Jagermeister
06-03-2010, 02:53 PM
looks back at the band's rise to heavy metal glory, New York debut
Four decades after Black Sabbath invaded American shores in 1970 and staked a name for itself on this side of the Atlantic on the stage of a famed New York club, original drummer Bill Ward reminisces with the Daily News about the earliest days of heavy metal.
Forty years later, I remember very well when [guitarist] Tony Iommi, [singer] Ozzy Osbourne, [bassist] Geezer Butler and I first arrived in the United States. We were on a TWA jet and we flew to New York at night. I will always remember seeing the Manhattan skyline and I was absolutely in awe.
Coming over the river from Kennedy Airport into Manhattan itself was absolutely amazing and incredible.
But the response to us at first was terrible.
The first two or three places that we played in New York were pretty rough joints -- they were small clubs and we absolutely had no idea what equipment we were using. We didn’t even know they used different power in the United States.
Our inexperience really showed. But Black Sabbath was a band that learned very quickly. By the time we got to the East Town Theater, which they used to call the Filmore East, in the Village that was the real opening of our career in the United States.
I remember when we played the Filmore East as the flashpoint. And what it was, is we were playing our asses off and we were one of the bills where there was pop artists as well as Black Sabbath. We were facing a very 'I've seen everything' New York audience, and we realized when we were on that stage that we really had to work hard to win over the audience.
Now, we were coming from a place of complete stardom, if you like, in Europe and starting in New York was like starting at the beginning all over again.
So we reacted as we did in England back in 1968.
And we started to get a little angry with the audience because they were just politely applauding, and they weren't really doing a lot of anything else. I was screaming at them to be more interactive, to get off their ass and just move. At that point, Tony was really hitting his guitar hard. And I could feel the emotions running through all of us. At one point, I threw my floor tom tom drum at the audience. It was kind of an audience battle with the band and the outcome of it was the audience stood up and they never sat down again.
That moment became a new opening for us with American audiences. What we achieved that night and what the audience achieved that night grew into a wildfire that spread through the United States.
It arrived on the West Coast before we even got there. Our name preceded us
When we first got together in Birmingham, England, we knew we had something special. Tony and I had always played together since we were about 15 years old. We had gone through lots of different bands and we were looking for a new singer when we noticed an advertisement for Ozzy, so we went to visit him. We loved how Geezer played base; we used to watch him in the overnight sessions that we had in our home town. And so the three of us went to Ozzy's, and that was it. It was instant.
For our heavy sound, Tony had tapped into something that was very much his own, but we were all in a similar musical place. So when we played the song "Black Sabbath" the first time, we just jammed, and it just literally fell together, which was quite magical in those days. Hide us out in a room and we'd come up with a song.
I knew that we were into something different, and I really loved what we were into, the sound and the religious and political imagery, but I didn't speculate much about it at the time. I just thought, "Wow, whatever this is, I love it, I want to be into it for the rest of my life."
We came up with an aggressive message. It wasn’t necessarily a new message, but it was a new aggressive message.
The partying was quite wild back then. If it was an after-gig party, it could go out of the hotel rooms and into the corridor, down the elevators and out into the street, because it was out of control.
The police were often involved.
Quite honestly, I thought I would be dead by 25. You can’t even imagine being 62, which is what I am now.
Sadly, those days have been over for us for a long, long time.
And so, the best I can do after a gig is usually get in my bus and try to have a sandwich or a cup of tea. That's pretty much the heaviest partying I do now.
From NY dailey news
Four decades after Black Sabbath invaded American shores in 1970 and staked a name for itself on this side of the Atlantic on the stage of a famed New York club, original drummer Bill Ward reminisces with the Daily News about the earliest days of heavy metal.
Forty years later, I remember very well when [guitarist] Tony Iommi, [singer] Ozzy Osbourne, [bassist] Geezer Butler and I first arrived in the United States. We were on a TWA jet and we flew to New York at night. I will always remember seeing the Manhattan skyline and I was absolutely in awe.
Coming over the river from Kennedy Airport into Manhattan itself was absolutely amazing and incredible.
But the response to us at first was terrible.
The first two or three places that we played in New York were pretty rough joints -- they were small clubs and we absolutely had no idea what equipment we were using. We didn’t even know they used different power in the United States.
Our inexperience really showed. But Black Sabbath was a band that learned very quickly. By the time we got to the East Town Theater, which they used to call the Filmore East, in the Village that was the real opening of our career in the United States.
I remember when we played the Filmore East as the flashpoint. And what it was, is we were playing our asses off and we were one of the bills where there was pop artists as well as Black Sabbath. We were facing a very 'I've seen everything' New York audience, and we realized when we were on that stage that we really had to work hard to win over the audience.
Now, we were coming from a place of complete stardom, if you like, in Europe and starting in New York was like starting at the beginning all over again.
So we reacted as we did in England back in 1968.
And we started to get a little angry with the audience because they were just politely applauding, and they weren't really doing a lot of anything else. I was screaming at them to be more interactive, to get off their ass and just move. At that point, Tony was really hitting his guitar hard. And I could feel the emotions running through all of us. At one point, I threw my floor tom tom drum at the audience. It was kind of an audience battle with the band and the outcome of it was the audience stood up and they never sat down again.
That moment became a new opening for us with American audiences. What we achieved that night and what the audience achieved that night grew into a wildfire that spread through the United States.
It arrived on the West Coast before we even got there. Our name preceded us
When we first got together in Birmingham, England, we knew we had something special. Tony and I had always played together since we were about 15 years old. We had gone through lots of different bands and we were looking for a new singer when we noticed an advertisement for Ozzy, so we went to visit him. We loved how Geezer played base; we used to watch him in the overnight sessions that we had in our home town. And so the three of us went to Ozzy's, and that was it. It was instant.
For our heavy sound, Tony had tapped into something that was very much his own, but we were all in a similar musical place. So when we played the song "Black Sabbath" the first time, we just jammed, and it just literally fell together, which was quite magical in those days. Hide us out in a room and we'd come up with a song.
I knew that we were into something different, and I really loved what we were into, the sound and the religious and political imagery, but I didn't speculate much about it at the time. I just thought, "Wow, whatever this is, I love it, I want to be into it for the rest of my life."
We came up with an aggressive message. It wasn’t necessarily a new message, but it was a new aggressive message.
The partying was quite wild back then. If it was an after-gig party, it could go out of the hotel rooms and into the corridor, down the elevators and out into the street, because it was out of control.
The police were often involved.
Quite honestly, I thought I would be dead by 25. You can’t even imagine being 62, which is what I am now.
Sadly, those days have been over for us for a long, long time.
And so, the best I can do after a gig is usually get in my bus and try to have a sandwich or a cup of tea. That's pretty much the heaviest partying I do now.
From NY dailey news