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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Black Sabbath: Technical Ecstasy

BLACK SABBATH: TECHNICAL ECSTASY (1976)

1) Back Street Kids; 2) You Won't Change Me; 3) It's Alright; 4) Gypsy; 5) All Moving Parts (Stand Still); 6) Rock'n'Roll Doctor; 7) She's Gone; 8) Dirty Women.

If we put it very bluntly, the crucial difference between Sabotage and Technical Ecstasy is that the former was an «art rock» album, whereas the latter was a «hard rock» album. Not «heavy metal» in the typical Sabbath sense, but a much more blunt, straightforward, lumpy, «leaden» form of heavy music, ideologically closer to AC/DC, Kiss, and early Judas Priest than to Master Of Reality. I mean, look at the songs — there is at least two tracks here whose primary purpose is to sing hosanna to «rock and roll» (ʽRock'n'Roll Doctorʼ is a Kiss-worthy title if there ever was one, and the refrain of ʽBack Street Kidsʼ — "nobody I know is gonna take my rock'n'roll away from me" — begs for one and only one question: is somebody whom Ozzy doesn't know going to take his rock'n'roll away from him?).

Why in the world did the band decide to make that switch when nobody really asked them to is anybody's guess. «Drugs» as such does not cut it: the stylistic change was clearly rational and could not have been fuelled by substance intake (and, for that matter, Iommi's guitar playing skills and Ozzy's vocal technique on Technical Ecstasy are impeccable, so from a «technical ecstasy» point of view at least, drugs really made no difference). Shifting musical tastes seem more like it — I think that Tony paid close attention to popular taste, and consciously wanted to shift the sound in the direction of the new wave of heavy bands, without any artistic pretense or particularly «satanic» connotations. Black Sabbath were going to try on the guise of a heavy rock'n'roll band, and see how it worked.

Unfortunately, it did not work too well. The crucial problem of Technical Ecstasy is that Black Sabbath just do not cut it as a «rock'n'roll band». Ozzy is not a rock'n'roll singer, and Tony is not a rock'n'roll player, and this is immediately obvious on the very first track, which is not bad per se, but relies on generic boogie chords to make its point rather than one of Tony's classic riffs. Why bother coming up with a classic riff, anyway, if all you wanna do is boogie? "I'm a rock'n'roll soldier, gonna play it until I'm dead" — 'nuff said. It sounds especially convincing when delive­red in Ozzy's glassy, inflexible vocal tone (as much as I generally prefer Ozzy's singing to Paul Stanley's, ʽBack Street Kidsʼ should rather be sung by somebody like Paul).

This «keep it loud, simple, and basic» ideology is maintained throughout the album, despite its strange title and Hipgnosis cover showing two robots engaged in robosexual activities — you'd think it would all be more fit for a Kraftwerk record. The only «sci-fi» or «futuristic» element here is the occasional sound of synthesizers (provided by Gerald Woodruffe), but it's actually less prominent than it was on the previous two LPs, although keyboards as such are laid over most of the songs. All of this merely adds to the overall confusion, because it sort of looks as if they started out with one agenda, then messed up and ended up with another, by which time it was already too late to straighten things out.

The good news is that the band was not yet completely wasted, and even in a state of misguided confusion was able to come up with occasional winners. Although the only song to endure in their setlist was ʽDirty Womenʼ, a last moment attempt at a throwback to the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath epoch (with a rather disappointing mid-song riff that sounds like a variation on the ʽN.I.B.ʼ theme), where they really excel here is in... the sentimental department! Cue Bill Ward and his ʽIt's Alrightʼ, an unabashedly romantic pop rocker on which the drummer sings lead vo­cals himself — and unexpectedly demonstrates a sweet and pleasant tone. The tune has often been compared to the Beatles, although it has a very prominent Seventies style pop rock sound and should rather be compared to Badfinger or Eric Stewart's 10cc, but the main thing is that, as a piano pop rocker, it's a cool, convincingly optimistic tune, and it plays a respectable role in de­molishing the «Sabbath stereotype», even though it would be the last Sabbath song in a long, long while to demolish the stereotype.

The true forgotten gem of this record, though, is ʽYou Won't Change Meʼ, a song that has been cruelly overlooked by fans and unjustly underappreciated by the band members themselves — if anything, it should have become a personal favorite of Ozzy's, but apparently neither Sabbath as a band nor Ozzy as a solo artist have ever performed it live, nor has it been covered by anybody else, for reasons I cannot fathom, since this song holds my personal top spot for «greatest non-Sabbath-like Sabbath song». A dark, heavy ballad, opening with a suitably Gothic guitar intro and then riding on a gloomy, funebral organ pattern and Iommi's doom-laden power chords — and on top of it all, what might be Ozzy's single best vocal performance of his entire career, just because it sounds so totally like him, Ozzy: a song about a morally dysfunctional human being who might occasionally question his own existence and grope for a ray of light, only to conclude with grim determination that "nobody's gonna change my world, that's something too unreal, no­body will change the way I feel". I will even confess to having occasionally found myself empa­thizing, against my will, almost to the point of tears — then again, I guess Jesus weeps for Ozzy, too, on an everyday basis.

