Aerosmith

Reading Steven Tyler’s autobiography (Does The Noise In My Head Bother You?) is written in gonzo style that might actually be him writing. Otherwise he dictated it (the way Sidney Sheldon used to work) and someone typed up his verbal diarrhoea. If this is his actual conversational style he could conceivably be a tiresome, intense bore. Lots of telling detail but not always all that substantive or illuminating except for giving us a glimpse into the Tyler psyche. The best part is that he is much more self deprecating than his on=stage, outward persona would suggest but, then, it is trite that many rock frontmen are rather more shy in private than they are on stage where  rock star is a completely different person to the human inside the hard edged shell of braggadocio.

Although the Seventies were the influential years in my musical education, being the years between ages 11 and 20, I read about bands without ever hearing the music. I was ignorant about many of the major bands of that era, specifically the American bands, because they were not covered in the South African media and received absolutely no airplay on South African radio.

Aerosmith is a case in point. By late 1974, when I began buying the US monthly rock publication Hit Parader, Aerosmith was starting to make in the USA and Lisa Robinson, the editor of the magazine, obviously had a thing for the band or maybe just Steven Tyler’s Mick Jagger influenced looks and sexual presence as frontman of a rather good rock and roll band.

Aerosmith may have been big in America but they meant diddley squat in South Africa in the late Seventies. Between 1974 and probably 1980 I read quite a bit about them without having any clue what the music actually sounded like. I also had no real biographical information on the band, at least not from Hit Parader who treated the band as superstars and who never let on that Aerosmith had released their debut album only in about 1972.  On the other hand, Hit Parader would have assumed that their American readership already knew the band well. It was just me, in the rather backaward Stellenbosch of the time, who was ignorant.

Tyler was the main face of the band besides Joe Perry, who was the Keith Richards to Tyler’s Jagger, and he sure looked damn sexy and dangerous in his loose fitting low-slung outfits,  resembling pyjamas, that left most of his white, hairless body bare, and the scarves and floppy women's hats. Tyler was one of the last of the typical breed of Sixties-informed Seventies rock star who clearly loved dressing up for stage and photo opportunities and for whom dressing up meant an androgynous image where the wardrobe consisted of as many items of women’s clothing, barring actual lingerie, as he could find. The look was outrageously flamboyant and this held true for his motormouth interviews and pronouncements. The way to get Hit Parader's attention was to look extremely good and to say something extremely outrageous or least highly quotable.

Up to that point my knowledge of hard rock had been pretty much limited to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Grand Funk Railroad and Boston. This was because these bands had hit singles on local radio or mates had the records. Acts like Led Zeppelin, Kiss and Blue Oyster Cult were still just names to me and it was a while before I owned some records by these bands.  The whole FM rock thing of Kansas, Boston, Angel, and others of that ilk, passed me by. I liked faster louder and not the soaring harmonic guitars and anthemic vocals of the AOR bands.

This lack of musical experience of mid-Seventies American hard rock changed somewhat when I got my hands on Toys In the Attic (1975) and Rocks (1976), the brace of albums that officially and permanently put Aerosmith on the map as superstars. My acquistion of those two records were followed by Live Bootleg (1978) and Night in the Ruts (1979). I bought all of them during the five years between 1977 and 1981 that I spent at Stellenbosch University, studying for my two law degrees, and all of them were on sale at discount prices when I bought them. This was soon after the punk explosion in the UK and even if I had not heard much of the punk songbook I was ideologically firmly committed to the punk ethos and what I perceived to be its sound, based on what I knew of the Sex Pistols and the Clash and their antecedents in the MC5 and Stooges. Therefore I took a gamble on the Aerosmith albums. I’d read about the band and now I wanted to know what they sounded like and whether the hype had any substance.

To say that I was pleasantly surprised and much astonished would be an understatement. This music did not sound like heavy metal; in the same way that Blue Oyster Cult (whose first three albums I bought at more or less the same time) was much more melodic than the bog standard heavy riffing bands of the time.

