The Definitive 1000 Songs Of All Time 1955 to 2005: Number 979

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Number 979 - Black Sabbath

Number 979

Black Sabbath

"Iron Man"

(1971)
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Genre:Hard Rock

I much prefer "War Pigs" to "Iron Man" but one of the criteria set for "The Definitive 1000 Songs Of All Time 1955 to 2005" was that I could not use songs that were already in my other volumes of music. (foiled again)

"Iron Man" (which sports one of the most immediately identifiable riffs in metal history). The subject matter is unrelentingly, obsessively dark, covering both supernatural/sci-fi horrors and the real-life traumas of death, war, nuclear annihilation, mental illness, drug hallucinations, and narcotic abuse."

Sounds absolutely peachy doesn't it? Still i'd rather listen to Black Sabbath than watch Ozzy on TV!

For more Black Sabbath see Number 826

For Ozzy Osbourne see Number 516 & Number 744

For more Ozzy visit MM Vol 2 #138

What does rolling Stone think about Black Sabbath?

Mixing equal parts bone-crushing volume, catatonic tempos, and ominous pronouncements of gloom and doom delivered in Ozzy Osbourne's keening voice, Black Sabbath was the heavy-metal king of the '70s. Despised by rock critics and ignored by radio programmers, the group sold over 8 million albums before Osbourne departed for a solo career in 1979 [see entry]. The band's original lineup reunited for a two-year tour in 1997. The four original members, schoolmates from a working-class district of industrial Birmingham, first joined forces as the Polka Tulk Blues Company, a blues band. They quickly changed their name to Earth, then, in 1969, to Black Sabbath; the name came from the title of a song written by bassist Geezer Butler, a fan of occult novelist Dennis Wheatley. It may also have been an homage to a Boris Karloff film. The quartet’s eponymously titled 1970 debut, recorded in two days, went to #8 in England and #23 in the U.S. A single, “Paranoid,” released in advance of the album of the same name, reached #4 in the U.K. later that year; it was the group’s only Top 20 hit.~ [Source Rolling Stone - from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)]

Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs ranked this song Number 310 and the Album ranked at Number 130

This song has a crowbarred rating of 48.7 out of 108

Iron Man - Black Sabbath
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