Showing posts with label Eagle Vision. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eagle Vision. Show all posts

DVD Review: Queen - "Days of Our Lives"

DVD Review: Queen - "Days of Our Lives"
Eagle Vision
All Access Review: A


Striding slowly across the stage in 1986, draped in a royal velvet robe with a gold crown on top of his head, Freddie Mercury, his head slightly tilted back, certainly bore a regal countenance. Preening to a packed stadium crowd, his arms spread wide in an ostentatious display of kingly arrogance, Mercury addressed his subjects, numbering in the thousands. As the waves of adulation began to subside at one of Queen’s final concerts, Mercury, laughing and smiling as if he didn’t have a care in the world, playfully places the crown on Roger Taylor’s head, as if abdicating his throne. To everyone, he looked as healthy as a horse. In secret, Mercury was already battling AIDS, and perhaps on some level, he knew then that he was inescapably doomed.
“I think he had an idea that he was not terribly well,” says Taylor, in between shots of the exultant audience, their arms raised to heaven in praise of Queen and the extravagant, theatrical rock and roll spectacle they were about to witness. That bit of foreshadowing from Taylor sets the stage for a moving narrative on Mercury’s last days and the touching elegy for this electric performer that encompasses much of Episode 2 of “Days of Our Lives,” an authoritative, engrossing and emotional two-part DVD documentary on Queen released on the last day of 2011, the 40th anniversary of Queen’s birth. “Days of Our Lives” originally aired in May on BBC in the U.K. over two nights. The DVD release, also available on Blu-Ray with loads more (almost an hour’s worth of interviews and additional scenes) bonus material, includes Episodes 1 and 2, plus a clutch of seven newly created videos for some of Queen’s greatest hits and deleted footage that make for absolutely essential viewing.
It’s a ripping yarn, this tale. Told chronologically by longtime fans Rhys Thomas and Simon Lupton, with Matt Casey directing, “Days of Our Lives” neatly cleaves Queen’s career in two parts, the first spanning 1970-1980 and the second picking right up where The Game leaves off, forging straight on through the inner turmoil of Hot Space and Mercury’s tragic death, and then arriving in the present, where Mercury’s shadow still looms over the lives of the three remaining members. New interviews with Taylor and Brian May, who are both refreshingly open and honest about the excesses and infighting that threatened to destroy Queen, form the core of “Days of Our Lives” – interestingly, bassist John Deacon, considered by many to be Queen’s secret weapon, is conspicuous by his absence, his contributions limited to found interview footage from long ago. Their commentary, so engaging and revealing, is patched in smartly amongst seemingly hundreds of clips of blazing, visceral concert video – including glorious Live Aid and Wembley Stadium triumphs, and South American soccer arena blowouts, with May and Taylor, as well as other Queen insiders, reliving the tension and fear arising from their appearance in totalitarian Argentina – and an abundance of other archival footage, much of it rare and unreleased. From the scandalous “Bicycle Race” promos featuring nude women bikers pedaling their ten-speeds to scintillating TV performances (starting with the band’s first-ever “Top Of The Pops” appearance from 1974, which hasn’t been seen since then – remembered with mixed feelings by May and Taylor), scrapbook black-and-white stills from their youth, piles of interview material and vintage behind-the-scenes film culled from video shoots, “Days of Our Lives” proves to be the ultimate Queen scrapbook, lovingly compiled and artfully arranged to serve a captivating story.
“Days of Our Lives” would be an incredibly vital collection for all that alone were it not for the wealth of colorful anecdotes strewn throughout its well-ordered contents. By turns devilishly funny – as when former manager John Reid recalls walking out on Mercury in a restaurant over an interview he did without Reid’s consent, and Mercury responding by throwing a brick through Reid’s window and telling Reid, in no uncertain terms, that nobody does that to him – and crushingly sad, as when Taylor tears up remembering when he heard that Mercury had died, the documentary is an illustrious history, not given to hyperbole but ever conscious of Queen’s magnificent accomplishments. Rummaging through the past, “Days of Our Lives” thoroughly vets all of Queen’s highs and lows, from the controversial Sun City performance in a South Africa still segregated by Apartheid to the gross financial mismanagement that nearly sunk them early on and ultimately, winding up with the bittersweet catharsis that was the tribute concert for Mercury. Fascinating stories abound, including the revelation that Deacon forgot the memorable bass line he’d created for “Another One Bites The Dust” when the band went out for pizza. And, of course, there are the many remembrances of Mercury the man, courageous in the face of a terminal disease and a wildly creative workaholic right up to the very end, as he tried valiantly to squeeze in as many recordings as he could for Queen before passing on. 
Sharply edited so that every scene has an impact, “Days of Our Lives” runs along at a pace that is quick but not hurried. The story of how Smile morphed into Queen is fleshed out with just enough detail to whet appetites for what’s to come, and from there, “Days of Our Lives” segues seamlessly into the making of Queen I and II, tracking Queen’s early stages of growth and development with surprising candor, humor and historical truth. On the cusp of a breakthrough, Queen kicked down the door with Sheer Heart Attack, and the sophisticated artistry that designed “Killer Queen” is dissected with scientific curiosity. The remainder of “Days of Our Lives” walks that fine line between entertainment and information delivery with relaxed confidence and clarity of vision, all while somehow controlling a gushing geyser of details related to Queen’s recording sessions – particular attention being paid to the groundbreaking multi-tracking techniques and choral-like blending of voices that sounded so angelic on “Somebody to Love” and a bevy of signature Queen tracks – and other key moments in the band’s tumultuous life.
Billed as “the definitive documentary of the world’s greatest rock band,” “Days of Our Lives” is all that and more. And while it is slightly less audacious than Mercury was onstage, it does capture all the pomp and circumstance that made Queen a stadium-rock sensation – for proof, see the deft shuffling of clips of “One Vision” brought to life through May’s cutting riffs and Mercury’s spine-tingling vocals. At Live Aid, Mercury was in rare form, whipping the masses into a writhing, joyous state of ecstasy that threatened to lift Wembley off its foundations. He truly was rock royalty, and so was the classic Queen lineup. Guaranteed to blow your mind, “Days of Our Lives” is that rare video biography that’s both grounded in reality and a completely transcendent experience. Somewhere, Freddie Mercury is smiling. 