Aerosmith was far more loose and grungy and visceral than, say, Boston. There was an amazing, fierce, fuzzed-out roar to the guitars that reminded me more of the punk movement (or how I imagined the punk bands would sound) than of the British heavy rock styles I knew.  Aerosmith was loud, energetic, scuzzy and rocked like a demon. To my mind I could play Sex Pistols, Clash and Aerosmith back to back and the music would be of a piece. In fact, most of London Calling was far more AOR than either Rocks or Toys in The Attic. Of course the lyrical content of Aerosmith songs, although undeniably clever, was still the basic building blocks of hard rock, namely all manner of sexual innuendo and schoolboy smut and songs about partying. Socially conscious and politically correct it was not.

When Live Bootleg came up in a discount bin I bought it because it would give me an overview of Aerosmith tunes I had not heard before plus some interesting cover versions. I was keen on live albums at the time as collections of hits played in rougher fashion than the polished studio recordings.  Unfortunately Live Bootleg turned out to one example of a cheap album that was not 100% perfect in quality. Sections of the vinyl deteriorated quickly but there was also an imperfection in the vinyl that caused one of the two records of the double album (I think it was the second disc) to jump when played, which meant I could not listen to it all that much or even record it on an audio cassette. Where the records were playable, it turned out that the live versions of the songs were pretty much as grungy as the studio versions  although an ad more jam oriented. As a live on stage proposition Aerosmith were the epitome of dirty rock and roll in the unvarnished Stones sense  of the concept.

Not long after Night In The Ruts also appeared in the discount bins at a very good, low price and I snapped it up. I believe that it got mostly less than positive reviews taking the view that Aerosmith had become an inspiration-free band wallowing in its success, over-indulging in the rewards of mega success and losing focus. In a way it was a departure in sound and vision but in another way I found it highly satisfactory except, once again, the vinyl was scratched and the record was playable only once or twice and then no more. The earlier rough-edged sound had been smoothed out to a degree with a loss of that fuzzy grunge I had admired on the earlier records, with some heavy blues and a Shangri La’s cover. I don’t care what the rock critics say. For me Night in the Ruts remains a favourite album and a record I’d l far rather listen to than anything the band has released afterwards, especially the enormous hit albums of the late Eighties.

Ii is true though, from this late Seventies point on, that Aerosmith lost direction. Joe  Perry left, briefly, then the band released a brace of mediocre albums before coming back in the late 80s with Permanent Vacation (1987) and then Pump (1989), both of which had monster radio hits that dominated even the South African airwaves and set the band on the path to serious wealth. Aerosmith may have made better rock albums in die Seventies but from 1987 they became a commercial monster with smooth well produced heavy rock made by older guys in the fashion of the time and, if the hits were good, none of them ever motivated me to buy any Aerosmith product ever again.

I guess it is the life cycle of most bands that struggle before becoming truly successful and secure in their careers later in life. In the first 5 to 10 years the bad members are young, ambitious, hard living and make records full of youthful brio and vim but do not necessarily make a bunch of money partly because they blow their income on drugs and expensive shit that come from the desire to achieve a rock and roll lifestyle. A few years into the career the band has a purple patch where they write and record an album or two with massive hits, commercial success is enormous and the band members at last achieve financial security and realise that a career can be had if they play their cards right and relax a bit into the lifestyle and do not take it to the extreme all the time. This is the corporate phase where production values are high and required to be high, lots of attention is paid to detail. Professional songwriters and producers come onto the scene to guide the band to a sustainable career with continued commercial success. Generally this is where the song writing and production become slick and the tunes sound good on the radio and the quirky rough edges are smoothed out to the degree that the music becomes far less interesting than it might have been at the beginning.

Aerosmith fell victim to this syndrome. From Aerosmith to Night in the Ruts the band released a succession of good gritty Seventies hard rock albums made by young guys wanting to make their mark and loving to rock out. From Permanent Vacation onwards the music was being written and recorded by a bunch of increasingly older guys with the older guys' attitude to what rock is or should be, with an eye on maintaining the commercial initiative and the sense of belonging to the music industry establishment and being proud of it and accepting all kinds of honours they might have scoffed at when they were very young and rebellious. 

