An Insiders View of the Memorabilia Scene

By Stephen M.H. Braitman

It never fails that our truly personal “Rosebud” is humble, perhaps common, and not what others expect. When asked what he would save if the flood waters were rising, Jacques van Gool reflected a moment and then said without embarrassment: a 1975 issue of the Dutch magazine Muziek Express with Kiss on the cover.

Apparently it was the first time Kiss had made the cover. “Emotionally, that magazine brings home more memories to me than anything else.” It was, as he said, “a life-changer.”

Jacques van Gool - Backstage Auctions

 

That change in life turned van Gool into a music collector, growing a personal collection into a significant leisure activity apart from his main gig in the globetrotting corporate world. When he and his wife Kelli became fed up with relentless travel and no home life, they seized on the opportunity to capitalize on their obsession with music memorabilia. Jacques and Kelli now run Backstage Auctions in Houston, focusing on collectibles personally owned by artists, managers, producers and promoters.

We wanted to hear from van Gool as someone totally immersed in the world of music memorabilia for a perspective many collectors simply can’t have. Like other professionals in his field, he has a view that is helpful on many levels to understand the dynamics of the market. Like, what the heck is happening now? And should I buy everything in sight?

We’ve had a certain amount of controversy over what constitutes “music memorabilia” lately, like Elvis’ medicine bottles. How do you define it? Is absolutely everything worth buying and selling?

Jacques van Gool: Honestly, I try not to define it. To me, memorabilia is anything that you enjoy collecting. And if you ask a thousand people why they collect, you probably get a thousand different answers. So, if collecting medicine bottles is your thing, then by default those bottles become memorabilia to that collector.

Having said that, I personally don’t believe that absolutely everything is worth buying and selling. We’ve been offered many very personal items over the years and that’s where I draw the line. Sure, I’ll take Bruce Springsteen’s boots, jeans and sweaty shirt any day, but I’ll pass on socks and underwear. I’ll gladly offer up Bob Dylan’s handwritten lyrics or letters, but an expired passport or a hospital bill with a social security number goes a step too far. I realize that the lines have been blurred over time, but I still believe that true music memorabilia is comprised of items that were meant to be collected: records, posters, shirts, autographs, photos, instruments, lyrics, magazines, etc.

Fortunately, that still makes up 95% of what’s out there, so I think we can easily group the remaining 5% as novelty items, which, by nature and design, attract mostly a different audience than the traditional collector.

At what point do you recommend that an object be authenticated? How rampant in the industry are counterfeits and frauds? And what categories of memorabilia are most suspect?

Jacques van Gool: Oh man, you sure know how to ask the tough questions, don’t you? I guess that once it became clear that there was money to be made in music memorabilia (and this goes back to the 1970s), you started seeing the first counterfeits. It likely began with autographs but has since spilled over to high-end concert posters, rare vinyl, vintage T-shirts, toys, tour programs, you name it.

It’s really no different than what you see among sports or movie memorabilia, or art, coins, stamps, jewelry — heck, even wine for that matter. I’m not sure that you can weed it out, but as an auctioneer you have an obligation to your buyers to protect them from fraudulent practices. We’ve eliminated it by exclusively representing the authentic source of whatever we auction, which creates huge peace of mind for everyone involved.

Short of that, if you want to sell or buy an item that comes from a secondary source, you really need to do your homework. Fortunately, there are many experts in many different fields who can help you authenticate. I must add, though, that you have to make sure that this expert is truly independent and has no other agenda but to serve you with the highest level of integrity.

Naturally, the most suspect area is that of signed memorabilia, simply because we all want a fully signed Beatles photo or poster from 1964. The reality is that only so many true signed pieces are in circulation and once the prices start to hit the four and five-digit levels, it’ll bring out the crooks from around the world. I’ve seen loads of fake autographs coming from Australia and Europe and Canada, so it’s not an American problem per se.

I’m not even going to touch the whole subject of whether to use a forensic expert or an autograph expert. At the end of the day, even though this is a massively complex issue, I believe that it’ll come down to something very simple: If you, as a buyer — in heart and mind — are happy and satisfied with the item you bought, than that’s all there is to it.

Every collector has a unique standard to which they measure their own collection. Some may need three independent reviews, letters and documents to pull the trigger, whereas the next buyer acts on impulse and buys simply because he or she likes what they see. That’s something that we (the sellers) can’t control. But what we can do — and must do — is take every step possible to provide the right stuff. After all, we are being looked upon to uphold a standard, and I like to believe that — since we have seen it all — we should know how to separate right from wrong.