- Peter Lindblad

DVD Review: The Rolling Stones - Some Girls: Live in Texas '78

DVD Review: The Rolling Stones - Some Girls: Live in Texas '78
Eagle Vision
All Access Review: A-


The punks were sneering at them from afar, and to the blow-snorting, booty-shaking hedonists living it up at Studio 54 and other less glamorous discos, the Rolling Stones might as well have been dead for all they cared. As big as they still were in the mid-to-late 1970s, the Stones were in danger of becoming irrelevant, of fading into the background. The black magic of 1972’s Exile on Main Street had long since worn off, and the Stones, with stardom further inflating Mick Jagger’s grandiose ego and drug addiction robbing Keith Richards of his bohemian talent and ambition, foundered. Satisfaction was becoming ever more elusive for the self-proclaimed world’s greatest rock and roll band.
Each succeeding album sunk them ever deeper into a quagmire of mediocrity – at least according to their lofty standards. The crass excess of 1973’s Goats Head Soup obfuscated the nasty sparkle of its brightest diamonds. It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, released a year later, lacked cohesion and consistency, even if it did, more often than not, make the blood run red hot. And while training Ronnie Wood in the ways of the Stones, Mick and Keith messed around with extended, funky grooves and stylistic experimentation on 1976’s Black and Blue and got lost (I know that’s The Eagles’ line and I’m mixing my classic-rock metaphors, but I don’t care).
With their desire to indulge in regrettably long jams and the suspect mixing of incompatible genres out of their system, the Stones, perhaps stung a bit by the criticism leveled at them, sought inspiration from a contemporary music scene dominated by polar opposites. On the one hand, there was the seething fury and cynical anger of punk doling out its own brand of street justice on bloated, fatuous rock stars who had lost touch with what once made them great. And then there was disco, glitzy and lacking anything resembling substance, while also guilty of delivering the kind of hypnotic beats and head-spinning action that compelled its coked-up consumers to lose their inhibitions and get freaky on the dance floor and in the bedroom.
The Stones, up to this point, hadn’t had much to do with any of it. That was about to change with 1978’s Some Girls, an album that lashed out at those ready to write them off as has-beens. Of its time and yet something that couldn’t ever possibly be considered dated, Some Girls was as nasty and mean as the Stones wanted it to be, with sharp, tightly wound tracks like “When The Whip Comes Down,” “Shattered” and “Respectable” all spoiling for a knife fight and not caring a whit for anybody who gets cut. Even the relatively laid-back country charms of “Far Away Eyes” break out into a menacing sneer that has bad intentions behind it, and the nod to disco, “Miss You,” sounds dangerously seductive . The Stones were not going to be pushed around – not by the Sex Pistols and certainly not by Bee Gees.
And so, with Some Girls still brandishing its razor-sharp songwriting and explosive recorded performances at a suddenly reinvigorated fan base, the Stones toured, adopting a lean, stripped-down approach that showed they meant business. On July 18, 1978, they rolled into Fort Worth, Texas, eager to show everybody who came to the Will Rogers Auditorium that night that they’d regained their swagger – something that was apparent to anybody who’d seen them on previous stops, the 1978 tour being one of the Stones’ finest hours. Tickets went fast, even though the band shrouded itself in the mysterious pseudonym “The London Green Shoed Cowboys” that nobody fell for. Onstage, the Stones caught fire, and that rip-roaring performance was filmed for posterity by the Texas outfit Showco. Colorfully packaged and riotously filmed, “The Rolling Stones: Some Girls Live in Texas ’78,” released in late 2011 by Eagle Vision in three formats – DVD, Blu-Ray, and special edition DVD + CD and Blu-Ray + CD packages – is stunning visual and sonic proof that the Stones could throw down with anybody.
Backed by faithful Ian Stewart on piano and Ian “Mac” McLagan on organ and piano, plus Doug Kershaw on violin, the Stones tear into 17 tracks with fire in their eyes and raw, edgy energy to burn. Following a savory version of “Let It Rock,” a celebratory spin around “All Down the Line” and a predatory “Honky Tonk Women,” Mick and the boys burn and pillage their way through the notorious “Star Star,” otherwise known as “Starf**ker.” Ready again to rumble, after a brief respite, they flex their sinewy rhythmic muscles on “When the Whip Comes Down,” with Mick joining the fray on guitar – he has one in his hands through much of the show – sporting a t-shirt that says “DESTROY,” a yellow coat, a red hat and black leather pants. Feeling their oats, the Stones generate plenty of throbbing, sexual heat in a stretched-out “Miss You,” before turning a bit more innocent and sincere in their fantastic reworking of The Temptations’ “(Just My) Imagination,” one of the true highlights of Some Girls.
Always the showman, Jagger is in rare form, full of bravado while shucking and jiving his way through “Miss You” before grabbing the crowd by the throat with tough, commanding vocals in “Shattered” – the vicious guitars of Keith and Woodie exuding attitude and filled high-wire tension – and spearheading a vigorous run through a snotty “Respectable” that sweats bullets. While clearly sticking it to anybody who would dare question their live prowess or their passion, there’s also a playfulness and unabashed exuberance that shines off the Stones’ gleaming performance and is readily apparent in the almost gleeful, child-like interaction – however naughty these man-children are – between all parties. And make no mistake, this is a party.
Transitioning out of the deliciously boozy, countrified drawl of “Far Away Eyes” and “Love in Vain,” the Stones let it all hang out on “Tumbling Dice” and “Happy” before kicking Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little 16” square in the ass. By the time “Brown Sugar” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” draw to a close, you are satiated, worn completely out like after the greatest sex of your life but not quite ready to see it end. And if the live portion of “The Rolling Stones: Some Girls Live in Texas,” so gloriously restored by Bob Clearmountain from the original multi-track tapes and shot from a variety of visually exciting angles, were all that one had to go on, it alone would be worth the $200 you were going to spend on hookers and drugs to make it through the night, but it doesn’t cost anywhere near that. Throw in a booklet full of memorabilia and detailed, well-written liner notes by James Karnbach and you have an essential piece of musical history.
What weakens the overall package are some of the extras: a throwaway interview with Jagger comprised of nothing but softball questions and bland, pat answers; a dull, poorly written Saturday Night Live skit with Dan Akroyd’s painfully unfunny turn as Tom Snyder doing the “Tomorrow” show with Jagger and the Stones’ subsequent flat SNL performance; and a segment of ABC News “20/20” interviews with the Stones from that era that hold some interest, but ultimately, don’t add much in the way of information or historical perspective. Don’t let that deter you from picking up “Some Girls Live in Texas ’78,” a landmark live DVD that makes for a great drinking buddy for Some Girls the album.