Young Aerosmith were rebellious punks who wanted to ultimate rock and roll lifestyle of women, drugs and excessive living. The older, more mature Aerosmith, who had become careerists as much as anyone else in the business who foresaw longevity provided they slowed down and observed a couple of rules, and realized that corporate rock was much more lucrative than rebellious rock and could give one the kind of comfort and luxury being a rebel and showing the establishment the finger, never could or would.

As soon as Aerosmith songs started enjoying serious airplay in South Africa the smooth, glossy pop veneer put me off. This was nothing like the satisfactory rough crunch of their early albums. They got older, more proficient, lost the drug habits and realized that their career demanded closer attention to craftsmanship and maintaining their health than punk rebellion and purely visceral rock and roll.

Somewhere along 1990 Aerosmith crossed the line from outlaw rockers to classic rockers. In my opinion Aerosmith’s best years were the first decade of their existence as band. They’ve going for more than 40 years now and will never equal those first 7 studio albums regardless of how commercially successful later records might have been.

  

Grand Funk Railroad shines on.

In 1974, riding on a crest of a wave of commercial popularity, Grand Funk Railroad played a gig in Los Angeles that was filmed and is now available on YouTube.

This is the four piece Grand Funk with long haired Mark Farner, bare chested and wearing high-waisted loon pants; Mel Schacher with a curly bubble perm and wearing a lime coloured leisure suit, looking very cheesy indeed, Don Brewer with an enormous Afro and in a shirt with puffy sleeves normally seen only on Cuban conga players at low rent hotels. Craig Frost is on the side of the stage behind his keyboards and not very visible.

 The band opens with “Footstomping Music” and Farner plays a bit of keyboards in tandem with Frost, dances all over the stage and plays the big time American rocker to the hilt. “Rock & Roll Soul” is the second party anthem before the band does a fave from the early days, “Heartbreaker,” where Mark Farner’s voice actually suits the material. It is one of the more tuneful songs the three piece had recorded and probably deserves anthemic status. Fanrer then announces that the band are going to do a couple of numbers from their current hit album, Shinin On, including the title track and the current hit single “The Loco-Motion” aided and abetted by various members of support band, Southern rockers Wet Willie. “Loco-Motion” represents the late period commercial angel Grand Funk was mining, with a kind of rock and soul groove, and also includes future hits singles “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “Bad Time.", none of them sound like the Grand Funk Railroad that took the Atlanta Pop; Festival by  storm in 1969 when they were the people’s band, with huge ponderous riffs, terrible lyrics and Mark Farner’s over excited yelp.

There is an odd interlude, a visual montage interspersed with snatches of “We’re An American Band,”  that look like home movies of the various band members at leisure. Farner rides a horse and shows off his outdoors skills. Don Brewer water skis, Mel Schacher rides a motorcycle and Craig Frost drives his muscle car.  These snipes must have been designed to show us the human face between the badass rockers form Grand Funk and though the activates are extremely banal in their normality, it is kind of touching.

The live version of “We’re An American Band” follows. It is a great rocker, about life on the road, with pounding riff and pop hooks. Back in the day it was quite important for even a heavy band to be able to place singles high on the pop charts. The recording industry was and is a business and a business is about making money, as much as possible and even if Mark Farner may have been an anti-capitalist, libertarian he had to obey the imperatives of the industry that fed him. Never mind that though. “We’re An American Band” is a classic and one of the 100 best hard rock tunes of the Seventies.

I do not think it is an overstatement to say that the early Grand Funk songs had some of the worst, simplistic and basic lyrics ever. Perhaps whoever wrote the words was simply trying to write simple understandable lyrics or perhaps, as  is often the case, the words were just tacked on as an afterword because the band was not about to release a record of instrumentals. Perhaps the lyricists were just somewhat pretentious and overweening and did not understand that their abilities were not up to the philosophies the band might have espoused.. by and large, also, the music was pretty rudimentary and stodgy.

Mark Farner seems to have had strong anti-establishment, libertarian views and also, for Grand Funk’s last album of the Seventies before the band broke up, he wrote a song that seems to advocate gun rights, which is kind of libertarian on the one hand and on the other hand smacks of the very conservatism he used to rail against when the bad started out.  Don Brewer, the singing drummer, was the other main songwriter in the band, and from the evidence it seems to me that he was the better songwriter of the two, especially when it came to writing decent songs with a good chorus and some catchy lyrics, where Farner wrote simple, straightforward, often kind of dumb,  lyrics and had no tunes to speak of but even that is too simplistic a dichotomy between the two songwriters.

