Happy 40th Anniversary to Black Sabbath’s ninth studio album Heaven And Hell, originally released April 25, 1980.
Years ago, a friend’s cousin had a 1970 blue Chevy Nova that contained a nitrous oxide system complete with a red button mounted near the dash. He would delight in pressing it, sending a double-shot of oxygen and fuel to the engine, thereby making it go zoom. The Nova was also equipped with the most ear-splitting and gut-punching Rockford Fosgate amplifier and subwoofers I’d ever experienced. It was so loud, it turned the music blasting forth from it into an extreme audio weapon, threatening to cause your ears to bleed and your head to explode all over the Nova’s lustrous black leather interior.
I didn’t know him that well, but one afternoon I agreed to tag along as he went “cruising” by the lake one county over from where we lived. Basically, that meant we drove very slowly in a circle for hours where families were picnicking and, most importantly, girls were sunbathing or playing volleyball. By blasting his ridiculous stereo out of his muscle car like some sort of shrill mating call, the intent was to attract the ladies over for what promised to undoubtedly be some stimulating intellectual conversation. It was in this setting where I first heard Black Sabbath’s Heaven And Hell.
As we circled the main beach area over and over and over, the full-throated, intensely masculine vocals of Ronnie James Dio seemed to warn the sunbathers of our arrival: “Oh, no, here it comes again” is the apropos first line to opening track, “Neon Knights.” From there on, dragons and kings, bloody angels, jackals, and protectors of the realm all converged to guarantee that neither my friend’s cousin, nor I, were going to get lucky at the lake that afternoon. My ears rang for hours after, and I didn’t accept his invitation for another adventure a couple of weeks later. By then I had, however, acquired a copy of Heaven And Hell on cassette (it was the 1980s, after all).
By the end of the 1970s, Black Sabbath and their ilk were seen as dinosaurs to the fans of the new crop of punks and new wavers making all the headlines at the time. Their 1978 album, the ironically-titled Never Say Die! became lead singer Ozzy Osbourne’s last full studio album with the band, as his problems with drugs and drink had begun to wear thin with Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward. They decided to work on a side project while Ozzy attempted to clean up.
The side project came about when Iommi ran into Dio, coincidentally enough, at the Rainbow Bar & Grill in LA. Dio had recently left Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow due to a power struggle, and Iommi invited him to jam with Ward and Geoff Nicholls. (Butler was not happy with playing without Ozzy and skipped the initial jam.)
Another coincidence of note: Dio was suggested as a placeholder until Ozzy recovered by none other than the daughter of Sabbath’s notorious then-manager Don Arden, Sharon Levy, who was at the time road managing ELO and would soon become Ozzy’s manager and wife.
During that fateful jam session, Dio quickly came up with what became a Heaven And Hell standout, “Children of the Sea.” Shortly after, Butler returned to the fold, Ozzy was out, and Nicholls was relegated to auxiliary keyboardist (where he remained until 2004). They relocated to Miami and hired Deep Purple and Whitesnake vet Martin Birch to produce. Black Sabbath started recording in earnest what would become their most successful album—commercially and artistically—in years.
The major difference you notice when the needle drops is the power of the voice. Rainbow fans —and those that had followed him from even the Elf days—already knew the mighty lungs of Dio. Attaching them to the Sabbath machine however, made it all sound fresh and vital. Sabbath’s new sound mainly came from Dio simply singing an actual melody and using the blues-rock phrasing he had become known for. Whereas Ozzy seemed to always sing the riff (“Iron Man,” anyone?), Dio gave the Sabs a shot of demonic soul (check out the Paul Rodgers-like phrasing in the chorus of “Children of the Sea”).
The eight songs contained on Heaven And Hell are all top-shelf Sabbath that easily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their first four albums, while at the same time pointing the way to the band that would bear Dio’s name just a couple of years away (“Lady Evil”, “Wishing Well”). There’s the final four minutes of album closer “Lonely Is The Word” where Iommi and company flaunt their heavy blues chops more explicitly than ever before, the straight-up rock of “Walk Away,” the relentless “Die Young,” and of course, the epic title track.
Propelled by its ominous galloping bass line (inspired from a song by Quartz, Nicholls’ former band) and the usual lyrical ambiguities from Dio that sound profound but don’t really make much sense (why must we bleed for the dancer?), “Heaven And Hell” would point the way to “Holy Diver” and “The Last In Line”—two of Dio’s most enduring classics.
Though they would only last for one more studio album (1981’s Mob Rules) and one double-live outing (1982’s Live Evil), both with Vinnie Appice after Ward bowed out due to alcohol issues as well as the death of his parents, the Dio-led Sabbath was far and away the most successful of all the non-Ozzy-fronted incarnations. So much so that the Mob Rules lineup reformed as Heaven & Hell and released the one-off, better than expected The Devil You Know in 2009. Sadly, Dio would be dead within a year of that release.
Still, Sabbath’s Heaven And Hell remains Dio’s crowning achievement in a long career filled with them, and his fans can take comfort in knowing that every band he fronted were made all the better for it. So tonight, drop the needle on Heaven And Hell, raise those devil horns high, pour one out for that 1970 Chevy Nova, and bleed a little for the dancer.
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