Random Drug-Fueled, Sordid Tales From Black Sabbath's Heyday That Prove Just How Unhinged They Really W (24 items)

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  (#10) 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath' Was Recorded In A Haunted Castle In Wales, Where Ozzy Set Himself On Fire and Bill Ward Slept With A Dagger

  The title track from Black Sabbath's 1973 masterpiece Sabbath Bloody Sabbath has one of the heaviest damn riffs you'll ever hear, so it shouldn't surprise you to learn the album was recorded in part in the dungeon of a haunted Welsh castle. As Ozzy and Iommi revealed in an interview:

  "Iommi: So we rented a castle in Wales, which, yes, was supposedly haunted. Bill saw this ghost jump out the window in his room, so he started taking this big dagger to bed with him. He said if he saw the ghost, he was going to stab it. As if you can stab a ghost! 

  Osbourne: I was the ghost! 

  Iommi: We set up our gear in the dungeons, and it was a great vibe for coming up with ideas. When we wrote Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, all these riffs started coming out. We started using synthesizers, too - musically, we went to another level. 

  Osbourne: That, to me, was the pinnacle of Black Sabbath. I also discovered, as a singer, the best person to harmonize with is yourself -- there's no one that sounds more like you than you." 

  As you can see from the transcript, Iommi seems completely unfazed to learn (or maybe already knew?) Ozzy was, or at least believed himself to be, the ghost terrorizing Ward. While Ozzy was haunting Ward and learning to harmonize with himself, he almost died.

  "Iommi: We almost lost Ozzy. We had a room with a big fireplace. Ozzy had a big fire going but had fallen asleep when a piece of coal tumbled onto the carpet. We forced our way in, and the room was ablaze! 

  Osbourne: I'd set my foot on fire. We were so hellbent on frightening each other, we frightened ourselves! We then made a collective decision to f*cking stop this coke thing - it was destroying us."

  And how did that go? As Ozzy tells it, "I started sniffing it behind the amps, where they couldn't see me."
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  (#20) Ozzy Was Fired For Being Too High In A Band Full Of Cokeheads (Including Bill Ward!)

  In the late '70s, Iommi, Ward, and Butler started having seriously problems with Ozzy's drug habit. His erratic behavior, near-endless coke use, and penchant for disappearing for long periods made it impossible for Black Sabbath to make new music. 

  As Iommi said in an interview for the book Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal:

  “I’d have to go over to [Warner Bros.] and they’d say, ‘How’s the album coming?’ and I’d go, ‘Oh, great, great.' I had to face those people knowing full well that we hadn’t anything to play them. It got to the point where the other guys said, 'Well, look. If we don’t do anything, we’re gonna break up. We can’t stand it. We’re gonna leave.’ So that was the decision between the three of us. We said we’re going to have to replace Ozzy.”

  Regarding the substance abuse issues of other members of Sabbath, Iommi tells it straight: 

  "Like Ozzy, [Ward] was drunk all the time. The difference was, he didn't leave the house and could at least prop himself behind the drums when the band decided to try writing. Even when Ozzy returned to the house, he was too trashed to sing."

  As for being fired from a band notorious for drug use for using drugs, Ozzy said:

  “I’d be lying if I said I didn't feel betrayed by what happened with Black Sabbath. We were four blokes who’d grown up together a few streets apart. We were like family, like brothers. And firing me for being f*cked up was hypocritical bullsh*t. We were all f*cked up. If you’re stoned and I’m stoned and you’re telling me that I’m fired because I’m stoned how can that be? Because I’m slightly more stoned than you are?”
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  (#6) During The Band's Heyday, Ozzy Took A Dump In An Upscale Hotel Elevator, In Full View Of The Lobby

  During a 1992 interview with Guitar World, Tony Iommi was asked to tell a crazy story about Ozzy. The guitarist revealed the following, from the band's heyday in the 1970s:

  "I don't know - there' s so many. [chuckles] Wait, here's one. Actually, it's quite funny. We were all in an elevator in this real plush hotel, and Ozzy decides to take a crap. As he's doing it, the elevator is going down to the reception floor. The door opens suddenly - and there's Ozzy with his pants around his knees. And all these people in fur coats are just staring at him with their mouths open."
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  (#2) No One Was Totally Sure Where All The Drugs Came From

  As Ozzy relates in his autobiography, I Am Ozzy:

  "Eventually we started to wonder where the f*ck all the coke was coming from. All we knew was that it arrived in the back of unmarked vans, packed inside cardboard boxes. In each box there were about thirty vials - ten across, three deep - and each one had a screw-on top, sealed with wax."
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  (#9) They Stashed Cocaine In Fake Amplifiers And Flew Them Around The World On Private Planes

  Black Sabbbath's cocaine habits were out of control, especially in the early-to-mid 1970s. Ozzy Osbourne was so high, so drunk, and having so much sex with so many groupies during the recording of Vol. 4 in Los Angeles in 1972, he didn't even know what was going on around him. 

  As Ozzy remembers of the band's days staying at 773 Stradella Road in Bel Air:

  "We never left the house. Booze, drugs, food, groupies - everything was delivered. On a good day, there'd be bowls of white powder and crates of booze in every room, and all these random rock 'n' rollers and chicks in bikinis hanging around in the place...

  It would be impossible to exaggerate the amount of coke we did in that house... At one point we were getting through so much of the stuff, we had to have it delivered twice a day. Don't ask me who was organizing it all - the only thing I can remember is this shady-looking bloke on the telephone the whole time. 

  I once asked him 'What the f*ck do you do, man?'

  He just laughed and fiddled nervously with his aviator shades. At that stage I didn't care, as long as the coke kept coming."

  According to guitarist Tony Iommi, nobody in Black Sabbath could control anyone else, they were all so far gone on drugs. In September 1972, Iommi almost overdosed at the Hollywood Bowl: "I was doing coke left, right and center, and quaaludes, and God knows what else. We used to have [cocaine] flown in by private plane."

  In order to hide the drugs in the planes, Sabbath had fake guitar amps built and filled with bags of cocaine. 
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  (#12) Geezer Butler Once Tried To Kill Himself During A Bad Acid Trip

  Though cocaine was Sabbath's primary vice in 1972, as they stalked the long boulevards and labyrinthine canyons of Los Angeles, churning out the Earth-shattering riffs and sinister lyrics of Vol. 4, the band indulged in a number of other substances, notably alcohol. One night, an anonymous groovy party ghoul spiked Geezer Butler's drink with LSD.

  While tripping through the cascading folds of space-time, Butler entered a shrine of necrotic thought and tried to kill himself by jumping out of the window at his hotel room. He told the Guardian: "Tony and Bill had to hold me down on the bed. I started going off drugs after that."

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