gems are “Wheels of Confusion” (only played live at the Hollywood Bowl – ten days before the album was released!), “Changes” (later done by Ozzy’s solo band), “Laguna Sunrise” (yet another slow instrumental, which seems to evoke images of a lazy Florida hotel in the early 60s), and “St. Vitus Dance”. 

Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath.  Released November 1973.  I bought this on vinyl along with Sabotage.  Others may disagree with me, but I think this is their peak.  Oddly, only the title track seems to survive as a hit, although Metallica were shrewd enough to cover “Sabbra Cadabra”.  “Fluff” is one of their best instrumentals.  “National Acrobat”, “Spiral Architect”, and “Killing Yourself to Live” are all excellent, and even the two weakest tracks, “Who Are You” (with Rick Wakeman on keyboards) and “Looking For Today” are still very good.  Not a bad track on the whole album – and certainly at least as good, if not much better (IMHO), as/than H&H and Mob Rules.  And the album artwork, both front and back cover, is one of the best in rock.  Unlike LZ IV, this is one of these albums where the artwork matches the quality of the album.

Sabotage.  Released July 28, 1975.  Inevitably, it was impossible to top SBS, but Sabotage suffers in comparison but not absolute terms – as well as having not merely a less impressive cover, but one which seems fairly thrown together (even with all their money, Sabbath still dressed like bums).  “Symptom Of The Universe” is the best known, but here it has a very nice acoustic 2^nd half which only resurfaced live with the Tony Martin era Cross Purposes tour set.  “Megalomania” is live on Past Lives; so far as I know, neither “Thrill of it All” – one of their best songs, ever, and easily the equal of anything on a Dio album by ANY band – or “The Writ” were ever played live.  “Hole in the Sky” was covered by Pantera.  The weakest track is “Am I Going Insane (Radio)”, but with so many strong tracks on the album, it can’t sink the album as a whole.

 Technical Ecstasy.  Released September 25, 1976. I bought this on vinyl along with Never Say Die.  Hipgnosis, best known for Pink Floyd covers (e.g. Dark Side of the Moon), struck out on this album; two robots passing each other on escalators, one apparently male, the other female.  It may be for this reason alone that this album gets such a bad rap; on Joe Siegler’s Black Sabbath website, there is a link to an article by Dan Marsicano on why this album is underrated; I agree that it is.  “Dirty Women” was brought back into the set for Ozzy’s return to Sabbath (1997-2001).  But the good songs are damn good: “You Won’t Change Me”, “All Moving Parts Stand Still”, and even “It’s Alright”, Bill Ward’s sole singing job on a Sabbath album, covered by Guns N’Roses.  For me, “Gypsy”, “Back Street Kids” and “Rock’n’Roll Doctor” (trying to be Blue Oyster Cult, as Marsicano described it) are indeed subpar, though no worse than simply mediocre.  “She’s Gone” is another sad and depressing song which was Sabbath’s particular forte. 

 Never Say Die.  Released September 28, 1978 (US), October 1, 1978 (UK).  I agree that this album deserves its bad reputation.  About the only songs I like on here are “Air Dance” (very similar to Frank Zappa – no wonder he was accompanying the band on their final tour with Ozzy, on which Van Halen was the opening act) and “Junior’s Eyes”.  I really can’t stand “Johnny Blade”, and the rest of the album is mediocre. 

 Live At Last.  Released summer of 1980.  An honorable mention for this live album, released well after Ozzy left the band but recorded on the Vol 4 tour (March 1973) – and includes “Killing Yourself To Live” (from the as-yet unreleased Sabbath, Bloody, Sabbath) with alternate lyrics.  The extended version of “Wicked World” is awesome: an unusually jazzy improv by Tony Iommi, snippets of “Supernaut”, and a heavy version of “Changes”.  Now this is included on Past Lives.  

