March 17, 1973. Black Sabbath play The Rainbow Theatre in London’s Finsbury Park. It’s the twenty-fourth of 25 shows across Britain and Europe that they have completed in a 32-day period. Everyone is exhausted, propped up on speed, coke, dope, acid – anything they can get their hands on to keep going. It’s the band’s second of two shows at The Rainbow, their last night in London, and there will be a big party afterwards. The following day they will lie comatose, flopped across the tiny seats of a small propeller plane as it bundles them north to Newcastle for the tour’s final show, at the City Hall.
Right now, though, Ozzy Osbourne, Sabbath’s 24-year-old officially ‘loony’ singer, knows only the Rainbow spotlight and what it’s doing to his head. Grabbing onto the mic stand with both hands, to stop himself from falling, he yells into the darkness: “Are you high?” The audience, almost exclusively male, greatcoated and long-haired, respond with a muted: “Yeaahhh…” Ozzy tries again. “I said are you high?” Same response, only a little louder this time. Ozzy stares at them forlornly. “Are you high?!” he screams at the top of his voice.
This time the place erupts. “Good!” he tells them. “Cos so am I!” Tony Iommi swipes at his guitar, and the ugly, tormented riff to Snowblind detonates, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer and Bill Ward thrumming as the building shudders. This is what it’s all about in 1973, man. Not all that glam stuff you see on TV, but the fully loaded realisation of what rock music has become: hard, vicious, undeniable. And completely critic-proof.
What no one knows is that a few days after the Rainbow show there’ll be a phone call that quietly cancels what should have been Sabbath’s next US tour. Promoters will be furious. But eight months on the road has nearly killed them. Now all Iommi wants is to get back into the studio and produce the masterpiece that will, finally, he is determined, prove that Black Sabbath