- Peter Lindblad

Official Trailer from Eagle Rock: 


CD Review: Rory Gallagher "The Beat Club Sessions"

CD Review: Rory Gallagher "The Beat Club Sessions" 
Eagle Rock / Capo
All Access Review:  B+


No stranger to cameras and lights, Rory Gallagher was a regular on the German TV show “Beat Club” in the early ‘70s, appearing four times over a span of two years, once with his band Taste in 1970 and three others in 1971-72 to showcase material from his brilliant first two solo albums. Listening to The Beat Club Sessions, it’s easy to see why he was asked back time and time again.

From the vaults come 90 minutes of sensational unreleased live material from those shows, all pulled together for this latest testament to Gallagher’s mastery of blues guitar. Intended as a companion piece to the two-DVD “Ghost Blues” package Eagle also released in September that is purported to be the first complete and fully authorized documentary of Gallagher’s life and career, The Beat Club Sessions provides a taste of Gallagher’s inestimable live prowess and a remarkable look at how the Irish guitar gunslinger reinvigorated favorites from his small, but magnificent catalog on stage.

And what a flavorful sampler this is, from the propulsive, double-barreled blast of “Laundromat” and “Hands Up” to intricate and wistful acoustic readings of “Just the Smile” and “I Don’t Know Where I’m Going” – every piece is powerful, beautifully played and joyously articulated. The slow stomp and slide guitar frenzy of “I Could’ve Had Religion” brings to life the ghosts of the Delta blues heroes Gallagher worshipped, and “Used To Be” smolders with intensity, with Gallagher’s slashing solo a stiletto across the neck and his coal-fired band playing with verve and passion, the trio closing the song with a raucous meltdown of pounding drums, thumping bass and soaring six-string magic.

There’s a hard edge to Gallagher’s playing here, and he’s at his sharpest on a dynamic, serrated version of “Messin’ with the Kid” that serves as the live collection’s blistering finale. Handling “Crest of a Wave” with a more melodic touch, Gallagher reveals a less bombastic, more fluid and artful aspect of his instrumental genius. If only the package had more to it.

The liner notes are too short to be sweet and more detailed historical context for Gallagher’s performances on “Beat Club” would have made this essential. Perhaps “Ghost Blues” will fill in the cracks.


-Peter Lindblad

DVD Review: Rush "Classic Albums: 2112 & Moving Pictures"

DVD Review: Rush - "Classic Albums: 2112 and Moving Pictures"
Eagle Vision
All Access Review: B


Perhaps predictably, Rush took a lot of heat for throwing in their lot with Ayn Rand as they did on 1976’s 2112. Her controversial writings were viewed by many as promoting a selfishly individualistic philosophy that sanctioned greed and scoffed at the notion of a common good.

