Black Sabbath were the masters of heavy music and heavy living. Not only did they conceive a dark, pulsating answer to the optimism of the hippie movement, but they were adept at pushing their lives to the limit – taking rockstar behaviour to levels that would give even Keith Richards pause. From paranormal encounters with cloaked figures to ingesting industrial quantities of cocaine and accidentally spiking a vicar, the original lineup committed some of music’s most extraordinary moments to folklore.
Yet while the Birmingham quartet were undoubtedly one of the most pioneering bands of all time, their musical achievements account for only a fraction of what their existence entailed. Another prominent feature was the hazing that drummer Bill Ward endured at the hands of his bandmates. Ward has since clarified that he was willing to be pranked – each member was fair game – but characteristically, the group occasionally pushed things too far.
The story most often retold is the one involving Ward being nearly set on fire in a “party piece” gone badly wrong. But there was another occasion, even more surreal in character – something closer to a Coen brothers film than a rock biography.
It was revealed in guitarist Tony Iommi’s autobiography, Iron Man. In 1972, during the chaotic recording sessions that produced Vol. 4 – then working under the title ‘Snowblind’, a nod to the band’s cocaine consumption – a rare calm had descended on their rented Bel Air mansion. No hazing had taken place. Ward made the mistake of mentioning it.
What followed was swift. The band did what they did second-best to making music, and the cocaine came out. Things deteriorated rapidly, ending with Ward being poisoned through his genitals.
Their drug use during this period was severe enough to alarm their record label. Warner Bros. refused to allow the band to release the album under the title ‘Snowblind’, unwilling to court the controversy. As Ozzy Osbourne wrote in his memoir I Am Ozzy: “For me, Snowblind was one of Black Sabbath’s best-ever albums – although, the record company wouldn’t let us keep the title, ‘cos in those days cocaine was a big deal, and they didn’t want the hassle of a controversy.”
It was also fortunate for Warner Bros. that Ward survived the making of it. With cocaine and other substances now in the mix, calm had given way to chaos. In a later interview with Rolling Stone, Osbourne described one version of what happened: “I see this aerosol can and squirt his dick with it. He starts screaming and falls down. I look at the can, and it says, WARNING: DO NOT SPRAY ON SKIN – HIGHLY TOXIC. I poisoned Bill through his dick!”
In I Am Ozzy, however, Osbourne told a different version – one in which Iommi was the culprit. “One day, Tony gets this can of blue spray paint and sneaks around the other side of the railing, and when Bill starts pissing over the railing, he sprays his dick with it. You should have heard the scream, man. It was priceless. But then, two seconds later, Bill blacks out, falls headfirst over the railing and starts rolling down the hillside.”
Osbourne, never one to dwell on the gravity of a situation, added: “‘Ah, he’ll be all right,’ I said. And he was, eventually. Although he did have a blue dick for a while.”
Which version is accurate remains, characteristically, unclear. In the world of Black Sabbath, that seems entirely appropriate.
