I was born in the Midlands and lived in Birmingham for five years so I’ve always had a soft spot for local heroes Black Sabbath.
I saw them once at Birmingham Odeon in the mid 1970s around the time of the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath album and remember balancing on the back of a seat flashing the peace sign back at Ozzy Osborne for almost the whole show – the closest I’ve ever come to being a headbanger.
It was, along with Hawkwind at the same venue, one of the loudest concerts I’ve experienced and it took me two days for my hearing to get back to normal.
For this reason, I couldn’t resist watching a one-hour BBC Classic Album documentary about the making of Paranoid in 1970.
It was both highly entertaining and a case study in how to demystify of the record making process. Sabbath have never claimed to be sophisticated or innovative but almost by accident stumbled upon a winning formula that became a blueprint for metalheads everywhere.