On the first couple of Grand Funk albums, before Craig Frost joined, there was usually a combination of some strong tunes, with anthemic qualities, mixed in with some dross. The strong tunes became live staples and the rest were abandoned. The odd thing is that one expects that the best songs made it to the record, on the assumption that more were written, and if some of these lame ducks represent the best of the bunch, the band really struggled to write decent material.

By Survival (1970) Farner had added heavy gospel and portentous keyboard riffs to his arsenal and the band recorded an album that sounded a lot different to the first two releases. The singing is as shrill as ever and the lyrics somewhat dumber than before in a pretentious way, but it is a record I have a fondness for, perhaps because of that very weird pretentiousness and high seriousness of purpose. And the absurd record cover with the band in Stone Age costume and dirty faces. The band does a truly killer heavy version of “Gimme Shelter” too.

It is probably not coincidental that the band took a more commercial direction after Craig Frost joined to thicken out the sound and to add some variation on the basic guitar, bass and drums sludge.  First  there was Don Brewer’s “We’re An American Band.” Which he sang quite toughly and in marked contrast to the Farner yelp, and then the more tuneful, pop oriented material such as “Shinin On,” “The Loco-Motion,” “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “Bad Time.” These were the radio hits in South Africa that typified Grand Funk Railroad for me.   These songs made them sound like a typical FM radio friendly hard rock band that could be counted in the same company as Boston, Foreigner, Kiss and various others. It was only after the band’s demise that I became aware, because I bought On Time and Grand Funk, both released in 1969, that the band originally sounded a lot more basic and grungy than the radio hits would have suggested. To a degree the band of, say, “heartbreaker,” could be understood as being the same band as “We’re An American Band” but songs like “Mr Limousine Driver” seem to be from another group altogether, the poor cousins.

It is somewhat odd that Grand Funk elected to make a commercial stand with old soul songs but it was an astute move because the tunes were good and making them heavier did not detract. There was an obvious intent to do well with the renditions. “Some Kind of Wonderful” is probably still one of my favourite Grand Funk performances. It was a long rime before I heard the original version of it. Ironically the other very good version of  this soul classic I know, is the performance of Huey Lewis & The News on their Motown pop and soul covers album, Four Chords & Several Years Ago (1994.)  Grand Funk was no soul band, and neither was Huey Lewis & The News and the heavy rockers kind of beat the shit out of the pop rockers for sheer gonzo appeal.

With Good Singing, Good Playing (1976) Grand Funk went out as dumb as they came in, albeit as four piece and with much higher production values yet the songs are far worse than the tunes from On Time  or anything the band released between 1973 an 1974.  It is a real pity that a once great band lost so much momentum and energy that it rolled over and died as pathetically as that.

When Grand Funk Railroad was good, the band was really good and deserves a prominent place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,  not because it was innovative or groundbreaking but because Grand Funk made dumb rock ‘n roll a huge pleasure to listen to.

Crimson House Blues

Crimson House Blues is yet another band on the new blues scene in South Africa, with Dan Patlansky and Albert Frost, who are kind of the senior statesmen, and Natasha Meister, Black Cat Bones, Mean Black Mamba and others.  To be pedantic about it, it is more of a revivalist blues rock scene than a purist approach to blues, with Jet Black Camaro finding space alongside the others yet being more of a good time rock and roll band than a blues group. We do have the Blues Broers, still toiling after all these years, and Boulevard Blues (also really just blues rockers) but nobody really wants to play blues as such. Everyone wants to boogie with intent and purvey a spirit and excitement that is always inherent in music derived from blues, rather than the faddish coolness and sameyness of most modern rock. You cannot beat a backbeat for getting the toes tapping and the hips shaking and for making one forget about intellectual appreciation of what's happening on stage.