There are many auction houses and retailers dealing in music items, and there’s tons of stuff out there — and not even counting eBay! Is there too much stuff? Is this a bubble market?

Jacques van Gool: I agree that there is a ton of stuff out there and naturally, from a competitive viewpoint, I’d like to see less; but that’s a bit of a double edged-sword. The fact that so many generic auction houses have jumped on the music memorabilia market also helps the rest of us in that it supports and promotes the overall hobby. The more places there are where you can buy collectibles, the more potential there is to create or generate new collectors, something that in the end is always good for our business.

I don’t believe it is a bubble market, though. Collecting music memorabilia is something that I see continuing for as long as there is music. The only fluctuations you will see is in the number of sellers. When the market is strong, there will always be an increase in auctioneers, retailers and stores that want a piece of that pie. When the market slows down, some will retreat and move on to something else. The diehards will always remain loyal and fortunately, there are some great music memorabilia stores and sellers who have truly been dedicated to serving the market for decades.

What type of people are actually spending thousands of dollars on higher-priced items and objects? Are there enough rich or well-off collectors out there, or is the market mixed with pure investors?

Jacques van Gool:  Well, you never can have enough rich collectors as far as I consider, but in reality, the real high-rollers make up for perhaps 5 or at best 10 percent of collectors. The beauty of collecting is that literally everyone can do it — and does do it. As such, you’ll see a perfect bell-shaped graph, which I believe to be a reasonable reflection of the income classes in the industrial world.

You’ll always have a good chunk of collectors that solely operate at the lower value end, the largest population is to be found in the middle, and only a small percentage operates at the very top of the curve. I have always operated on that principle and, as such, aim to have our auctions reflect all three levels. In other words, I always want to have something to offer for every wallet, and no one should ever feel left out.

As for who buys the higher-end collectibles, in my experience that’s an exotic blend of clients. Naturally they have one thing in common, which is sufficient disposable income, but as far as their motives for collecting, I think only a small portion buys for the purpose of “investing.” Most high-end collectors are still true fans and motivated by the exclusivity of the item.

Are the voracious buying habits of showplace retail establishments like Hard Rock Cafe and museums like the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame and Experience Museum drying up collectibles and driving up prices?

Jacques van Gool: The museums used to buy in the very beginning, but once they established themselves, they have for the largest part relied on donations. The HRC has many deals directly with musicians who will provide them constantly with new material. By the way, most of the products you’ll see these days are reproductions.

The Hall of Fame is almost exclusively donations, which are mostly on temporary loan. They rotate their pieces fairly quickly and at some point, most of it will be returned to the consignor.

If your question is whether places like these generate a positive effect on collecting as a whole, I’d say the answer is yes. Everyone who likes music has visited at least once a Hard Rock Café, and you can’t help but be excited about the cool stuff that’s hanging on the walls. As a true collector, you naturally would love to have a piece just like that, whether it’s a signed guitar, a vintage concert poster or a record award. And that’s where the auctioneers and memorabilia sellers come into play. I’m all in support of places like the Rock Hall and the Hard Rock Cafes because, in the end, it’s good for the hobby, thus it’s good for business.

Is there any comprehensive database yet for music memorabilia similar to those available for fine art, like Artfact.com? Or is it still the Wild West — nobody really knows what’s out there, and new stuff is always being discovered? In other words, how mature is the field of collecting music memorabilia?

Jacques van Gool:  I don’t think it’s mature, but it is certainly maturing. Ever since the ’70s, people — mostly dedicated fans — have been putting together price guides which, if anything, are often helpful sources to knowing what is out there. You can find books these days dedicated solely to guitars, vinyl, T-shirts, posters, etc. On top of that, there are great band- or artist-related price guides for The Beatles, Kiss, Madonna, Rolling Stones and so on. Also, with the continued accessibility of the Internet, you’ll start to find more and more decent Web sites dedicated to pricing and inventory.

So I believe the hobby is getting better. That said, I believe this hobby is still too young to have established a reliable and consistent platform for pricing. I still see too many extremes in pricing to be able to say that a certain poster or shirt or autograph is worth “X” and “X” only. The best you have these days are ranges. But on the upside, the ranges have become more defined and more reliable, which is the result of collectors and Web sites comparing sales data.

What doesn’t make it any easier is the fact that new discoveries are being made on an almost daily basis, and many will have an effect (up or down) on what was established previously.

But, in a way, that’s the beauty of collecting music memorabilia. Unlike cars, coins or stamps, where you pretty much know what’s there, music memorabilia is much more diverse.

