Neon Knights

Zoo Freaks, the Crew just dropped the needle on a real charger, and if you were anywhere near a radio in the spring of 1980 you already know the opening blast. "Neon Knights" is the first track on Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell, and it is also the last song they wrote for that record. Ronnie James Dio told the story straight. The band already had Heaven and Hell, Children of the Sea, Lonely Is the Word and Die Young in the can, and they still felt the album needed one more piece that could stand beside those songs. Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi and Dio headed for Jersey to find it. Bill Ward stayed behind in Britain because his father had died. Out of that trip came the gallop that opens the record, circles and rings, dragons and kings, a call to the legions of the brave. They cut it fast at Studio Ferber in Paris with producer Martin Birch. Hardly anybody in the room spoke English, Birch was waving his hands to get the point across, and the four of them walked in, knocked the track out, and walked back out glad the long job was finally done.

That is the kind of story the Crew loves to pass around the mic. Heaven and Hell was not some tidy studio project. Most of the album had been built in Miami at Criteria, then the band shifted to a house in Bel Air and turned the place into a writing room after the garage got too hot to work in. Geezer had already slipped back to England for a stretch. He has said that a few songs into the sessions he was dealing with rough personal trouble at home, on top of Ozzy Osbourne leaving, and he needed to clear his head. He is credited across the album, but Neon Knights is the one track where his hand is certain. The lyrics belong to Dio, and they sit in that medieval dreamworld he loved, knights riding out against the jackals of the street, blood on the streets and blood on the rocks. Fans have argued for years whether the neon knights are old English legend, modern protectors, or something closer to first responders in armor. Dio never pinned it to a single reading, which is probably why the song still feels wide open.

The single landed at number 22 on the UK chart, with a live Children of the Sea on the flip and a picture sleeve on the first 25,000 copies. For a lot of listeners it was the first taste of Sabbath without Ozzy, the same kind of pressure point AC/DC faced when Hell's Bells introduced a band without Bon Scott. Tony Iommi has said they threw Ronnie in the deep end and told him straight that some of the old crowd would hate it, maybe even spit. The little man with the huge voice stood up to it. Iommi still talks about how hard it was to believe that sound was coming out of that frame, and he has named the Neon Knights riff among the ones with real character on the record, right beside Die Young and the title track. Dio later admitted that Turn Up the Night, on the follow-up Mob Rules, was a subconscious try at Neon Knights part two. That tells you how much the opener set the standard.

The road into that moment starts years earlier, in the factory streets of Aston in Birmingham. Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward were looking for a way out of the mills and the machine shops. They came up through local outfits, Rare Breed and Mythology among them, and first gathered as the Polka Tulk Blues Band, a name Geezer tied to a talcum-powder brand. A sax player and a second guitarist were in the mix for a short while, then both were shown the door. The name shrank to Earth. They hauled gear to any gig they could get, and Ozzy later recalled waiting outside venues on the chance a bigger band would not show. The turn came from a horror habit and a bad night. Their rehearsal room sat across from a cinema that ran scary pictures, and Iommi wondered why people paid money to be frightened. Geezer, deep into horror films and Dennis Wheatley novels, had a figure he believed was from the dark side appear at the foot of his bed and quit dabbling after that. The band wrote a warning song about it, called it Black Sabbath after the Boris Karloff film, and watched a crowd lose its mind. Another band already owned the name Earth, so they took the song title for themselves. Iommi has said the name sounded mysterious and gave them a direction. Down-tuned guitars, a drummer who hit like a foundry, and a singer who could wail over the top of it, and heavy metal had its first real house.

By the end of the seventies that house was close to empty. Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die had not set the world on fire, Ozzy was in no shape to finish new songs, and Iommi has said the choice was break up or replace the singer. He met Dio at a party at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Los Angeles, phoned him, and asked him up to the house for a jam. The gear was already set. Children of the Sea came out of that first session. Dio later called Sabbath a ghost ship when he came aboard. What they built with him was not Sabbath with a new mouth. It was a sharper, more melodic band, fantasy in the words and swing still in Bill Ward's drums, and Heaven and Hell, released in that wild metal year of 1980 alongside Back in Black and British Steel, proved the ship could sail. Dio said the finger from old fans faded because the album was their own and it worked. Years later, when lawyers kept them from using the Sabbath name on a reunion, they took the title Heaven and Hell for the band itself, a nod to the record that saved them. Dave Grohl, whenever he ran into Dio, went straight to that album.

If you want the long trail, the band's own house is Black Sabbath, and the Crew keeps a standing invite over at THE ZOO for anyone who still wants a station that plays the deep cuts without talking over them. You can follow the official pages on Facebook, Instagram, and X. For the fans who keep the scrapbooks, the tour stories and the album notes, Black Sabbath Online has been the gathering place for years, Heaven and Hell included. Spin it again, Freaks. Circles and rings. The knights are still out there.