 Vinyl.  We bought all the Sabbath albums on vinyl, up to and including Seventh Star.  Eternal Idol was the first album which came out when we were no longer buying records.  I bought We Sold Our Souls For Rock’N’Roll on vinyl in Paris, but never bothered to buy the CD version of it.  Of course, our vinyl versions, which were NEMS reissues from the 80s and not first generation Warner Brothers releases, did not have gatefold sleeves (except for Vol. 4, and that one was missing Ozzy and Bill), much less the posters.

 Remasters.  The first set was from Castle; they have lyrics and liner notes.  I can’t say I’ve noticed a HUGE difference between these and the original CD releases.  I haven’t heard the Rhino remasters; nor can I say I can trust Joel Siegler’s testimony that the Rhino versions are much better than the Castle series (which I have), as he has essentially become Sabbath’s webmaster and cannot risk alienating them by describing the newer ones in anything less than glowing terms.   For that matter, I really dislike the Amazon.com “user reviews” which try to tell me why these albums are so important – I know they are, I bought them ages ago, on vinyl, no less! – but fail to address the issue of whether the 3^rd generation remaster is any better than the previous two.  I do have a few of the Deluxe Editions, which claim the standard album is also digitally remastered.  At least with Judas Priest someone with no connection with the band took the trouble to listen to the various remastered versions of Rocka Rolla and Sad Wings of Destiny to give us an opinion as to which one he thought sounded best.  I’ve yet to see anything comparable for Black Sabbath.

 Bootlegs.  I have, on tape, several bootlegs: the Paris 1970 show (“War Pigs” as “Walpurgis Night”, with alternate lyrics), a Sabotage tour show with “Sabbra Cadabra”, the Reading 1984 Born Again show (includes “Smoke on the Water” in the encore), a Seventh Star tour bootleg with Ray Gillen on vocals (Hammersmith Odeon) (on CD), and the Rob Halford/Ozzy Osbourne show from 1992.

 For that matter, I might as well review the Dio albums.

 Heaven & Hell.  Just like Back In Black – by my other favorite band, AC/DC – Sabbath hit the ground running with their first album with Ronnie James Dio.  The title track, “Neon Knights”, “Children of the Sea”, and “Lonely is the Word” are all excellent.  “Die Young” and “Walk Away” are good, though I could do without “Lady Evil”.  And the artwork is killer.   But again, I still put Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath ahead of this album.

 The Mob Rules.  UGH.  I can’t stand the artwork, and unlike the prior album I also can’t stand the title track.  “Country Girl”, “Voodoo”, “The Sign of The Southern Cross”, are all quality, as are the lesser tracks.  Perhaps I’m biased by the terrible artwork.

 Live Evil.  The double live album with Dio, recorded in Seattle on the Mob Rules tour.  The mix of H&H, Mob Rules, and classic Ozzy tuneage is good, as is the sound quality.  Of course, the highlight is Dio’s pedantic instructions to an obviously English-speaking audience of Americans on the “Heaven & Hell” sing-along portion, i.e. “here’s the example.”  For all his skill as a singer, his crowd-control skills lagged well behind…Ian Anderson…Eric Bloom…Jim Morrison…Rob Halford…Bruce Dickinson…even Ozzy Osbourne and Ian Gillan, though I still put him a bit further ahead from Tony Martin.

Dehumanizer.  My friend Ken salivated over the imminent release of the album, and the tour for this album in 1992 was my first opportunity to see Black Sabbath in concert; the Seventh Star tour was cancelled before it reached Paris in 1986. 

            I really didn’t like this album.  Sorry, but I do NOT worship Ronnie James Dio – either in Elf, Rainbow, Sabbath or solo.  To me, every single track on this album is mediocre.  Tony and Dio clearly developed a “system” for writing songs which put them on auto-pilot.  If you like the formula, fine, but if you don’t it’s just another album of writing by the numbers.

 The Devil You Know.  The same deal with this album.  The “X of the Y” is the pattern for ¾ of the album.  Aside from “Fear”, “Bible Black”, and “Nevermore”, all the rest of the songs feature that type of song title and chorus.  This might as well be “Dehumanizer II” – great if you loved that album, otherwise so-so.

