(Credits: Tony Iommi)
Mon 15 December 2025 23:00, UK
It’s hard to imagine rock music’s tapestry without four working-class Brummies joining forces at the 1960s’ tail-end, standing tall in its centre.
Without lapsing into lofty hagiographies or stuffy pop lore, but it can’t be overstated how foundational Black Sabbath’s impact was during their classic era across the 1970s.
Paving the way for heavy metal along with Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin, guitarist Tony Iommi’s heavy blues attack and frontman Ozzy Osbourne’s distinct vocal howl all scored a gloomy, skulking horror trip, daring to lift the veil on a peace and love idyll long turned to a bad joke amid the febrile political engulfment at home and across the Atlantic.
Growing up in Birmingham’s Aston area, Iommi and Osbourne’s paths crossed early on, long before musical paths came calling. Both attended Birchfield Road Secondary Modern School, Osbourne behind a year, and even reputedly on the receiving end of occasional bullying from the elder Iommi. Such schoolyard experiences forced creative paths to split due to the early mutual disliking.
Iommi played in a string of local blues bands, meeting Sabbath drummer Bill Ward in The Rest and later Mythology, before the latter’s dissolution after a drug bust.
In the neighbourhood, bassist Geezer Butler was in need of a singer for a band he’d started at school, Rare Breed. Hearing the word and turning up to Butler’s house with a chimney brush and no shoes, Butler embraced the eccentric budding frontman. Rare Breed disbanded just as Mythology had streets away, and rock history would be cemented from an all-important ad in the local music shop.
“Ozzy Zig Requires Gig – has own PA”. Better than nothing. Boasting the attractive asset of owning a sound system courtesy of his father’s generosity, the name sprung to Iommi’s mind the old schoolmate from his Birchfield days. “I know a guy called Ozzy,” he reportedly told Ward. “But it just can’t be the same guy. I’ve never heard him sing.”
“We went round to his house and his mum answered the door,” Iommi recalled to Kerrang in 2018. “I saw him walking up the hallway and I said, ‘Bill, this is the guy from school. I don’t think that’ll work.’ And we went back to my house.” Yet, a PA’s a PA. Coming round to Osbourne’s role in the band, the recruitment of old Rare Breed bassist Butler forged the genesis of the band not long after, initially called the Polka Tulk Blues Band an featuring a slide guitarist and saxophonist.
Losing the extra members, the reduced quartet played the local Birmingham pub circuit as Earth in September 1968. Curiously, Iommi left for a couple of months to join Jethro Tull and even appeared on The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus film with the band, before rejoining Earth in November. Inspired by the popularity of horror films, and noticing their material take a spookier, heavier turn, Earth borrowed the title of a Boris Karloff horror feature and burnished the metal pioneer that inspired countless future metalheads forever in their debt.
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