BEFORE: I've got just five films left before I return to narrative movies, and they cover three bands: Black Sabbath, Metallica and Rush. From the Rush film I can make an easy transition back to fiction films, believe it or not. But that will happen during the coming weekend, so here comes my last week of the Summer Music Concert Series, and I'm going out with a bang-your-head heavy metal-thon, which includes TWO famous bands performing their farewell concerts.
Ozzy Osbourne carries over again from "The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years"
THE PLOT: The heavy metal band Black Sabbath plays its final show in their hometown of Birmingham on February 4, 2017.
AFTER: This is another band that I know almost nothing about, except the fact that Ozzy Osbourne came from this band, left it for a while, and came back to it. "Iron Man", "War Pigs" and "Paranoid", those are the only Black Sabbath songs I think I know. But I'm taking this as a learning experience - hey, I didn't know all the names of the Eagles before I started this chain, so that's what this has been all about, plugging up some of the holes in my musical knowledge.
It turns out there have been a LOT of people in Black Sabbath over the years, like Ronnie James Dio and Glenn Hughes (from Deep Purple) and others that were also in KISS, the Clash, and even ELO. But here in the end times, the band reverted to the "classic" line-up of Tony Iommi (who never left), Ozzy (who left and came back) and Geezer Butler (who also left and came back). They made a few references to someone named "Bill", but I didn't know who that was - apparently that was drummer Bill Ward, who was fired from the band over his drinking, but did six stints overall, most recently in 2011-2012, but did not want to come back for the final tour. There seem to be various stories over whether he was healthy enough to tour, or whether he was unable to come to proper contract terms.
Another thing I learned tonight was that Black Sabbath's guitarist, Tony Iommi, is missing the tips of two fingers on his right hand from an industrial accident at a sheet metal factory that happened when he was 17. Which would only be a problem if he ever wanted to play guitar again. One option would have been to learn to play guitar the other way, like switch hands, but he didn't want to do that. So he fashioned some plastic fingertips for himself, learned to play chords differently, and developed some new techniques. That might have slowed him down, but it sure didn't stop him. From the small amount of guitar-playing that I've done, I find this incredible - I didn't play long enough to develop any callouses, instead I played a smaller guitar with rather soft strings, and my giant fingers could each cover two strings at a time. So I also had to develop some different ways to play chords, just because my fingers were big and my guitar was small. I've got a regular-sized guitar, but I just don't have the time to play it or the patience to develop the necessary finger strength - this guy was missing pieces of TWO fingers, but he found the time and he played through the pain. My hat is off.
My biggest problem with this film was connected to the fact that I only knew TWO of their songs - but this was a 90-minute (mostly) concert film, so that meant that there were bound to be a few songs that I was just not going to be familiar with. And that would only be a problem if they were sung by Ozzy Osbourne, who's close to incoherent when he's talking, let alone singing. I struggled through the first half-hour, and I couldn't understand a word he sang, or even said. After about 30 minutes I couldn't take it any more, and I had to enable the captions on my TV. My hearing is getting worse, but I can usually compensate by turning up the volume - but that doesn't help when the words are hard to understand at ANY volume. At least with the captions on, I could see most of the lyrics as they appeared on the screen (it wasn't perfect, about 10 or 20% of the lyrics were missing) and I could at least tell what Ozzy was singing about.
It didn't help that the band returned to their Birmingham roots for this final concert - Ozzy said that as soon as he crosses the border to his hometown, he gets that thick "Brummie" accent back, and he's even harder to understand than usual. Unless, of course, that your ear is tuned to that thick, slurring accent, and mine just plain isn't.
In their final concert, the band played a number of their "classic" songs, which as you might expect, was intended to reward the long-time fans. With no new album to promote, the band was free to play whatever songs they liked from their early years. Then, and I thought this was a bit weird, the band got together at a recording studio a few days AFTER their final concert, to play some more older songs together. I thought the reasoning for this was really suspect - why would they want to play another gig, right after their final gig? Iimmi says something like, "Well, you don't have a chance to talk during your last show, so I thought we'd get together again a few days later?" Huh? How would he know in advance that he wouldn't get to talk to his bandmates during their final show, if they'd never done a final show before? This makes no sense - I'm willing to bet this was arranged for the benefit of the film, like maybe the concert footage wasn't long enough to fill up the 90 minute film, so they had to quickly book some time to get a few more songs in there. Just admit it, man.
Aha, I figured it out - the DVD that was released of their final concert came with a bonus CD, and that CD ("the Angelic Sessions") featured 5 songs, two of which this film shows being recorded at that studio - "The Wizard" and "Changes". So that's probably the real reason the band got back together a few days after their last show, to record this bonus CD. There's no shame in that, why make up a lame excuse like getting together to discuss the final show that took place just a few days before. What was that session supposed to be, some kind of exit interview?
The whole thing wraps up with the band performing the song "Changes" in the studio, and even though it's an older song (from 1972 apparently), I couldn't help but wonder if it applies to Ozzy's current state of affairs, since it's a song about letting one's lover go and then regretting that decision. There always seem to be some kind of divorce rumors circulating around Ozzy and Sharon, but it seems they're still together in some fashion. Perhaps it's a very complicated relationship that I'll learn more about from tomorrow's film.
There's that same old rock and roll story again, that the band got screwed in their first recording contracts, and didn't make much money until late in their careers. But at least Black Sabbath is able to put a positive spin on all that, pointing out that if they HAD received millions of dollars when they were younger, they probably would have spent more money on drugs, and then overdosed. So if they'd been richer sooner, they'd also be deader sooner! I guess that's one way of looking at the brighter side of things. Sort of.
Also starring Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Tommy Clufetos, Adam Wakeman
RATING: 5 out of 10 apocalyptic references
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