 Ozzy vs. Dio.  I had always assumed that Ozzy wrote the lyrics back when he was in the band.  Only much later did I read that Geezer was the principal lyricist for the band until Dio showed up and took over completely.  For some reason I never really liked Dio’s lyrics compared to Geezer’s, but until now I hadn’t been able to focus my thoughts on the issue sharply enough to articulate why.  If there is some subtle, barely articulable difference, it’s that Dio strikes me as pretentious, whereas Geezer and Ozzy are not.  Pretentious works for the Moody Blues, King Crimson, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd – the usual crop of “progressive” bands – but does not work so well for a blues-based hard rock band like Black Sabbath.  In the latter context we wind up with the spectacle of the black trenchcoated, “food court druids” waxing poetic about the occult.  I know we want to steer light years away from the Beavis & Butt-head, “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” crowd of idiots who unfortunately make up a sizable portion of the heavy metal audience, but this goes too far.  Plenty of us are neither pretentious nor idiots. 

 One last piece of anti-Dio heresy: I do like Born Again, even if Ian Gillan can’t stand it and no other Sabbath fan seems to be willing to admit it. 

Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath

 Time to return to the roots, stuff that really matters the most: including the all-time favorite Black Sabbath album, Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath.  Like Dark Side of the Moon and Back in Black, this is a classic album.  I can’t say it belongs in everyone’s collection, but certainly every ROCK fan should have it.  I bought it in high school at the same time I bought Sabotage, albums #5 and #6 respectively in the Ozzy/Sabbath lineup.  Such a good album, in fact, that every track deserves individual attention.

Of course, the album cover itself is one of the best, plus its backside – combined, it infers that the “demons” tormenting the poor guy are simply his own family members which his delirium transforms into devils instead of sympathetic friends and family.  Stunning!  With all the great albums which have remarkably poor album covers – Zeppelin IV comes to mind immediately – that the art and the music complement each other so well is itself commendable.

Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath.  The title track, killer all the way through and a good opener.  I had first heard this on Speak of the Devil, so I wasn’t prepared for the second set of vocals when I originally heard this on vinyl.  

National Acrobat.  Tuned down to C#, a good example of a complex song which shows Sabbath’s more artistic angle. 

Fluff.  A light instrumental, one of my favorite.  Although you couldn’t fill an entire album with soft Sabbath songs, there are a few: “Solitude”, “Planet Caravan”, “Laguna Sunrise”, and “She’s Gone”.  This is one of the better ones.  

Sabbra Cadabra.  Bar none, one of the top Sabbath songs.  Metallica covered it on their Garage, Inc. album, a rare occasion when they actually picked a better example of a band’s material to cover (along with “Astronomy” by Blue Oyster Cult, another gem).  The song has two parts: the initial up tempo part, then the second more romantic and darker part.  

Killing Yourself To Live.  Opens side two with a bang.  Especially kick ass in the middle when Ozzy whispers – over the fantastic riffing, “smoke it – get high.”   

Who Are You.  Features Rick Wakeman of Yes on keyboards.  When the band toured with Yes, Wakeman stuck with Ozzy and the gang.  I never figured out who the song was directed to, though the best bet is God.  This is after taking God’s side in “After Forever” from Master of Reality.  

Looking For Today.  More cynical but good rocking songs with familiar time changes and soft parts interlocking, a good combination of metal and organic.   

Spiral Architect.  A light acoustic intro, leading into a more spatial song to close off the album.  

Sean – the same guy who so cleverly figured out Rob Halford’s sexual orientation (and advised me that it was Clapton, not Harrison, playing lead guitar on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”) – missed the boat on this one.  He was too stuck up on Frank Zappa and Rush, so he slagged off Black Sabbath as having idiotic lyrics.  All these lyrics are excellent, well-written and thoughtful, easily in Neil Peart’s class and range.   Although Ronnie James Dio era Sabbath is most noted for its lyrics, I think that gives short shrift to Geezer Butler’s work on the first 8 albums they did with Ozzy Osbourne.   