Lastly, we shouldn’t forget that this isn’t an exact science. We collect mostly because of our passion, and when you translate passion into value, the number in the end will be different for most of us. To me, that’s also the beauty of collecting music memorabilia. One collector will pay $50 for a certain poster, whereas the next collector will pay $500.

I find absolute pricing to be a bit of a dangerous undertaking, and I personally would like to see us concentrate more on ranges instead. Once we have widely established and accepted ranges, it’s up to the collector to decide whether on not to follow those guidelines. It certainly will make the whole negotiating part a little easier and, better yet, will provide a great aid in assessing the true value of a collectible.

Stephen M.H. Braitman is a music appraiser, writer, collector, and fan.

DVD Review: The Rolling Stones "Stones in Exile"

DVD Review: The Rolling Stones "Stones in Exile"

All Access Review: A

To avoid paying exorbitant taxes in their native England, the Rolling Stones moved to the south of France in 1971, following the release of Sticky Fingers. It was not a proud moment for a band that left home with their tales between their legs, knowing that their street cred was about to take a serious hit. Still, it’s hard to blame them. The English tax laws were going to take pounds and pounds of their flesh, and had they stayed and settled up, the Stones, rock and roll’s dark princes, wouldn’t have had a pot to piss in, or so they claim.

But evading taxes is hardly a cool thing to do. That’s something card-carrying members of the Establishment attempt, isn’t it? Caught between a rock and a hard place, the Stones did the wise thing and reluctantly, and almost shamefully, went on semi-permanent holiday. Something good did come out of it, though, and that was Exile on Main Street, perhaps the most mythologized album in the history of pop music, and one of the best ever made by anybody, including the sainted Beatles. And, as an added bonus, the tales of excess and degradation that came out of the Nellcote villa, the decaying mansion where Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg tried to play family in a sleepy, hazy atmosphere of sex, drugs and rock and roll, only served to rehabilitate the Stones’ outlaw image.

“Stones in Exile,” the hour-long visual accompaniment to the recent reissue of Exile, revisits the making of a record that was initially misunderstood before everyone figured out that it was a work of artistic genius and it does so with beautiful, intelligent editing that doesn’t get in the way of what is a compelling story. As Mick Jagger says, while back at Olympic Studios, where the groundwork for Exile was laid, talking about recording sessions is boring. “Stones in Exile” splits the difference, providing just enough real insight about the technical side of things to appease those who care about such things, while wonderfully re-creating the laissez-faire environment that led to Exile’s black magic, this album of dissolute beauty, a loose, shambolic shakedown of zombie-like gospel, drug-sick country and blues, and murky rock with undertones as scary and dangerous as voodoo.

True, it’s a cliché. But, this definitive documentary, with its well-placed pieces of vintage still photography of the Stones, period film from the infamous, and secretive, “Cocksucker Blues” movie and extensive variety of interviews with Exile survivors - all of the Stones, with Mick Taylor, included, plus Pallenberg, producer Jimmy Miller, engineer Andy Johns, the crazed, but exceedingly likeable, Texan saxophone player Bobby Keys - does put the viewer smack dab in the middle of Exile’s long, humid birth. You’re there in the kitchen and huge basement of Nellcote, watching the Stones deal with the region’s stifling summer heat, walls full of condensation and near constant equipment malfunctions, while improvising on the fly to overcome it all.

You’re in the famed mobile recording studio truck and its confined walls as the techies attempt the high-wire act of trying to record various Stones performing in different places inside the house. You’re in Richards’ massive bedroom, sleeping away the day and doing smack until going to work late at night and not coming out until morning, or even the afternoon, whether Mick was there or not. And, of course, you’re there lying on one of the exotic rugs, hung over after a long bender, among all the other hangers-on similarly affected, all of you wondering whether you should stay or go.

That’s just a small sampling of scenes from the tour of hell “Stones in Exile” guides you through. Above it all hangs that feeling of disconnectedness the Stones experienced while exiled from their homeland and there’s plenty of conversation about how much of that influenced the album. Tack on 90 minutes of behind-the-scenes bonus footage, with music heavyweights like the White Stripes’ Jack White, Don Was and Liz Phair, among others, offering praise and spot-on analysis of Exile’s virtues, and “Stones in Exile” succeeds as a slice of nostalgia, a history lesson and a work of art.

It’s already been a big year for Exile, what with the reissue and “Stones in Exile” being aired on NBC-TV’s “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and Fallon’s week-long celebration of Exile leading up to the event. Watch for the restoration and release of the 1972 concert film “Ladies And Gentlemen … The Rolling Stones” on Blu-Ray later this year, the result of a two-movie deal between the Stones and Eagle Rock Entertainment. Have you got Exile on Main Street fever yet?