Anyhow, Crimson House Blues have been going for a while and, looking at the band photographs on their website and in the album packaging, they aspire to being a mix between neo-hippie and old style beat, with the first's long hair and the latter's sense of cool dressing. Where there is a current trend for band members (apart from the serious hipsters)  not to look doo different form their audiences, and in fact quite ordinary, the guys in Crimson House Blues definitely do not want to be mistaken for being anything else than bohemians. If they do have day jobs, it is probably not in law or commerce.

Debut album Smoke, Dust and Whiskey (2012) opens with “Going Down Slow,” the only blues standard on the album, and sets the scene for the listener to anticipate being entertained by some tasty, subtle blues. Riaan Smit’s emotional, hoarse voice fits the mood and tone of the song, the rhythm section pushes the song relentlessly forward and the lead guitar is fiery and fluid. Altogether a fine modern day interpretation of a venerable classic that’s been done to death.

Next up is “Silver Dollar,” an acoustic based song with electric lead and the first of the mythical barroom tales on the record, recording a tough life on the edge of society, pretty much the cinematic impression of what a blues landscape should look like. The song has a good tune, is not specifically a blues and is the first of a couple of tunes on the album that betrays the major influence of Tom Waits, both in the lyrical themes and in the timbre and inflections of Riaan Smit’s voice, that became really prominent on the second album. At times the resemblance is uncanny.

There is also not much more straightforward blues on offer. The mix leans towards a hillbilly string band with banjo and bottleneck guitar, strengthened by tough lead guitar and blue harp. The band seems to lean towards updating old-timey back country musical styles. “Halfway Whore House” brings us back to blues rock and yet another seedy tale of the underbelly of life. And then there is “Pickaxe Blues,” which is an unapologetic Tom Waits pastiche if I’ve ever heard one, based on the Swordfishtrombones or Raindogs template. The album plays out on the mostly acoustic piece “Over & Out,” an elegaic end to a set of songs that is organically tough, filled with brio and the confidence of a bunch of guys on top of their game and on a mission to spread their particular gospel.

Red Shack Rock (2013) is the second album and is more eclectic within the blues framework. The opening cut, “Call of the Wild,” is heavy blues circa 1968, second track, “Magic Potion,” features banjo and bottleneck guitar, “Aphrodite,” the third track, sounds like Asylum Records-era Tom Waits and the fourth cut is not only called “Jelly Roll” but it, and following track, “Take Away My Blues,” are the closest the album gets to electric blues. The music is always tough and gritty and with roots going to places way older than the guys in the band. Talk about old souls in young minds.

Obviously the influences are wide and diverse and equally obviously Tom Waits is one of them, not only in the vocal sound. In some of the songs, like “Aphrodite” and “Valley Below,” the entire composition sounds like pastiches of the Waits style.  Hey, there is even an echo of Seasick Steve in “Alternative State of Mind” with a mumbled intro and tough slide guitar., the third big rock track on the album. In “Pindrop Circle” the band channels a Berlin cabaret circa 1926 with a fantasmagorical shaggy dog story and possibly the biggest tune on the album.

“Don’t Ask Why” and “The Jam” are the third last and penultimate tracks and the band really kicks out the roots rock blues jams here with a boisterous joyful noise with ribald guitar, banjo and harp and stomping rhythm section, before playing us home with the last atmospheric blues of the night on “Ashes On The Highway.” When the last note fades out you want to play the album again, just ot make sure your mind has not been playing tricks on you and that this collection of energetic, eclectic and engaging tunes is really as good as it seemed at the time.

Full marks to Crimson House Blues for not trying to replicate an anachronistic blues sound and succeeding with providing us with a diverse set, from heavy blues rock to blues to hillbilly to jazz, replete with hooks and tunes. The debut album made a powerful statement of intent and the second record brings it all back home with a confident swagger that says “it ain’t bragging if you’re doing it.”

The road trip test was an excursion to Builder's Warehouse. The album sounded very good on the car stereo system. The bottom heaviness of the sound and that almost extraordinary gruff, sandpapery voice that sounds as if it could be on the verge of self-destruction were emphasised to the point of an almost giddy joy. I dearly would have loved to drive very fast with this music roaring in my ears. Unfortunately it was inner city driving. There was some satisfaction when the woman in the car next to me at the traffic light glanced over with a weird little smile, hopefully of approval. 

