{"id":618923,"date":"2026-09-09T04:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T04:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/618923\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T04:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T04:18:10","slug":"black-sabbath-cover-model-louisa-livingstone-discusses-her-own-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/618923\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Sabbath Cover Model Louisa Livingstone Discusses Her Own Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor half a century, the identity of the cloaked witchy woman staring out at metalheads on the cover sleeve of Black Sabbath<\/a>\u2018s self-titled debut was a mystery. Then, in 2020, a Rolling Stone article<\/a> revealed the model to be Louisa Livingstone, who\u2019d also appeared on appeared on the covers and in art for Queen and British rock band.<\/p>\n

\n\tPrior to the Rolling Stone article, she had spent the previous 50 years working as a model, actress, and musician, among other creative endeavors, and had moved to mainland Europe where she recorded electronic music under the name Indreba<\/a>, a portmanteau for \u201cIncredible Dream Band.\u201d At the time, she was unprepared for the band\u2019s vast fanbase to embrace her.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI still find it a little bizarre at times being the Black Sabbath \u2018witch woman\u2019 since of course I\u2019m also a lot of other things \u2026 but there have been some very nice interactions with a few lovely Black Sabbath fans online,\u201d the musician, who lives in Spain\u2019s Murcia region, now tells Rolling Stone via email.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier this year, she released two rock-focused Indreba songs, \u201cWitch Woman\u201d and \u201cThe Woman by the Mill,\u201d which explicitly reference her claim to metal fame. \u201cJust a girl in a cloak on a cold autumn day,\u201d she sings on \u201cWitch Woman.\u201d \u201cNow I\u2019m the face of heavy metal, leading the way.\u201d The song at times hints at Sabbathian doom metal and crunchy guitar but with unique melodrama.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe power-metal song \u201cThe Woman by the Mill\u201d references Mapledurham Watermill, where photographer Keith Macmillan took the cover image. \u201cThey called you witch, they called you ghost,\u201d she sings. \u201cSpirit haunting the river coast, but the years rolled on and the truth came through, a young girl posing in the morning dew.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c\u2018Witch Woman\u2019 came out of nowhere as a sudden idea of what I could do,\u201d she says. \u201cBlack Sabbath fans loved the songs, which was gratifying as it was aimed at them and definitely deliberately in the metal genre for that reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tEmbracing Sabbath fans\u2019 interests, she attempted to raffle off her autograph<\/a> to one lucky fan as a means to raise money for her cat-rescue efforts around the time Black Sabbath reunited for a final time at the Back to the Beginning concert<\/a>. \u201cThe winner never claimed the prize despite repeated attempts to contact them,\u201d she says. \u201cSo my autograph is still extremely rare and unknown.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNow she\u2019s turned her musical interests to the fantastical: a mini\u2013rock opera called Alice based on Lewis Carroll\u2019s Alice in Wonderland books, which her father read her every night as a child. She got the idea for it by discussing the idea of panpsychism, \u201cthe theory that everything (including AI) is conscious\u201d with an AI chatbot. The conversation \u201cled to the concept of myself (or Alice!) falling in love with AI but that in the end it\u2019s just a beautiful illusion along with everything else on the internet \u2026 and getting back to being oneself and nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Louisa Livingstone<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 23-minute work is split into five parts, beginning with a rock tango (\u201cFeed Your Head\u201d) with lyrics like, \u201cOne pill makes you scroll for hours,\u201d as she updates Jefferson Airplane\u2019s \u201cWhite Rabbit\u201d: \u201cGo ask Alice, when she\u2019s 10 feet tall, staring at the digital wall.\u201d The rest of the EP, which sounds like psych-rock in a blender, has lyrics about algorithms, \u201csilicon gold,\u201d and synthetic angels built out of code. It ends with \u201cThe Red Queen\u2019s Wake-Up Call. \u201cThe digital palace is turning to dust in the light of a genuine day,\u201d Livingstone sings.<\/p>\n

\n\tLivingstone grew up in a musical household, since she says her mother was a \u201cvirtuoso violinist,\u201d and later gravitated to guitar and keyboards for herself. She once owned a Framus guitar she says had been owned by Jeff Beck, and she used to record music on a Sony reel to reel. Since she moved to Spain, she played live electric lead guitar with a couple of bands. These days, she uses Logic as a digital audio workstation and mostly plays keyboards.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve been experimenting a little with cloning my own voice and seeing what different things I can do with the help of AI,\u201d she says. \u201cI used to be very judgmental about AI like many people, but it\u2019s a tool that you can use to create either absolute rubbish or \u2018slop\u2019 as it\u2019s called, to something really good and interesting. It\u2019s still down to the user and their input. \u2026 It will always reflect the person who is using it and how well or badly they use it and their musical tastes and knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tShe started recording as Indreba, she says, when she learned how powerful her computer could be as an instrument, sometime around 2014. One musician she reveres is Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess, who has created iPad apps that serve as musical instruments<\/a>. \u201cHe firmly believes everyone should enjoy music and making it, no matter how,\u201d she says. \u201cThe iPad can actually be amazing in how versatile I can be as a musical instrument in the right hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHer plans going forward are to explore what programs like Logic and Omnisphere can do, and she hopes she can get a theater to perform Alice live. \u201cI plan to carry on creating enjoyable music that\u2019s a joy to make in all kinds of ways,\u201d she says, \u201cand to dispense with anything that tries to box me in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For half a century, the identity of the cloaked witchy woman staring out at metalheads on the cover…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[10499,93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-618923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-black-sabbath","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}