Ozzy Osbourne still had his voice back then.  As I noted earlier, he can’t claim the pipes of Robert Plant or Ian Gillan, but he does sing – which more than can be said for rappers or the “cookie monster” singers from most thrash bands.  Geezer Butler and Bill Ward do the job on bass and drums, respectively.  And of course Tony Iommi nails the guitar.     

Incidentally, I learned to play “National Acrobat”, “Fluff”, “Killing Yourself To Live”, and “Sabbra Cadabra” – and the acoustic intro to “Spiral Architect” – on guitar.  “NA” has a low tuning, C#, shared with “Into the Void” and “Snowblind”, so I tend to play those three together. 

Ozzy After Sabbath

I suppose this is the appropriate complement to “Sabbath After Ozzy”.  I’ve been listening to Black Rain, the newest Ozzy album, and despite its surprisingly cheap and unimpressive packaging (no jewel case or insert) I was pleasantly surprised with its quality.

 Ozzy’s career after Sabbath – aside from the brief reunions with Sabbath – can be divided into three periods, easily corresponding to the guitarist he picked.  The drummers and bassists have come and gone (including Geezer Butler at one point).  But it’s the guitarists who really make their mark.  Ozzy doesn’t play ANY instrument and relies on real musicians (!) to help him out, though he has developed considerably as a singer and lyricist.

 1.  Randy Rhoads.  This includes his first two albums, Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman.  As we know by now, Randy died in that freak airplane accident – the tour bus driver was an amateur pilot and took Randy and a friend up for a spin...and killed them all in a kamikaze attack on the tour bus itself.  Anyhow.

            Randy was NOT a Black Sabbath fan – he considered himself MUCH better than Tony Iommi (right there he lost me).  He added the pretentious classical music elements.  I do like his albums, particularly the songs  “Mother Earth (Revelation)” and “Diary of a Madman” but I can do without “Flying High Again” for the umpteenth time.  Randy was an excellent guitarist, but I think his talent is overstated these days into legend status simply due to the fact that he died so young in the freak accident.

 2.  Jake E. Lee.  Another good guitarist – whose fame suffered because he simply left the band and wasn’t killed in a freak accident.  The two albums with him, Bark At The Moon and Ultimate Sin, are not bad at all, but largely forgotten.  These are, however, typical 80s metal.   Weeding out the 80s filler would result in one decent album.

 3.  Zakk Wylde.  I do like Zakk.  From No Rest For The Wicked to Black Rain, Wylde undoubtedly rips. His masterpiece is “No More Tears”.  Unlike Randy, Wylde DOES worship at Tony’s altar and does a fairly good job of covering the Sabbath songs, especially since he’s not reluctantly going through the motions.  I suppose he overdoes the “bearded biker redneck” image with Black Label Society, but I’ll take that if he still puts some balls into Ozzy’s albums.  They do tend to repeat each other fairly often in a familiar formula, so it’s difficult not to get tired of them, but all the same, I do like them.

 4. Brad Gillis.  The first Ozzy album I ever heard was Speak of the Devil, which is probably an odd one to begin with: it’s a live album of ALL Black Sabbath songs at a time at which he already had two albums worth of solo material with Randy Rhoads.  My buddy Phil had bought it at the PX and was crazy about it, particularly “War Pigs.”  The story was that Jet Records, run by Sharon Arden>>>Osbourne’s father, insisted on a live album immediately after Randy’s death.  Rather than tastelessly spit out the live Randy material they did have then (which later was released as Ozzy-Randy Tribute) they simply played a one-off show with Brad Gillis playing nothing but Sabbath songs.  On the remaining dates of the “Diary of a Madman” tour, Gillis did play the Rhoads material. 

            Gillis did a respectable job, though he didn’t particularly put much effort into faithfully reproducing Tony’s solos.  The best that can be said is that Gillis had a terrific guitar tone.  Ozzy screams, “this album’s for you people, man!” and I have to wonder who he’s referring to. 