Drummer/lyricist Neil Peart and the rest of Rush looked at Rand and saw something different in works like “Anthem” and “The Fountainhead.” In Rand, they found something of an intellectual freedom fighter, a warrior of strong mental fortitude in the fight against repressive totalitarianism and mind control. What they had, in essence, was an ally.

Influenced by the writings of Rand and those of science fiction writer Samuel R. Delaney as well, Peart constructed for Side 1 of 2112 an epic futuristic tale of a world where technology reigns supreme and art – music especially – is crushed under the heels of priests who knew, implicitly, what was best for the people. And yet, somehow, as told in this latest installment of Eagle Vision’s Classic Albums series, Rush was demonized for it. Critics went so far as to call them right-wing extremists and even Neo-Nazi sympathizers, when all Rush wanted to do was say a little something about staying true to yourself and your artistic vision.

2112 was the epitome of transitional records. On one side, there’s a conceptual suite, at once angry and piercingly loud, but also contemplative and melodic, pieced together in defiance of record company mandates to be more commercial. Once the rebellion had ended in the crashing chaos of “Oracle: The,” which Peart sees as the cavalry coming to save the day, Rush moves on to the shorter, more compact songs – the ones Mercury Records wanted more of, particularly after the weird and incomprehensible Caress of Steel – that make up Side 2.

Exploring the exotic, drug-fueled nature of “A Passage to Bangkok” and the contrasting lightness and dark shadows of imagination in “The Twilight Zone,” the DVD goes into great detail in telling the story of 2112. Peart, guitarist Alex Lifeson and bassist Geddy Lee all end up sharing fascinating memories of the making of 2112, with producer Terry Brown also revealing much about the studio process. Context and insight provided by esteemed music writer David Fricke and Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins flesh out the history of Rush’s break-though record, while Mercury promotions man Cliff Burnstein explains how tough it was for him to sell a conceptual record, or at least half of one, to a label that wanted no part of that.

What feels ham-fisted is how the film segues into Moving Pictures. In a sense, it tries too hard to find a connection between the two landmark records. History has shown that 2112 and Moving Pictures are clearly the most important works in Rush’s catalog, but, maybe due to time constraints or the lack of supporting material, the filmmakers gloss over how the band evolved between those works. And where they artfully lay the foundation and backdrop for 2112, less attention is given to what led up to Moving Pictures, though passing mention is made of Rush’s interest in New Wave and Punk and how that helped inform the record. The Moving Pictures segment is salvaged, however, by the deep, expansive analysis of “Tom Sawyer,” “Limelight,” “YYZ” and “Red Barchetta.”

While “2112 & Moving Pictures Classic Albums” does much to celebrate Rush’s musicianship and the complexity of their compositions, perhaps the film bit off more than it could chew here. Maybe separating the stories behind both records would have made for fuller, richer and more satisfying storytelling. Still, if you’re a Rush fan and these two records are among your favorites, there is much here to enjoy, especially the interviews. Candid, open and refreshingly defiant, Peart, Lifeson and Lee are engaging subjects, and watching them, up close, work through some of the most interesting parts of these great songs on their instruments is an absolute pleasure.

-Peter Lindblad 

Links: 

DVD Review: The Rolling Stones "Stones in Exile"

DVD Review: The Rolling Stones "Stones in Exile"
All Access Review: A

To avoid paying exorbitant taxes in their native England, the Rolling Stones moved to the south of France in 1971, following the release of Sticky Fingers. It was not a proud moment for a band that left home with their tales between their legs, knowing that their street cred was about to take a serious hit. Still, it’s hard to blame them. The English tax laws were going to take pounds and pounds of their flesh, and had they stayed and settled up, the Stones, rock and roll’s dark princes, wouldn’t have had a pot to piss in, or so they claim.

But evading taxes is hardly a cool thing to do. That’s something card-carrying members of the Establishment attempt, isn’t it? Caught between a rock and a hard place, the Stones did the wise thing and reluctantly, and almost shamefully, went on semi-permanent holiday. Something good did come out of it, though, and that was Exile on Main Street, perhaps the most mythologized album in the history of pop music, and one of the best ever made by anybody, including the sainted Beatles. And, as an added bonus, the tales of excess and degradation that came out of the Nellcote villa, the decaying mansion where Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg tried to play family in a sleepy, hazy atmosphere of sex, drugs and rock and roll, only served to rehabilitate the Stones’ outlaw image.

“Stones in Exile,” the hour-long visual accompaniment to the recent reissue of Exile, revisits the making of a record that was initially misunderstood before everyone figured out that it was a work of artistic genius and it does so with beautiful, intelligent editing that doesn’t get in the way of what is a compelling story. As Mick Jagger says, while back at Olympic Studios, where the groundwork for Exile was laid, talking about recording sessions is boring. “Stones in Exile” splits the difference, providing just enough real insight about the technical side of things to appease those who care about such things, while wonderfully re-creating the laissez-faire environment that led to Exile’s black magic, this album of dissolute beauty, a loose, shambolic shakedown of zombie-like gospel, drug-sick country and blues, and murky rock with undertones as scary and dangerous as voodoo.