I understand that in 2014 Crimson House Blues toured and recorded in the USA and I would be very keen on getting my sweaty paws on the third record, if it actually comes from the country where the roots of their music are. If they were this good in South Africa, very far removed from the real life influences of the blues, imagine how truly excellent they must have to be once they’ve absorbed the influences at the source.

Black Sabbath

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) was one of the albums my peer group at Paul Roos Gymnasium held in particularly high esteem. The album was passed along from boy to boy and all of them ostentatiously flaunted their temporary possession of the album, to arouse envy and awe in their mates who did not have the record. Nobody ever bothered to offer to lend it to me. At the time I did not know much about the music (simply known as “underground” in Stellenbosch) anyway and probably would not have liked it much.

Perhaps the cool guys truly liked Black Sabbath; perhaps listening to this stuff was a simply prerequisite for appearing to be cool. The thrill of listening to a group that was ostensibly  connected to Satanism and anti-religious sentiment was probably related to the perceived illicit nature of the material in a country and a town that were firmly in the grip of Christian Nationalism. At this point, or just a few years later, our school principal took time out at two school assemblies to warn us of the subversive and non-Christian nature of the music of the Beatles, who had not been a functioning band for more than 6 years and were no longer very hip and happening.  The principal completely missed out on Black Sabbath. This went to show that teachers can be pretty ignorant and dumb concerning the real lives and interests of the kids they are supposed to teach.

I was not particularly keen on heavy metal when I was in my late teens. My first musical love was blues and basic roots rock and roll. I did once own, for a few weeks, Deep Purple's live album Made in Japan but soon grew tired of it. Uriah Heep never appealed to me. As far as I was concerned Heep was an obvious copy of the Purple template, but completely crude and clueless with it.  I liked glam rock, with the likes of Bowie, Slade, Sweet (when they started rocking), T Rex, Mud (before they became cheezy) and Suzi Quatro. Then I discovered Dr Feelgood and Cream and was hooked for life.

Around about 1979 I started buying Led Zeppelin albums, starting with Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II and then moving to The Song Remains the Same (the movie soundtrack) and ending up with Led Zeppelin IV.  Although I understood that Cream and Led Zeppelin were the forerunners of the heavy blues style that mutated into heavy metal, the blues aspects were paramount to me and I hardly saw even Led Zep as particularly heavy. Then I moved on to Aerosmith and Blue Oyster Cult, both of which rocked pretty hard but Aerosmith seemed to be closer to straight rock and roll than metal and Blue Oyster Cult was far too melodic to sound truly heavy. I also bought a couple of Grand Funk Railroad albums and even these seemed kind of twee compared with the others. Apparently Grand Funk was incredibly loud on stage yet their records sounded underproduced and weedy.

At no time did I fancy buying any Black Sabbath product until the closure of the Ragtime Records outlet in Stellenbosch. During its extended closing down sale I splurged on a bunch of legendary Seventies records. Amongst my purchases was the Black Sabbath debut album called, uh, Black Sabbath (1970) with a cover of a sinister figure in what could have been a cemetery, illustrating the title song en emphasising the black magic aspects of the band's image. Paranoid (1970) was also available but for some reason I could not persuade myself to buy this record even though I had already heard the title track, which sounded pretty much like the kind of speed freak rock that could have come from Detroit at around that time.

Black Sabbath was ponderous, slow and heavy and the lyrics sounded ridiculous. I did not like Ozzy Osbourne's reedy, slightly shrill, voice either. The arrangements were intricate, a trademark of the band's music, but somehow too incoherent and all over the place for my taste. The darkness of the album was a good theme though and though I cannot say I ever loved the record,  I did appreciate it.

A while later I also bought Master of Reality (1971) and was a lot less impressed. The music was as stupidly intricate and heavy as ever and the lyrics, if possible, even dumber than before and Ozzy's singing style grated all the more because the words were so stupid. Apparently this album was quite influential on many teenagers who later took up music and one or more the various sub-genres of metal.