-       -  Peter Lindblad

Hands Of Doom: Black Sabbath’s Bill Ward looks back on ‘Paranoid’

A storm was brewing on the northwest coast of England around 1969 and 1970, and it was moving inland fast.

The origins of this tempest, however, first stirred in the industrial wasteland of a city called Birmingham, where four scraggly, but wildly creative, young men were transforming the heavy blues of such legends as Cream and Blue Cheer into a new kind of minor-key sonic monster, a ponderous beast capable of pummeling of great pillars into pebbles with immense, explosive guitar riffs, pounding rhythms that buffeted and followed those powerfully struck chords to hell and a singer whose pained howl expressed horrors both real and imagined.

It was a scary, almost apocalyptic sound that both shocked and awed rock audiences in Cumbria, an English county that relied on the bounty of the Atlantic Ocean to eke out what was at times a meager existence. And they loved the devastatingly loud, sludgy dirges and hallucinogenic jams that were blasting out of the rugged amps of a then-unknown Black Sabbath that toured the area hard.

“We’d done a lot of work in northwest England in what they call Cambria,” remembers Sabbath drummer Bill Ward, “and without realizing it we built up quite a fan base in northwest England.” Playing to increasingly packed houses in the region, Sabbath cultivated a rabid, extremely loyal following that Ward believes put its collective shoulders to the band’s foggy, drug-addled, yet crushingly powerful and disturbingly spooky, self-titled debut, released in May 1970, and helped nudge it into the U.K. Top Ten album charts. All of which set the stage for Sabbath’s master stroke, Paranoid, also unleashed in 1970, in September of that year, and the subject of a new Eagle Vision “Classic Albums” series DVD as we approach its 40^th anniversary.

“I was just amazed,” exclaims Ward. “I think [our debut] came in at No. 26 out of the Top 30. It was just like, ‘Oh my God.’ And it was something that, after all the years that you are playing on the stage and playing all the clubs, playing all the different places we had to play, comes as a surprise. So it was enormous, really. It was like, ‘Oh, wow. We’ve actually accomplished part of a dream,’ if you like. That was a big part of the dream, to get a hit record.”

But, why Cumbria? What was it about Sabbath’s bleak musical black magic, still in its infancy but growing more and more mature with each performance, that appealed to denizens of the area’s sparsely populated towns?  

Ward explains that, “On the west coast, the northwest coast of England, they’re mainly fishing villages. However, they’re very hard. It’s a very hard life, and it’s very hard weather. It’s a really tough place to be, working in Aspatria, Whitehaven … these are all tough towns. They’re granite. The houses are built of black granite. And so they actually look quite dismal when it’s raining with these black, monolithic houses that exist up there. They paint the landscape with granite silhouettes if you like. But at the same time, you can see the beauty in that as well, but there’s almost a sense of morbidity there that was … I know we were very attracted to playing there. We wanted to be there all the time (laughs). The biggest city in that specific area is Carlisle, and Carlisle is a fortress. It’s a fortress town. It’s right on the border of England and Scotland. So it’s got a lot of pagan history, and it just goes way back in time. And so [Sabbath guitarist] Tony [Iommi] and I used to live in Carlisle. We were in another band, but when we had Black Sabbath, we all loved Carlisle. That’s where a lot of our roots were in the beginning, to play our music. So, I don’t know. The people just, you know, really liked hard-core music.”

That’s putting it lightly. Ward compares Sabbath’s original fans in that area to the more intense ones you’d also find in places like New Jersey and Philadelphia. In other words, they’re extremely passionate about what they like.

“I think it was great in the sense that not much came up to that part of northwest England,” says Ward. “You know, there are rolling hills; it’s called the ‘lake district.’ There are lots of lakes there. There’s not a large population. It’s quite isolated. So, being up there, it was a real treat when a band went up there, and I loved the audiences around that area. And they loved it when rock bands would go up there and visit these different small towns and so on and so forth. It’s just a very fanatical crowd, and I like the Scots. The Scotsmen were the same way.” 

With momentum building among the black masses, Sabbath, true to its blue-collar roots, continued working. Touring was constant, and on the road, the quartet of Ward, Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and iconic metal vocalist Ozzy Osbourne jammed and wrote during the hours when they weren’t onstage. There was a bit of a break, though.