True, it’s a cliché. But, this definitive documentary, with its well-placed pieces of vintage still photography of the Stones, period film from the infamous, and secretive, “Cocksucker Blues” movie and extensive variety of interviews with Exile survivors - all of the Stones, with Mick Taylor, included, plus Pallenberg, producer Jimmy Miller, engineer Andy Johns, the crazed, but exceedingly likeable, Texan saxophone player Bobby Keys - does put the viewer smack dab in the middle of Exile’s long, humid birth. You’re there in the kitchen and huge basement of Nellcote, watching the Stones deal with the region’s stifling summer heat, walls full of condensation and near constant equipment malfunctions, while improvising on the fly to overcome it all.

You’re in the famed mobile recording studio truck and its confined walls as the techies attempt the high-wire act of trying to record various Stones performing in different places inside the house. You’re in Richards’ massive bedroom, sleeping away the day and doing smack until going to work late at night and not coming out until morning, or even the afternoon, whether Mick was there or not. And, of course, you’re there lying on one of the exotic rugs, hung over after a long bender, among all the other hangers-on similarly affected, all of you wondering whether you should stay or go.

That’s just a small sampling of scenes from the tour of hell “Stones in Exile” guides you through. Above it all hangs that feeling of disconnectedness the Stones experienced while exiled from their homeland and there’s plenty of conversation about how much of that influenced the album. Tack on 90 minutes of behind-the-scenes bonus footage, with music heavyweights like the White Stripes’ Jack White, Don Was and Liz Phair, among others, offering praise and spot-on analysis of Exile’s virtues, and “Stones in Exile” succeeds as a slice of nostalgia, a history lesson and a work of art.

It’s already been a big year for Exile, what with the reissue and “Stones in Exile” being aired on NBC-TV’s “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and Fallon’s week-long celebration of Exile leading up to the event. Watch for the restoration and release of the 1972 concert film “Ladies And Gentlemen … The Rolling Stones” on Blu-Ray later this year, the result of a two-movie deal between the Stones and Eagle Rock Entertainment. Have you got Exile on Main Street fever yet?

-       -  Peter Lindblad

Hands Of Doom: Black Sabbath’s Bill Ward looks back on ‘Paranoid’

A storm was brewing on the northwest coast of England around 1969 and 1970, and it was moving inland fast.

The origins of this tempest, however, first stirred in the industrial wasteland of a city called Birmingham, where four scraggly, but wildly creative, young men were transforming the heavy blues of such legends as Cream and Blue Cheer into a new kind of minor-key sonic monster, a ponderous beast capable of pummeling of great pillars into pebbles with immense, explosive guitar riffs, pounding rhythms that buffeted and followed those powerfully struck chords to hell and a singer whose pained howl expressed horrors both real and imagined.
It was a scary, almost apocalyptic sound that both shocked and awed rock audiences in Cumbria, an English county that relied on the bounty of the Atlantic Ocean to eke out what was at times a meager existence. And they loved the devastatingly loud, sludgy dirges and hallucinogenic jams that were blasting out of the rugged amps of a then-unknown Black Sabbath that toured the area hard.

“We’d done a lot of work in northwest England in what they call Cambria,” remembers Sabbath drummer Bill Ward, “and without realizing it we built up quite a fan base in northwest England.” Playing to increasingly packed houses in the region, Sabbath cultivated a rabid, extremely loyal following that Ward believes put its collective shoulders to the band’s foggy, drug-addled, yet crushingly powerful and disturbingly spooky, self-titled debut, released in May 1970, and helped nudge it into the U.K. Top Ten album charts. All of which set the stage for Sabbath’s master stroke, Paranoid, also unleashed in 1970, in September of that year, and the subject of a new Eagle Vision “Classic Albums” series DVD as we approach its 40th anniversary.

“I was just amazed,” exclaims Ward. “I think [our debut] came in at No. 26 out of the Top 30. It was just like, ‘Oh my God.’ And it was something that, after all the years that you are playing on the stage and playing all the clubs, playing all the different places we had to play, comes as a surprise. So it was enormous, really. It was like, ‘Oh, wow. We’ve actually accomplished part of a dream,’ if you like. That was a big part of the dream, to get a hit record.”

But, why Cumbria? What was it about Sabbath’s bleak musical black magic, still in its infancy but growing more and more mature with each performance, that appealed to denizens of the area’s sparsely populated towns?  

Ward explains that, “On the west coast, the northwest coast of England, they’re mainly fishing villages. However, they’re very hard. It’s a very hard life, and it’s very hard weather. It’s a really tough place to be, working in Aspatria, Whitehaven … these are all tough towns. They’re granite. The houses are built of black granite. And so they actually look quite dismal when it’s raining with these black, monolithic houses that exist up there. They paint the landscape with granite silhouettes if you like. But at the same time, you can see the beauty in that as well, but there’s almost a sense of morbidity there that was … I know we were very attracted to playing there. We wanted to be there all the time (laughs). The biggest city in that specific area is Carlisle, and Carlisle is a fortress. It’s a fortress town. It’s right on the border of England and Scotland. So it’s got a lot of pagan history, and it just goes way back in time. And so [Sabbath guitarist] Tony [Iommi] and I used to live in Carlisle. We were in another band, but when we had Black Sabbath, we all loved Carlisle. That’s where a lot of our roots were in the beginning, to play our music. So, I don’t know. The people just, you know, really liked hard-core music.”

That’s putting it lightly. Ward compares Sabbath’s original fans in that area to the more intense ones you’d also find in places like New Jersey and Philadelphia. In other words, they’re extremely passionate about what they like.