            But at the time I didn’t connect Ozzy with Black Sabbath.  On the school bus I’d listen to the album on my Walkman (remember those?) and the older kids would ask what I was listening to.  “Hey, these are BLACK SABBATH songs!”  Now this dopey, clueless 13 year old finally had a clue.  Sure enough, I went to FNAC (the huge record store in Paris) and flipped through the Black Sabbath vinyl (remember vinyl?) and sure enough saw.. OZZY OSBOURNE listed on the albums!  And hey, look!  It’s those songs!  D’OH!

            So we asked for Black Sabbath albums for Christmas, and guess what we got?  Born Again and The Mob Rules!  (Sigh).  I ended up getting the Ozzy albums after school, passing through FNAC and spending my leftover lunch money on pairs: Black Sabbath/Paranoid, Master of Reality/Vol 4, Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath/Sabotage, and Technical Ecstasy/Never Say Die.  But as crazy and stupid as it sounds, I have BRAD GILLIS (and my buddy Phil) to thank for getting me into Black Sabbath.

 Ozzy vs. Sabbath.  As I noted earlier, Sabbath since Ozzy has had its ups and downs.  Heaven and Hell, The Mob Rules vs. TYR and Forbidden.  Ozzy’s material has never been as dark as Sabbath’s: at one point Rick Rubin – producer of Slayer and Danzig – was brought in as a producer, and Zakk Wylde remarked that it was “as if the sheet music was being faxed to us directly from Satan.” Ozzy concurred, saying, “if I wanted to do that kind of music, I’d do it with Sabbath.”  Ozzy’s material is more lighthearted, the overall philosophy being, “it’s a crazy, fucked-up world out there, but there is still some hope.” 

            Relative to such bands as Slayer and Megadeth, or any of these death metal bands with “cookie monster” vocals, Ozzy is certainly much more polished and accessible.  You can understand the lyrics!  But it’s still METAL.  The 16 year old girl who says “like, you know” every other word and listens to Beyonce and 50 Cent, the skinny VW-driving REM fan, the 30-something soccer mom, are never going to bang their head to any of Ozzy’s material.  It’s not nearly pop-oriented enough to appeal to people who wouldn’t otherwise listen to “heavy metal”, and the crowd at an Ozzy or Ozzfest concert is the same 90% male demographic you’d find at a Slayer or Anthrax show.

 Sharon Osbourne & “The Osbournes”.  I never really watched the show that much.  To me Ozzy is a singer – and most importantly the singer for Black Sabbath.  Watching him at home without Tony, Geezer & Bill is not particularly worthwhile (why weren’t THEY ever on the show??).  He was likeable and adorable, bewildered by his own wealth (I suppose his mind is still in the slums of Birmingham even if his body is in L.A.) and forever baffled by such things as remote controls and poo-ing pets.  It got old rather quickly.  I won’t comment on Jack or Kelly, as they have no real connection with Ozzy’s solo career.

            I don’t have a problem with Sharon Osbourne.  She saved Ozzy’s ass from alcoholic suicide, salvaged his career, and believed in him when he didn’t even believe in himself (a heavy metal June Carter to the heavy metal Johnny Cash).  She deserves every penny of his wealth - seeing to it that HE gets what he needs and doesn’t get screwed.  If she throws her weight around, amen.  I wasn’t keen on the slew of crappy bands opening for Sabbath/Ozzy on the Ozzfests, but at least we got Sabbath and Ozzy – and a few good bands like Iron Maiden – compared to the Lollapalooza tours.  (Where’s the stoner rock festival, man?  Come on!).  Metal fans seem to see her with the same hatred and loathing Rush Limbaugh has for Hillary Clinton, but I don’t think Sharon Osbourne deserves it anymore than Hillary does. 

 There we go.  Ozzy has aquitted himself well since Sabbath, thanks to Sharon.  Just when I thought he might be getting into a rut, Black Rain has restored my faith in his ability to entertain me.