“Yeah, well, what was happening was, as we were playing more and more, we became more and more intuitive toward one another, and so, by the time we’d done our first album, we were continually on the road,” says Ward. “It didn’t stop us from jamming out. You know, we could jam out in hotel rooms. So we’d get ideas all the time.”

Their fertile imaginations working overtime, the men of Sabbath were becoming more and more cohesive as a unit, and when they did get a little window of time to exit the road, they decided to go to Monmouth in Monmouthshire, Wales, for more work.

“We actually took a week or maybe 10 days to rehearse some of our songs,” says Ward. “I’ll give you an example of that. I’ll always remember, we rehearsed ‘Electric Funeral,’ ‘Hand Of Doom’ and I think we did some of ‘War Pigs’ there as well. So we actually had - which had never happened to us before – rehearsals, just writing material for what was to be Paranoid. So, with the combination of having licks and different things in our heads and what have you, and also by now being a very intuitive band, when we played, we knew almost … I can’t describe it. We knew where the other person was going to go. We would often sit down and write something, and we’d all go to the same place at the same time. It was actually a little strange, a little scary. But without being too analytical, it was just something we had as a band that we were able to do that. We knew intuitively when to change, when we were going to go into a different place, you know. So it was really quite a ride in making a Black Sabbath track, you know.”

Deciding on a driver for the trip was easy. Everyone followed Iommi’s lead, the guitar wizard who seemed to be able to pluck innovative, instantly memorable riffs out of thin air. Ward and Iommi, both of them heavily influenced by what Ward called the “incredibly rich soil” of the British music scene of the 1960s, began playing in bands together at the age of 16. In Birmingham, Iommi was, even at that tender age, was as good as any guitarist in the city. In quick order, he moved past them all, fluidly navigating more complex pieces than the blues and rock standards of the day.

“I just watched him all his life, you know; observing from his later teenage years, he just shot up,” says Ward. “He just grew into this young songwriter, this riff master. His uncanny ability to come up with parts and pieces, and just even sometimes [with] three notes, and then they were so devastatingly good, they would just blow the rest of us away. I mean, just playing drums, as far as playing drums to the notes that he was playing, it was a drummer’s dream. It was the best job in the world. But then, of course, it was all about talent [allowed] to flourish when we started making more and more music. But it was a prime growth period for all of us, and definitely for Tony.”

However brief, that short rehearsal period, plus the nonstop gigging, prepared Sabbath well for the tight studio timeframe the band had to record Paranoid. Having booked just two days, Sabbath was ready and willing to work long hours to get the job done, going from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Undaunted, Sabbath was up to the challenge.

“God, we were so weird,” laughs Ward. “I don’t recall us being savvy enough to put that together. It’s almost like we were told that this is what it is, this is what you have fellas. This is what you do. It was like, okay, well, we’ll just do it then. So we just showed up and did it.”

Having engineer Tom Allom and producer Rodger Bain, real recording professionals, onboard helped Sabbath stay on schedule. Allom, for his part, says on the DVD that he knew exactly how to record Sabbath.

“With what he had, and with what Rodger had, I think that they used the tools very well,” says Ward. “You know, we tried to scramble everything to put it all together the best we could. We had some fairly decent microphones, which was the case back in the late ‘60s, around ’69, early ’70. So, I think with the tools that they had and the equipment that they had, they were able to capture at least part of what we sounded like.”

Time being an issue, Sabbath laid down tracks in three takes or less. “I don’t think we’d ever [gone beyond] that,” admits Ward. “I think if we were in Take 4, we’d probably forget the song, you know, because we knew we were on a timeline, and we intended to keep to that timeline, much to Tom Allom and Rodger Bain’s efforts to keep that tight. We knew that’s what we were being given, to try to take every advantage of that. So in that sense, we encouraged each other. We were very pushy towards each other.”

And Sabbath, being the force of nature they were live and always pushing to play at a volume that was troublesome to manage, had trouble adjusting to the confines of the studio.

“This was like the band’s fifth day in a recording studio, ‘cause we were only a couple days with Black Sabbath and now we were doing Paranoid and it was like a few more days for Paranoid,” says Ward. “We were very inexperienced, but what we were at the time was we were a touring band. We were playing live and we were playing loud and we were playing very aggressively. So, for anybody to capture that in a very small studio, with the baffles and the microphones of the day … I remember just my snare drum, they were trying to just get the microphone to not just go into the red and just overpower the microphone, ‘cause I was just playing full strength. You know, I didn’t know how to play in the studio.”