My final Black Sabbath purchase to date, was a cassette tape of the album Live at Last (1980), that I could never listen to because the tape surface was damaged. It had been a cheap buy but I was still kind of disappointed. After that I never felt any need to own any further Black Sabbath product, even when I started buying CDs and began replicating  a good deal of  my record collection. I have Led Zeppelin, Blues Oyster Cult and Aerosmith and I got into Metallica. Heck, the other day I even bought a budget compilation of Mötley Crüe hits. But for all that, Black Sabbath has not made any appearance in my music collection, especially since I gave away all of my records a couple of years ago.

There has been a slight change  in this situation. Emma gave me the DVD of the documentary God Bless Ozzy as a Christmas 2012 present. This movie is a biography of Ozzy Osbourne, released in 2011, and made at around the time Osbourne turned 60, a sober 60 at that after years of alcohol and drug abuse. The basic Ozzy story is familiar and I knew the outlines of it. This documentary fills in some gaps and expands on the life story. Now suddenly it has also  piqued my interest in the back catalogue, primarily of Black Sabbath and the Randy Rhoads years, in much the way Some Kind of Monster made me go to the Metallica back catalogue beyond the Metallica (1991) album.

Ozzy's story is almost the Sixties rock star cliché  of an origin in dire poverty, music as escape from that background, massive success coming quickly to young men utterly not emotionally or psychologically equipped to deal with the fame and fortune, the resultant excesses and addictions, the almost disastrous firing from the band that made him famous and then a whole new career and a whole different level of success and, ultimately, after the years of abuse, the redemption of getting clean and sober, connecting with children and loved ones. Now Ozzy is an elder statesman of heavy metal who still tours and who still draws massive adulation.

One thing the documentary does not tell us, is why The Osbournes got made at all. Whose idea was it? I never saw any of the episodes and perhaps I should seek out the box set, but it was talked about and revered. I had lost track of Ozzy's career after the Eighties and had  no idea whether the man was alive or dead or even had an any career left, though I did read that for a couple of years the Ozzfest tour was one of the most successful, if not the most successful, of the  type of travelling rock caravan first popularized by Lollapalooza.

In the biggest scheme of things, I guess, there was obviously no reason why Ozzy could not tour when the Rolling Stones were still doing massive tours and in general the heavy peer group with whom Black Sabbath came up during the early Seventies, such as Purple or Heep, were also still touring albeit to more selective audiences.

The original members of Black Sabbath reunited in 2011 to record new material, although it seems that Bill Ward may after all not be part of the package. A new album titled 13 was released in 2013. One wonders why these guys would still want to write and record new stuff to appeal, presumably, to the kind of young audience that follows Ozzy.  Do they want to show up Metallica?  Is there one more economically massively successful nostalgia tour in them as pension plan? 

Yeah, why doesn't either Ozzy as solo act or Sabbath as band play in South Africa?  Metallica  is coming; Red Hot Chilli Peppers are coming; Bon Jovi has been; Kings of Leon have been.  Surely these granddads of metal can fill a stadium, or large auditorium, and find some decent local metal act to support them. I guess I would pay money to check them out.

So, after Christmas 2012, I was in my local Musica and came across a Black Sabbath Greatest Hits compilation covering the Ozzy Osbourne years. Coincidence? I think not. I bought it. The album kicks off with “Paranoid” off the eponymous record and concludes with “N.I’B.” from the Black Sabbath album. In between we have cuts from most of the albums between Black Sabbath (1970) and Never Say Die (1978). The emphasis is on the early years and there is nothing from Sabotage or Technical Ecstasy, and only one track each from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and the final album with Ozzy Osbourne, Never Say Die.

I had not heard the songs I know well, off Black Sabbath and Master of Reality, for a number of years and I have to confess that my re-acquaintance was quite warm. The sound is bottom heavy, but the digital remastering (I presume) adds clarity and the separation of instruments gives one a more dynamic, lively sound than I remember from the records. Bill Ward’s busy, driving drumming is a particular delight. He sounds like an amalgam of Keith Moon and Ginger Baker and his playing serves to alleviate the ponderousness of the guitar and bass riffs.

