9. Black Sabbath1970
I like that album. A lot. Ozzy’s voice is phenomenal. I like a lot of early Black Sabbath. I first discovered and got into the simplicity of those riffs, the sort of nursery rhyme nature of them. Tony Iommi is great. I don’t know whether it is to do with his missing fingers, but his riffs are very particular and oddly shaped. This is another album I can listen to with my kids. They really like ‘Iron Man’ from Paranoid as well. The songwriting is ridiculously naïve and strange, it is all about cursing witches and robots. But the way he sings those songs, with such a blues rock element to it. His voice has an angelic soaring quality. It is great. No, not angelic, more diabolical than that – but it has a searing quality, like he totally believes in fairies and mystical craziness. His music seems incredibly full of belief. It is great. I love that album.
There are some jazzy bits on it as well. My metal phase was Sabbath then more noodly stuff like Van Halen and Rush. And Yes, which is more prog. Heavy prog was more my thing. Rush and Van Halen had this musicality which I liked. I don’t listen to it much now. Some Van Halen is good. But I did have a metal phase and played in a heavy metal band initially when I had long hair and wanted to play solos. We were called Vamongus. I think it was after a tribe in The Warriors? Some film reference.
We were a double act of guitarists. We would outdo each other, try to be the fastest on these interminable solos. I would do one then he would do one. The next song, I would do a solo then he would do one. I don’t know how much fun it was to watch. But we had a lot of fun. We mutated into a sort of jazz rock band. Knowing that there were guitarists from Yorkshire – John McLaughlin and Gary Boyle – I could dream that I could maybe one day join the ranks.