“I think it was great in the sense that not much came up to that part of northwest England,” says Ward. “You know, there are rolling hills; it’s called the ‘lake district.’ There are lots of lakes there. There’s not a large population. It’s quite isolated. So, being up there, it was a real treat when a band went up there, and I loved the audiences around that area. And they loved it when rock bands would go up there and visit these different small towns and so on and so forth. It’s just a very fanatical crowd, and I like the Scots. The Scotsmen were the same way.” 

With momentum building among the black masses, Sabbath, true to its blue-collar roots, continued working. Touring was constant, and on the road, the quartet of Ward, Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and iconic metal vocalist Ozzy Osbourne jammed and wrote during the hours when they weren’t onstage. There was a bit of a break, though.

“Yeah, well, what was happening was, as we were playing more and more, we became more and more intuitive toward one another, and so, by the time we’d done our first album, we were continually on the road,” says Ward. “It didn’t stop us from jamming out. You know, we could jam out in hotel rooms. So we’d get ideas all the time.”

Their fertile imaginations working overtime, the men of Sabbath were becoming more and more cohesive as a unit, and when they did get a little window of time to exit the road, they decided to go to Monmouth in Monmouthshire, Wales, for more work.

“We actually took a week or maybe 10 days to rehearse some of our songs,” says Ward. “I’ll give you an example of that. I’ll always remember, we rehearsed ‘Electric Funeral,’ ‘Hand Of Doom’ and I think we did some of ‘War Pigs’ there as well. So we actually had - which had never happened to us before – rehearsals, just writing material for what was to be Paranoid. So, with the combination of having licks and different things in our heads and what have you, and also by now being a very intuitive band, when we played, we knew almost … I can’t describe it. We knew where the other person was going to go. We would often sit down and write something, and we’d all go to the same place at the same time. It was actually a little strange, a little scary. But without being too analytical, it was just something we had as a band that we were able to do that. We knew intuitively when to change, when we were going to go into a different place, you know. So it was really quite a ride in making a Black Sabbath track, you know.”

Deciding on a driver for the trip was easy. Everyone followed Iommi’s lead, the guitar wizard who seemed to be able to pluck innovative, instantly memorable riffs out of thin air. Ward and Iommi, both of them heavily influenced by what Ward called the “incredibly rich soil” of the British music scene of the 1960s, began playing in bands together at the age of 16. In Birmingham, Iommi was, even at that tender age, was as good as any guitarist in the city. In quick order, he moved past them all, fluidly navigating more complex pieces than the blues and rock standards of the day.

“I just watched him all his life, you know; observing from his later teenage years, he just shot up,” says Ward. “He just grew into this young songwriter, this riff master. His uncanny ability to come up with parts and pieces, and just even sometimes [with] three notes, and then they were so devastatingly good, they would just blow the rest of us away. I mean, just playing drums, as far as playing drums to the notes that he was playing, it was a drummer’s dream. It was the best job in the world. But then, of course, it was all about talent [allowed] to flourish when we started making more and more music. But it was a prime growth period for all of us, and definitely for Tony.”

However brief, that short rehearsal period, plus the nonstop gigging, prepared Sabbath well for the tight studio timeframe the band had to record Paranoid. Having booked just two days, Sabbath was ready and willing to work long hours to get the job done, going from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Undaunted, Sabbath was up to the challenge.

“God, we were so weird,” laughs Ward. “I don’t recall us being savvy enough to put that together. It’s almost like we were told that this is what it is, this is what you have fellas. This is what you do. It was like, okay, well, we’ll just do it then. So we just showed up and did it.”

Having engineer Tom Allom and producer Rodger Bain, real recording professionals, onboard helped Sabbath stay on schedule. Allom, for his part, says on the DVD that he knew exactly how to record Sabbath.
“With what he had, and with what Rodger had, I think that they used the tools very well,” says Ward. “You know, we tried to scramble everything to put it all together the best we could. We had some fairly decent microphones, which was the case back in the late ‘60s, around ’69, early ’70. So, I think with the tools that they had and the equipment that they had, they were able to capture at least part of what we sounded like.”
Time being an issue, Sabbath laid down tracks in three takes or less. “I don’t think we’d ever [gone beyond] that,” admits Ward. “I think if we were in Take 4, we’d probably forget the song, you know, because we knew we were on a timeline, and we intended to keep to that timeline, much to Tom Allom and Rodger Bain’s efforts to keep that tight. We knew that’s what we were being given, to try to take every advantage of that. So in that sense, we encouraged each other. We were very pushy towards each other.”
And Sabbath, being the force of nature they were live and always pushing to play at a volume that was troublesome to manage, had trouble adjusting to the confines of the studio.

“This was like the band’s fifth day in a recording studio, ‘cause we were only a couple days with Black Sabbath and now we were doing Paranoid and it was like a few more days for Paranoid,” says Ward. “We were very inexperienced, but what we were at the time was we were a touring band. We were playing live and we were playing loud and we were playing very aggressively. So, for anybody to capture that in a very small studio, with the baffles and the microphones of the day … I remember just my snare drum, they were trying to just get the microphone to not just go into the red and just overpower the microphone, ‘cause I was just playing full strength. You know, I didn’t know how to play in the studio.”