The song is also notable for introducing Iommi's new soloing style — each of Ozzy's stone-heavy concluding statements puts Tony in a state of overdrive, where flashy, frenzied, «shredding» licks flood the room in hysterical torrents that used to be characteristic of Jimmy Page rather than Tony Iommi. Of course, this playing style can easily degenerate into meaningless wanking, but on ʽYou Won't Change Meʼ, both solos are in perfect agreement with the singer's state of mind, not to mention the important demonstration that Iommi is, in fact, ready and able to enter the Van Halen / Iron Maiden era with the required chops for the business. Nevertheless, on the whole ʽYou Won't Change Meʼ is an Osbourne classic, not an Iommi one (and, in a funny way, all those lyrics — from "you give me life woman" to "although you won't change me anyway" — predict the complicated story of the Ozzy / Sharon relationship to a tee).

I wish I could garner the same level of exuberance for the other ballad of the album (ʽShe's Goneʼ); alas, this is where the melodrama in Ozzy takes over, and he oversings Butler's corny lyrics to a lite-baroque pop arrangement, fully in line with all the stereotypical «arena (pseudo)-art balladry» clichés of the decade. Maybe they were trying to become The Moody Blues on that particular track, but they forgot to write an interesting melody for it, beyond Tony's repetitive acoustic arpeggios. Actually, the Moody Blues connection could also be seen in that they have a psychedelic art rocker called ʽGypsyʼ on the album — far less impres­sive than the Moodies' ʽGypsyʼ, but one of the most experimental numbers on Technical Ecstasy anyway; I'm not sure I love it, but I can see where it could be lovable if you give its complex structure, various overdubs, and alleged seriousness some time to seep in.

As you can see by now, the album is an oddly mixed bag — on the whole, probably a failure if viewed from a «music as never-ending progress» angle, but not without its share of underrated classics and musical experiments. In recent years, its reputation seems to have slightly improved as more and more people have begun evaluating it on its own terms, rather than from the «how does it compare with the punk/New Wave spirit, or at least with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal?» point of view. In any case, it is not a record that is only too happy to pigeonhole itself, and I'd gladly take it, hits and misses included, over most of what would continue to be issued under the Black Sabbath moniker — even if it is much less true to the «essence» and «legacy» of the Black Sabbath moniker than, say, all of those Tony Martin albums. A «technical», if not parti­cularly «ecstatic», thumbs up here.

8 comments:

  1. Nope. This is cut-out bin material. Saw them on tour in November 1976. The band members didn't even look at each other. Ward was tanked.

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  2. Definitely a pile of trash that won't be saved by any context reconsideration. You won't change me and It's alright are the only decent songs here. Otherwise... no reason to put this in the player when there's so much good music around. The 80's Sabbath it's another affair and should be judged in itw own terms without any reference to the hypothetical legacy (what is the true Sabbath legacy anyways? most people talk about heavy doomy stuff, but is this really the legacy when the majority of their catalogue it's NOT that?). Legacy it's a hypotetical concept which even the band themselves got into hence releasing Heaven and Hell and 13.

    But you're right, Sabbath experimented more than people usually acknowledge them to have done and that's the missing link between the albums - good or bad.

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  3. I agree with almost anything Georgi says except: I believe All Moving Parts and Rock'n'Roll Doctor are great rockers! I belong to the club that believes all first 7 albums of the group are masterpieces!
    Welcome to the club!!!

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  4. "Tony paid close attention to popular taste, and consciously wanted to shift the sound in the direction of the new wave of heavy bands"
    Only if he could foresee the future - the New Wave of (British) Heavy Metal had not arrived yet. Let there be Rock is from 1977, while Whole lotta Rosie only became a hit a year later. Kiss was in danger of losing their contract at the end of 1975; Alive! was their breakthrough, but only in the USA. I doubt if that one inspired Iommi. Judas Priest and Motorhead were completely unknown yet.
    Besides Alive! the big hits of 1976 were Boston's debut, Agents of Fortune (in the USA only) and Blue for You (in Europe only). None of them (not even Kiss) belong to the New Wave of (British) Heavy Metal.

    "Why bother coming up with a classic riff, anyway, if all you wanna do is boogie?"
    You do realize that this summarizes about 90% of Status Quo's output?

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    1. He's not saying that the NWBHM influenced Tony. He's saying how does it compare to it, as he only mentions it in the last paragraph. He's comparing them to the heavy rock 'n' roll of AC/DC, Kiss and Judas Priest. As for the improbability of their influence on Sabbath, they could very easily have met them on tour from 1974-1976 and heard their kind of sound. Musicians are inspired by more than just the major albums and singles. Some of Pete Townshend's more psychedelic/instrumental tracks ("Relax", "In the Hall of the Mountain King", "Sodding About") were heavily influenced by live shows Pink Floyd did before Piper was even released.

      As for the Status Quo comment, bands like the Quo or Humble Pie, Foghat or Canned Heat or whatever, were all boogie bands from the beginning (or in the case of Humble Pie, weren't as good when they were going for a wall-of-sound-ish psych-hard-rock sound), and at their best. Sabbath were a great riff-based band, so opting for boogie is like abandoning one of their best skills, used in their formative years, their heavy years and their artsy years.

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  5. Juha-Matti JärvinenAugust 1, 2014 at 8:49 PM

    I always thought that it works if you put commas around I know: "Nobody, I know, will ever take my rock'n'roll away from me". As in he knows that nobody will ever take rock'n'roll away from him.

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  6. I think it's great. Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die are the ones I still play.

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  7. Biggest problem of this album for me is the production. You listen to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Sabotage and it has that nice hard metal crunch to it. Here, Tony makes his guitar tone standard and it mostly sound generic. He did this in the live 1976-78 shows too and I have no clue why. Drugs probably? You Won't Change Me and Dirty Women are definitely the best songs of the album. You Won't Change Me for the dark mood and Dirty Women were that GLORIOUS bridge!

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