What do you do when you live in Birmingham in 1969 and are bored to death? That’s right! You start a band, call yourselves Black Sabbath and begin dominating the world with songs about “War Pigs”, “Hole In The Sky” and “Paranoid” activities. And while you’re at it, you try to play the rawest, lowest Black Sabbath chords the world has ever heard.
This, in a nutshell, is the story of… Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward and Ozzy Osbourne. Fun fact: Black Sabbath wasn’t the first name of the band. Initially, they called themselves Earth, but there was another band with that name, although in a whole different genre.
So what do you do when in doubt? You look around for inspiration and if that presents itself in the form of a Mario Brava’s Black Sabbath horror movie poster on the other side of the street, you grab it and pin it on to what we now know as the first metal band ever. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
The band started off with bluesy hard rock chords and tunes, but quickly embraced the darkness. Black Sabbath’s first titleless record from 1969 was so raw and contra flower power movement that it gained a lot of popularity in no time. The first heavy metal band’s commercial break came after their second album Paranoid. The title song went through the roof and the British metalheads rose to stardom.
After ten years of successful touring and recording, Ozzy Osbourne was pressured to quit the band due to his struggles with excessive drug and alcohol addiction. He started a golden solo career and added the occasional Black Sabbath song to his setlist. Ozzy’s departure was the first of many changes the band made. Osbourne was succeeded by Ronnie James Dio, who was thrown out of the band in 1982 after being accused of messing with the mix of Live Evil. Ronnie followed Ozzy’s example and went out to start a successful solo career. He was temporarily replaced by frontmen like Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan, Tony Martin and Glenn Hughes.
The only steady factor in the history of Black Sabbath is guitarist Tony Iommi who lost the tops of his left middle- and ring finger during an accident on his last day in a metal factory. He is known for using plastic tops to replace his fingertips. This is also one of the reasons he loves to play power chords on the lowest guitar strings.
Since 1992, Black Sabbath started to play reunion tours and recorded their last studio record in 2013 called 13. So, wondering which dark Black Sabbath chords shine on that album? Just check it out.