Being young and somewhat naïve about the recording process, Sabbath decided, whether consciously or unconsciously, to sort of mimic the chords and notes Iommi was churning out, and in doing so, they added incredible heft to the overall sound.

“It was whatever Tony was doing, we’d try to enhance, fill and do that,” says Ward. “That was the priority: getting as big a sound as we possibly could. And so, in doing that, keeping that in mind, then we would look at how to create that bigger sound that we had to make it dramatic or dark or hard or critical – any of those things. So, that would be our focus. Whatever we needed to do, whatever the ingredients were note-wise or rhythmically to get to those places, of the latter that I just mentioned, whatever we would do, we’d go wherever we needed to go to get that and just pour all that out.”

That flood intensified tracks like “War Pigs,” the title track and Ward’s particular favorite, “Hand of Doom.”
“It’s just raw and naked, and Ozzy’s phrasing is superb,” says Ward. “I like the fact that we got some of our little jazz things going on in there (Ward being a big fan of drummer Gene Krupa and Iommi being heavily influenced by Django Reinhardt). And we go from our little jazz things to a wonderful dynamic of sheer volume. When we played that live, we used to blow everybody away, because we were playing very, very soft and then suddenly you can hear the amps just rise up, baarrangg … you know, so to me, that’s pure metal.”

If “Hand of Doom” was “pure metal,” the trippy, acoustically sketched out space travelogue “Planet Caravan” was something altogether different.

“I think it was something that we would go to when we needed a bit of peace, and I strongly suspect it was the same formula, as always, which was that Tony had, you know, some kind of a riff going on or some kind of chord, because that’s how things would normally start,” says Ward. “When I listen to that, it sounds like Ozzy immediately caught on to the guitar and interpreted a melody straightaway, so even after 30 seconds of it, we could turn it into a song. Yeah, it was a nice resting spot.”

There wasn’t much rest for the wicked, though, on Paranoid. The album starts with the raging anti-war epic “War Pigs,” which, perhaps surprisingly, has some basis in Sabbath’s appreciation for the Latin-tinged poly-rhythms of a band called The Shadows, whose influence on Sabbath, according to Ward, is subtle but omnipresent.

“That was one that we had rehearsed before, so it wasn’t something that was brand new that we built in the studio or anything,” says Ward. “And we’d already been playing that out, playing it in front of audiences. I thought it was just such a good song live, very compelling. But yeah, I like the way we did play the grooves, especially the top groove … you can feel the jazz influence, only it’s played extremely f**king loud.”
Another song that was honed to perfection live was “Jack The Stripper/Fairies With Boots.” Ward says, “It’s one of the band’s favorites. It always has been. I think it was fairly well recorded. We’d been playing that for quite some time. And it was a fun song to play. Onstage, we got really, really raucous with it.”

Speaking of raucous, the stinging, frenetically paced title track, a classic song that describes, in horrifying fashion, a struggle to maintain one’s sanity, was something unexpected, a last-minute fill-in that Sabbath put together in under half an hour. It all started with an idea in Iommi’s head. As Ward, Ozzy and Butler went to lunch that last day in the studio, Iommi excused himself. He wanted to work on what’s become one of the greatest riffs in rock history, “ … and we followed about 10 minutes later,” recalls Ward. “He was playing the top 30 or 40 seconds of what was going to be ‘Paranoid,’ and so, we didn’t say a word. It was quite subdued actually. I got up there on my drums, Geezer got on his bass, and Ozzy [got] behind the mic, and we just slammed in and took about 20 minutes to do it. And again, I think that’s one of the good things about being a band sharing everything equally and being intuitive to each other. And that’s what can come out. And I think it was 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, from beginning to end. We recorded it, and then there was an overdub the next day, I think, where Tony played through it, and I played through it.”

Firing on all cylinders, Sabbath, in just two days, had created not only an album for the ages, but they had also drawn up the blueprints for what a genre that become known as heavy metal. Critics, at the time and for years afterward, loathed Sabbath, but they got the last laugh. Paranoid went straight up to #1 in the U.K. and the songs “Paranoid” and “Iron Man” marched into the lower reaches of the U.S. charts.
As for Sabbath, the realization of what they’d accomplished took a while to sink in.

“I guess we must have stopped to enjoy the party and congratulate each other for being No. 1, but I don’t think any of us knew even when we were doing it what that meant,” says Ward. “It must have meant something different for everybody, like ‘Oh, we’re No. 1’ and I was expecting something to happen, like there’d be a bolt of lightning out of the sky or something, you know, and I’ll be invited to see the Queen. The only thing we really thought about was getting a little bit of sleep and making sure we had some food. It’s strange because when it actually happens, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, right. What do we do with this now?”
Sabbath was about to find out.


- Peter Lindblad

More Surprises in Store for Ward and Black Sabbath



Black Sabbath’s early days were marked by poverty. Singer Ozzy Osbourne, at one point, couldn’t even afford a pair of shoes. And any food the four had was shared equally among the band mates, remembers drummer Bill Ward. So, understandably, their appearance was somewhat shabby and rough. To say the four looked like street people wouldn’t be too far off the mark.