Being young and somewhat naïve about the recording process, Sabbath decided, whether consciously or unconsciously, to sort of mimic the chords and notes Iommi was churning out, and in doing so, they added incredible heft to the overall sound.

“It was whatever Tony was doing, we’d try to enhance, fill and do that,” says Ward. “That was the priority: getting as big a sound as we possibly could. And so, in doing that, keeping that in mind, then we would look at how to create that bigger sound that we had to make it dramatic or dark or hard or critical – any of those things. So, that would be our focus. Whatever we needed to do, whatever the ingredients were note-wise or rhythmically to get to those places, of the latter that I just mentioned, whatever we would do, we’d go wherever we needed to go to get that and just pour all that out.”

That flood intensified tracks like “War Pigs,” the title track and Ward’s particular favorite, “Hand of Doom.”

“It’s just raw and naked, and Ozzy’s phrasing is superb,” says Ward. “I like the fact that we got some of our little jazz things going on in there (Ward being a big fan of drummer Gene Krupa and Iommi being heavily influenced by Django Reinhardt). And we go from our little jazz things to a wonderful dynamic of sheer volume. When we played that live, we used to blow everybody away, because we were playing very, very soft and then suddenly you can hear the amps just rise up, baarrangg … you know, so to me, that’s pure metal.”

If “Hand of Doom” was “pure metal,” the trippy, acoustically sketched out space travelogue “Planet Caravan” was something altogether different.

“I think it was something that we would go to when we needed a bit of peace, and I strongly suspect it was the same formula, as always, which was that Tony had, you know, some kind of a riff going on or some kind of chord, because that’s how things would normally start,” says Ward. “When I listen to that, it sounds like Ozzy immediately caught on to the guitar and interpreted a melody straightaway, so even after 30 seconds of it, we could turn it into a song. Yeah, it was a nice resting spot.”

There wasn’t much rest for the wicked, though, on Paranoid. The album starts with the raging anti-war epic “War Pigs,” which, perhaps surprisingly, has some basis in Sabbath’s appreciation for the Latin-tinged poly-rhythms of a band called The Shadows, whose influence on Sabbath, according to Ward, is subtle but omnipresent.

“That was one that we had rehearsed before, so it wasn’t something that was brand new that we built in the studio or anything,” says Ward. “And we’d already been playing that out, playing it in front of audiences. I thought it was just such a good song live, very compelling. But yeah, I like the way we did play the grooves, especially the top groove … you can feel the jazz influence, only it’s played extremely f**king loud.”

Another song that was honed to perfection live was “Jack The Stripper/Fairies With Boots.” Ward says, “It’s one of the band’s favorites. It always has been. I think it was fairly well recorded. We’d been playing that for quite some time. And it was a fun song to play. Onstage, we got really, really raucous with it.”

Speaking of raucous, the stinging, frenetically paced title track, a classic song that describes, in horrifying fashion, a struggle to maintain one’s sanity, was something unexpected, a last-minute fill-in that Sabbath put together in under half an hour. It all started with an idea in Iommi’s head. As Ward, Ozzy and Butler went to lunch that last day in the studio, Iommi excused himself. He wanted to work on what’s become one of the greatest riffs in rock history, “ … and we followed about 10 minutes later,” recalls Ward. “He was playing the top 30 or 40 seconds of what was going to be ‘Paranoid,’ and so, we didn’t say a word. It was quite subdued actually. I got up there on my drums, Geezer got on his bass, and Ozzy [got] behind the mic, and we just slammed in and took about 20 minutes to do it. And again, I think that’s one of the good things about being a band sharing everything equally and being intuitive to each other. And that’s what can come out. And I think it was 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, from beginning to end. We recorded it, and then there was an overdub the next day, I think, where Tony played through it, and I played through it.”

Firing on all cylinders, Sabbath, in just two days, had created not only an album for the ages, but they had also drawn up the blueprints for what a genre that become known as heavy metal. Critics, at the time and for years afterward, loathed Sabbath, but they got the last laugh. Paranoid went straight up to #1 in the U.K. and the songs “Paranoid” and “Iron Man” marched into the lower reaches of the U.S. charts.

As for Sabbath, the realization of what they’d accomplished took a while to sink in.

“I guess we must have stopped to enjoy the party and congratulate each other for being No. 1, but I don’t think any of us knew even when we were doing it what that meant,” says Ward. “It must have meant something different for everybody, like ‘Oh, we’re No. 1’ and I was expecting something to happen, like there’d be a bolt of lightning out of the sky or something, you know, and I’ll be invited to see the Queen. The only thing we really thought about was getting a little bit of sleep and making sure we had some food. It’s strange because when it actually happens, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, right. What do we do with this now?”