These ‘greatest hits” are meant to be the best of the bunch and this is probably how Sabbath should be approached and appreciated. Ozzy Osbourne’s vocal style is still a tad irritating yet also affecting on “Changes”, which adumbrates the kind of sound and melodic song Ozzy came up with in his solo career.

Unlike, say, Uriah Heep, Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin, who stuck firmly to songs on mock-medieval or mythic themes or simply sang about having a good time, Black Sabbath actually wrote a number of songs addressing political and social issues, from “Iron Man” and “War Pigs” to “Snowblind” and “Sweat Leaf,” albeit often in a simplistic, naïve way, and this makes them unique amongst heavy bands for whom the celebration of rock and roll itself was most commonly the stuff of lyrics. Perhaps Ozzy saw himself as the Bob Dylan of heavy metal.

After listening to this collection of prime Sabbath I am almost inclined to seek out the parent albums. When I look at the track listings of the first 6 albums (Black Sabbath to Sabotage) I realise that I know many of them. Although my memory is bit fuzzy it may be that, probably during my last years at varsity, I knew someone who owned the records and lent them to me at least to listen to. The surprising thing, given the incredible ponderous heaviness of Black Sabbath, was how many delicate instrumentals the band had recorded. They obviously arose from Tony Iommi’s ambition to demonstrate that he was not just some dumb-ass metal guitarist but as much of an artist as Jimmy Page or Ritchie Blackmore.  In the pantheon of Seventies British metal I would once have pigeonholed Sabbath as very heavy and very dumb. They are certainly very heavy. They are nowhere as dumb as Uriah Heep though. 

The San Francisco based band Blue Cheer, and various Detroit bands of the late Sixties, could have been the inspiration for the early Black Sabbath sound though I would not have expected such influences to have penetrated to Birmingham in 1969. Who knows, though. The Ozzy documentary does not offer a detailed history of Black Sabbath and perhaps one should look at the recently published Tony Iommi autobiography, Iron Man, for more information on the minutiae of the genesis and the  influences on the musicians. If Iommi’s memory can still serve him. Apparently the sudden success and easy money went to the band members’ heads and quite a lot of the money went up their noses.

For a reason that eludes me, unless it is simply a commercial fact that  the potential readers of rock biographies are only interested in salacious stories of debauchery and decadence and not the technical stuff of making music,  most rock biographies or autobiographies really skim quickly and lightly over the arcane aspects of song writing and recording. Nowadays there is a sub-genre of rock book that concentrates on the making a particular influential or popular album but even they deal with the surrounding circumstances, band relationships, social context and so forth,  and not  too much with technical matters.

Anyway, I want to know how Iommi came up with his riffs and melodies; what inspired Osbourne to write lyrics he wrote; what the drumming influences on Bill Ward were; and who inspired Geezer Butler to play bass.

When one listens carefully to the greatest hits it is evident that the band can play and whatever ostensible dumbness can be ascribed to heavy metal, it does not reflect in the virtuosity of the musicians. After all, metal is the one musical genre where great technical virtuosity in guitarists is prized and almost expected.

It’s good that there is revival of interest in Black Sabbath even if I won’t go any further than the greatest hits. The band had no specific significance to me from my teenage years, other than as a hip name to bandy about, and my curiosity has more to do with my general and eclectic interest in music than with reliving a memory from youth.  Ozzy Osbourne’s lyrics and sometimes excruciating singing style often irritated me and the ponderous riffing does tend to go beyond the limits of my tolerance. Black Sabbath is a good example of the kind of band where I would be quite happy to own only the greatest hits set without feeling a need to investigate or own the rest of their output.  A collection of the best known songs would represent the best songs period and what more does one want than a collection of killer tracks?

Whether Black Sabbath really was the first heavy metal band is a question that may be debated for as long as there are heavy metal fans. That the band has been influential seems beyond question. That they have recorded some good stuff is also beyond question. Black Sabbath is  also not the kind of band that bears critical examination beyond the riffs and trite lyrics. It is a force of nature and by now an institution.  From fringe act to grand old men of metal within the space of 40 years. One more example of rock bands that started as outlaws or marginalised artists and then grew into the establishment, whether or not they made money along the way, simply by staying around and keeping going until the changing times caught up with them.