Musically, Sabbath’s voluminous riffs, punishing rhythms and eerie, macabre lyrics failed to make a good first impression with critics. Not at all sunny or uplifting, Sabbath in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was more attuned to the dark side of humanity, unable to turn a blind eye to the horrors of the Vietnam War, mental illness or the breakdown of civilization. Theirs was an unrelentingly aggressive sound, massive and raging with an undisguised frustration, furious angst and equal sympathy for both angels and the devil that, perhaps, even outdid that of The Rolling Stones.


All this, as any good record label executive would tell you, is not exactly a formula for churning out hit records. But there was something about Sabbath that struck a chord with the disaffected, and their money was just as green as everybody else’s. Still, to drummer Bill Ward, the chart momentum Sabbath built with its self-titled debut and then, its masterwork, Paranoid, in 1970 was an absolute shock. And all of the success Sabbath has experienced since then has been no less surprising.
With a sense of bemusement and wonderment, Ward has taken all of it in. And so, the release of a “Classic Albums” series DVD, from Eagle Vision, on the making of the Paranoid LP is, again, one of those pleasant happenstances that keep filling Ward with pride and satisfaction over what Sabbath has accomplished.
“Well, I think it’s a nice surprise. It came as a surprise,” explains Ward. “I don’t have any expectations or leftover ideas of what Black Sabbath [can] do, other than possibly tour and make another album, which is always, of course, in my mind, as it is for all of us from time to time. So things [like this] are surprises, like [when] we were inducted into the [Rock And Roll] Hall Of Fame in New York. I kind of take it as it comes, and I tend to go with the ebb and flow of things that happen. So, you know, I’ve been enjoying it. It’s almost like receiving accolades after so many years of being involved [with Sabbath]. So in that sense, it’s been a very nice surprise.”
As for his thoughts on whether the documentary does a good in detailing the creation of an album that many believe drew up the blueprint for heavy metal, Ward was complimentary of its makers.
“I thought it was pretty good,” says Ward. “Yeah, I thought it was pretty good in the sense that it’s something different. For instance, I don’t think we’ve had an opportunity to see Black Sabbath quite like that before - you know, parts broken down. And it’s somewhat informal and yet very informative at the same time. So I think we’re joining the ranks of TV media (laughs). Finally, we’re getting there. So, in that sense, I think it’s quite good.”

And, in the end, a film like this that celebrates the often-maligned musical abilities and songcraft of Sabbath is confirmation that their critics had it all wrong from the start.

- Peter Lindblad

DVD Review: The Doors "When You’re Strange"

DVD Review: The Doors "When You’re Strange" 
All Access Review:  A-

Inscribed on Jim Morrison’s Paris grave marker is a Latin phrase that, when translated to English, is said to mean “True to his Own Spirit.” Morrison’s estranged father, Admiral George C. Morrison, a man who admits to not really knowing his son the rock god all that well – something many in the Doors’ inner circle can relate to – claims to have chosen those words on the advice of a former language teacher. The by-the-book Navy man, so different from his wild-child offspring, got it right with this farewell tribute.

So does The Doors documentary “When You’re Strange,” now out on DVD through Eagle Vision. Where Oliver Stone’s feature bio-pic, “The Doors,” infamously played fast and loose with the facts, failed in epic fashion to capture the dark, mysterious essence of that most enigmatic and alluringly surreal of late-‘60s, early –‘70s counter-culture bands, this Tom DiCillo directed effort is unfailing in its quest for the truth. That is to say that it’s almost always on point whether reciting what really happened in The Doors’ brief, but incendiary, heydays in astonishingly rich and visually captivating detail or re-creating the swirling madness that swallowed up one cult hero and three serious musicians who, as guitarist Robby Krieger put it, made music that was more “symbolic than straight to the point.”

Of course, it helps to have a wealth of never-before-seen archival footage at your disposal. What’s your pleasure? Beguiling, and often riotous and unpredictable, live performances, some of it from landmark moments in Doors’ history, including the Miami incident and more of Morrison’s very public brushes with the law? What about candid vintage interviews with Morrison, Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore in which they try to explain the unexplainable, namely how their hypnotic music actually makes sense? There’s even film of The Doors at leisure and offstage rehearsals, of members’ lives before the band, plus Morrison’s prophetic movie of his own afterlife, a high-speed journey through a desert in a Mustang Cobra into the great unknown. Were that all there was to “When You’re Strange” it would be merely a funhouse of disparate images. What sets “When You’re Strange” apart is how artfully DiCillo and company pull it all together, with Doors’ songs like the funereal dirge “The End,” the ramshackle, carnival of sound that doubles as the film’s title, and other hits from the catalog gnashing their teeth above the surreal dreamscape of well-edited imagery.

And then there’s Johnny Depp’s deadpan narration, reminiscent of that of Martin Sheen in “Apocalypse Now.” Suitably dry and unobtrusive, Depp breathes gloom and tension into a script that, thankfully, offers a fairly in-depth and intelligent study of the musical chemistry of Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore before digging, with appropriate respect and very little sensationalism, into Morrison’s writings, his descent into alcoholism and its divisive effect on the band, and, ultimately, the cloudy circumstances surrounding his death in Paris. Add in intimate and revealing interviews with Morrison’s father, recorded prior to his death in 2008, and his sister, and what you get is a documentary that is dreamy, intoxicating and pure cinematic poetry.


-Peter Lindblad



Eagle Vision The Doors: When You’re Strange