Sabbath was about to find out.

- Peter Lindblad

More Surprises in Store for Ward and Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath’s early days were marked by poverty. Singer Ozzy Osbourne, at one point, couldn’t even afford a pair of shoes. And any food the four had was shared equally among the band mates, remembers drummer Bill Ward. So, understandably, their appearance was somewhat shabby and rough. To say the four looked like street people wouldn’t be too far off the mark.

Musically, Sabbath’s voluminous riffs, punishing rhythms and eerie, macabre lyrics failed to make a good first impression with critics. Not at all sunny or uplifting, Sabbath in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was more attuned to the dark side of humanity, unable to turn a blind eye to the horrors of the Vietnam War, mental illness or the breakdown of civilization. Theirs was an unrelentingly aggressive sound, massive and raging with an undisguised frustration, furious angst and equal sympathy for both angels and the devil that, perhaps, even outdid that of The Rolling Stones.

All this, as any good record label executive would tell you, is not exactly a formula for churning out hit records. But there was something about Sabbath that struck a chord with the disaffected, and their money was just as green as everybody else’s. Still, to drummer Bill Ward, the chart momentum Sabbath built with its self-titled debut and then, its masterwork, Paranoid, in 1970 was an absolute shock. And all of the success Sabbath has experienced since then has been no less surprising.

With a sense of bemusement and wonderment, Ward has taken all of it in. And so, the release of a “Classic Albums” series DVD, from Eagle Vision, on the making of the Paranoid LP is, again, one of those pleasant happenstances that keep filling Ward with pride and satisfaction over what Sabbath has accomplished.

“Well, I think it’s a nice surprise. It came as a surprise,” explains Ward. “I don’t have any expectations or leftover ideas of what Black Sabbath [can] do, other than possibly tour and make another album, which is always, of course, in my mind, as it is for all of us from time to time. So things [like this] are surprises, like [when] we were inducted into the [Rock And Roll] Hall Of Fame in New York. I kind of take it as it comes, and I tend to go with the ebb and flow of things that happen. So, you know, I’ve been enjoying it. It’s almost like receiving accolades after so many years of being involved [with Sabbath]. So in that sense, it’s been a very nice surprise.”

As for his thoughts on whether the documentary does a good in detailing the creation of an album that many believe drew up the blueprint for heavy metal, Ward was complimentary of its makers.

“I thought it was pretty good,” says Ward. “Yeah, I thought it was pretty good in the sense that it’s something different. For instance, I don’t think we’ve had an opportunity to see Black Sabbath quite like that before - you know, parts broken down. And it’s somewhat informal and yet very informative at the same time. So I think we’re joining the ranks of TV media (laughs). Finally, we’re getting there. So, in that sense, I think it’s quite good.”

And, in the end, a film like this that celebrates the often-maligned musical abilities and songcraft of Sabbath is confirmation that their critics had it all wrong from the start.

- Peter Lindblad

Links:  Bill Ward Official Site

DVD Review: Black Sabbath "Paranoid" (Classic Album)

DVD Review: Black Sabbath "Paranoid" (Classic Album)

All Access Review:  B+

A seismic shift occurs in Black Sabbath’s monolithic, sci-fi revenge fantasy “Iron Man” that few, outside of former Black Flag front man and spoken-word terrorist Henry Rollins, would ever notice. Swarmed under by Tony Iommi’s panzer division guitar riffs and Ozzy Osbourne’s freakishly sinister distorted vocals, the absolute brilliance of this little treasure often goes unnoticed, getting lost in a storm of gloomy power chords born of the factories of Sabbath’s home of Birmingham, England. Rollins, however, is amazed by this incredibly agile movement.

In the latest edition of Eagle Vision’s highly acclaimed “Classic Albums” series, a documentary that details the making of Sabbath’s archetypal heavy-metal LP, Paranoid, Rollins describes a slow, tantalizing descent in the bridge that shifts into a steep, sure-footed ascent that, according to Rollins, would “sprain” the brains of amateurs, and many professionals, who try to duplicate it. And he might be right.

