So Halloween is almost here, and there is a chill in the air.
I don’t celebrate or get as excited about Halloween as I once did (I think it has to do something with growing up), but I will always have a soft spot in my heart for that day and the music that goes with it.
The music that goes with Halloween needs to convey a certain threat or creepiness, and I first found that in the music of Black Sabbath.
I remember distinctly getting off work at the Hinky Dinky grocery store in Auburn on a Sunday of all nights and riding with Steve Butts the fifteen miles to Rock Port, Mo.
For the life of me, I can’t remember what our excuse was for going, but we took his rusty, junky poor excuse for a car and probably raced at least one train either coming or going at one of the two crossings along the way.
Who knows why, but Steve liked to demonstrate his complete lack of critical thinking skills and respect for the lives of his friends by racing trains of all things. He was generally reckless, so when he rolled his car three times going down Half Breed Road one night, no one was surprised; we were just surprised that he lived and glad he didn’t have anybody with him.
So anyway, we somehow arrived alive at Trail’s End, a seedy, old truck stop along I-29 at Rock Port. After going in, I looked through the budget bin for tunes, as broke music fans are wont to do and as I have done all my life primarily because I like music and walk through this world with a wine appetite on a beer budget.
And in this cabinet full of cheap tapes by the likes of Tanya Tucker, Steppenwolf and dirty, racist truck stop comic Gene Tracy, I found “Black Sabbath – Greatest Hits.”
At the time, I hadn’t heard much Black Sabbath. I’d probably heard “Iron Man” or “Paranoid” somewhere along the way, but the rest of the songs were a mystery. The tape included those aforementioned songs and “Sweet Leaf,” “N.I.B.,” “Changes,” “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,” “War Pigs,” “Laguna Sunrise,” “Tomorrow’s Dream,” “Sweet Leaf” and “Black Sabbath.”
The band’s name and the names of the songs certainly suggested they weren’t going about their way spreading peace and love, but beyond that, I wasn’t really sure what to expect. All I knew was that they were revered by the musicians that I revered, and that was enough for me.
So I paid the $5 or whatever it was for that tape and added a bottle of Nitro cola (“All the sugar and twice the caffeine” was the cola’s motto, and I had no business buying a bottle at 11 o’clock at night, but I did.).
Once we were in Steve’s car, we put the tape in his cheap Kraco stereo, Steve steered the way out of the parking lot, and we were off.
The first side started with “Paranoid,” and from there it went to “N.I.B.,” which was a little discomforting. I had been raised to take my Christian faith seriously, and here was Ozzy singing “My name is Lucifer, please take my hand,” and I didn’t know what to think, but I had a feeling I was getting a bit too close to the dark side.
The next song, “Changes,” felt really out of place after the first two. What was a piano ballad doing on heavy metal album? Quite frankly, I still don’t know.
The remainder of that side finished up with more down-tuned riff-rockery and then the second side was to start with the song “Black Sabbath.”
At first, what I heard was a storm, complete with rain and thunder, then a church bell in the distance and a loud guitar chord that clearly conveyed a sense of doom.
Then there was Ozzy: “What is this that stands before me? Figure in black which points at me,” and I was transfixed. I was overcome with a sense of dread and was sincerely scared. I don’t know what I was scared of, but I was clearly scared.
As the song continued there was a “Big black shape with eyes of fire telling people their desire,” and for some reason Satan was sitting there smiling as he “watches those flames get higher and higher,” which prompted Ozzy to beg “Oh no, no, please God help me.”
Then it’s like Armageddon and Satan is “coming round the bend” while people are running, but for some reason the people who are running “better go and beware,” and the final words of the song before Tony Iommi does some pretty cool guitar noodling are Ozzy pleading “No, no, please, no.”
It’s not easy to make sense of the lyrics, but what one can figure out is that Satan is coming, and it’s clearly not a good thing.
The sense of dread and Ozzy’s pleas for help and the first impression they made remain with me. The song still scares me, and I can’t put my finger on exactly why.
And I know I’m not the only one.
During my first semester as a graduate assistant teacher, for Halloween, I turned out the lights and played “Black Sabbath,” and when someone who was late to class knocked on the door, everyone jumped, including me.
I don’t remember what Steve Butts had to say about the song, or if he said anything about it all.
But what I do remember is risking my life with a reckless driver in a car that was ready to fall apart so that I might get scared by a song and learn to love heavy metal.
To hear the song above, check out Black Sabbath-Black Sabbath.