Heaven and Hell

The Zoo Crew has got "Heaven and Hell" spinning right now, the title cut off Black Sabbath's 1980 album of the same name, and if you are a Zoo Freak who grew up on the Ozzy years, this one still feels like a different band walked into the same room and lit a bigger fire. The song runs about seven minutes, built on a bass line that keyboardist Geoff Nicholls worked up when Geezer Butler was out of the picture, and it climbs the way a good freeform cut should, from a quiet, almost spoken opening into Tony Iommi's long solo and Ronnie James Dio's voice riding the top of it. Live, the band stretched it even further, with crowd sing-alongs and a little extra sermon about angels, demons, and who gets judged. Kerrang! later ranked it among the greatest Sabbath songs, and Louder put it near the top of their own list. That is the kind of cut that still earns its place on the air at THE ZOO.

The story behind the record is better than the myth. By 1979 the original four were frayed. Ozzy Osbourne had already been shown the door after the Never Say Die! stretch, and the first attempts at a new album in Los Angeles went nowhere. Sharon Arden, who would later marry Ozzy and become Sharon Osbourne, was the one who put Tony Iommi in a room with Ronnie James Dio, lately out of Rainbow. They met around the Rainbow on Sunset. Iommi has said he already knew what Dio could do from the Rainbow records. Dio did not want a formal audition. He has said he auditioned them as much as they auditioned him. They took him to a house in Beverly Hills, Iommi played a riff, Dio sang, and they started writing instead of testing. Children of the Sea was the first piece he was handed. There are stories, from both Iommi and Geezer, of an earlier tape with Ozzy singing that song to different words and a different melody. That tape has never turned up.

The title song itself was not born in a proper studio. During the sessions they left Criteria in Miami and set up in a house in Bel Air, planning to turn the garage into a room, then giving up because it was too hot and moving the gear into the lounge. Iommi has said Heaven and Hell was written sitting in that lounge, jamming, one of those songs that built as they went. He felt he had more room to play than he had in years. Dio wrote every lyric on the album. He later called Heaven and Hell his favorite of anything he had worked on, not only for the music but for how hard it was to make, how long it took, and how many people came and went while they were doing it. Geezer had left not long after Dio arrived. Craig Gruber and Geoff Nicholls covered bass until Geezer called and asked to come back. Nicholls stayed on keys. Bill Ward played the album, then left on the road. Dio told the story of phoning Ward's hotel and hearing, "I'm off then, Ron." Dio asked where he was going. Ward said he was already at the airport. Vinny Appice took the drum stool. Ward has said he has little memory of those sessions. The album came out in April 1980 on Vertigo in Britain and Warner Bros. in the States, produced by Martin Birch, whom Dio had wanted after the Rainbow years. It reached the UK top ten and number 28 on the Billboard 200, and it eventually went platinum in America. The cover was not painted for the band. It is Lynn Curlee's painting Smoking Angels, with angels and a cigarette, which suited the title better than anyone planned.

Dio kept the song in his own sets for the rest of his life, and when he and Iommi later toured as Heaven & Hell, the title cut was still the center of the night. Dave Grohl has told Dio, more than once, that the album was the one that got him. The intro was even used to bring Iommi on at the Freddie Mercury tribute. None of that was obvious in 1979. A lot of people thought Sabbath without Ozzy was finished. The record argued otherwise, and it still does.

The band that made room for that song started a long way from Miami. In Birmingham in 1968, four working-class players were trying to get out of factory life. Tony Iommi and Bill Ward had been in Mythology. Geezer Butler and Ozzy Osbourne had crossed paths in Rare Breed. Ozzy had put a notice in a music shop window, the famous "Ozzy Zig needs gig, has own PA." They first assembled as a six-piece called the Polka Tulk Blues Band, a name Geezer lifted off a shop sign on the way to a gig. The extra guitar and the sax did not last. They cut down to Earth, a blues band working the Midlands clubs under manager Jim Simpson. Iommi even stepped out briefly to play with Jethro Tull on the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, then came back because he did not want to be someone else's guitarist. The turn came when Geezer, who had been reading Dennis Wheatley and flirting with occult ideas, woke convinced he had seen a dark figure at the foot of the bed and wanted nothing more to do with it. Out of that scare they wrote a slow, heavy song called Black Sabbath, after the old Boris Karloff film. Audiences reacted to it in a way they never had to the blues covers. Another band already had the name Earth, so they took the song's title. Iommi later said the name sounded mysterious and gave them a direction. Their first show under it was in August 1969. The tritone, the old "devil's interval," became the sound, and heavy metal had its first real band. Dio's arrival in 1979 was a second start, not a first one, but it saved the name when the original lineup could not hold.

If you want the band's own front door, the official site is Black Sabbath, and the history page there still names Heaven and Hell among the post-Ozzy albums the faithful keep. The verified pages are Facebook, Instagram, and X. For the deep crate, Joe Siegler's long-running fan site Black Sabbath Online has the full Heaven and Hell entry, credits, and the note that Nicholls wrote the bass line. The big all-eras gathering is the Complete Black Sabbath group. Put the needle back on the title cut. The angels on that sleeve are still smoking.