Giving these small, but crucial, moments in a given work of genius their just due is part of what makes the “Classic Albums” series such vital companion pieces to transcendent albums like Paranoid and this one, in particular, goes to great lengths to make a case for the artist in question and the underappreciated musicality of Sabbath. Whether it’s sitting down with Iommi to dissect some of his most influential guitar parts or watching engineer Tony Allom replay tapes of Ozzy’s lyrical riffing over “Paranoid” in an attempt to refine the melody, this DVD offers incredible technical insight into how Sabbath constructed its undisputed masterpiece, even going so far as to explore the jazz influences of Iommi and drummer Bill Ward – namely, Django Reinhardt and Gene Krupa, respectively - and how they furtively plant these subtle trip wires to alert people to the fact that there’s something more at work here than just massive volume and power. Sabbath is out to blow your mind with how this fearsome foursome is in absolute control of its dynamics.

And lest you think it is all studio reconstruction and jargon that only a musician would understand, think again. As always, the makers of the “Classic Albums” series take pains to put Paranoid in its historical context and study the events in Sabbath’s life to that point that led up to the album that would provide a blueprint for heavy, and at times mind-bending (see the medicated psychedelia of “Planet Caravan”), rock. All four Sabbath members tell fascinating, and often very funny, stories about this heady time in their lives, and in-depth talks with bassist Geezer Butler and esteemed music writers explore the almost unbearable realism of the album’s lyrics and how Sabbath mirrored the madness of the times, especially Vietnam, as the dream of a hippie utopia died in a cruel, tortured fashion.

Again, “Classic Albums” has done what it set out to do, and in the process, it garners a little more respect for a band that was, at first, eviscerated by critics but in the end, has endured as one of hard rock’s most revered quartets. Maybe it ends a little abruptly, but that’s hardly reason to avoid picking this up.

- Peter Lindblad

Eagle Vision:  Black Sabbath:  "Paranoid" (Classic Album)

Be sure and check back in the coming week to read our interview with Bill Ward. 

DVD Review: The Doors "When You’re Strange"

DVD Review: The Doors "When You’re Strange" 
All Access Review:  A-

Inscribed on Jim Morrison’s Paris grave marker is a Latin phrase that, when translated to English, is said to mean “True to his Own Spirit.” Morrison’s estranged father, Admiral George C. Morrison, a man who admits to not really knowing his son the rock god all that well – something many in the Doors’ inner circle can relate to – claims to have chosen those words on the advice of a former language teacher. The by-the-book Navy man, so different from his wild-child offspring, got it right with this farewell tribute.

So does The Doors documentary “When You’re Strange,” now out on DVD through Eagle Vision. Where Oliver Stone’s feature bio-pic, “The Doors,” infamously played fast and loose with the facts, failed in epic fashion to capture the dark, mysterious essence of that most enigmatic and alluringly surreal of late-‘60s, early –‘70s counter-culture bands, this Tom DiCillo directed effort is unfailing in its quest for the truth. That is to say that it’s almost always on point whether reciting what really happened in The Doors’ brief, but incendiary, heydays in astonishingly rich and visually captivating detail or re-creating the swirling madness that swallowed up one cult hero and three serious musicians who, as guitarist Robby Krieger put it, made music that was more “symbolic than straight to the point.”

Of course, it helps to have a wealth of never-before-seen archival footage at your disposal. What’s your pleasure? Beguiling, and often riotous and unpredictable, live performances, some of it from landmark moments in Doors’ history, including the Miami incident and more of Morrison’s very public brushes with the law? What about candid vintage interviews with Morrison, Krieger, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore in which they try to explain the unexplainable, namely how their hypnotic music actually makes sense? There’s even film of The Doors at leisure and offstage rehearsals, of members’ lives before the band, plus Morrison’s prophetic movie of his own afterlife, a high-speed journey through a desert in a Mustang Cobra into the great unknown. Were that all there was to “When You’re Strange” it would be merely a funhouse of disparate images. What sets “When You’re Strange” apart is how artfully DiCillo and company pull it all together, with Doors’ songs like the funereal dirge “The End,” the ramshackle, carnival of sound that doubles as the film’s title, and other hits from the catalog gnashing their teeth above the surreal dreamscape of well-edited imagery.

And then there’s Johnny Depp’s deadpan narration, reminiscent of that of Martin Sheen in “Apocalypse Now.” Suitably dry and unobtrusive, Depp breathes gloom and tension into a script that, thankfully, offers a fairly in-depth and intelligent study of the musical chemistry of Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore before digging, with appropriate respect and very little sensationalism, into Morrison’s writings, his descent into alcoholism and its divisive effect on the band, and, ultimately, the cloudy circumstances surrounding his death in Paris. Add in intimate and revealing interviews with Morrison’s father, recorded prior to his death in 2008, and his sister, and what you get is a documentary that is dreamy, intoxicating and pure cinematic poetry.


-Peter Lindblad



Eagle Vision:  The Doors: When You’re Strange