Amazing isn’t it how sometimes songs you heard in your childhood but that didn’t really GRAB you back then can come back to you 20 years later and BLOW YOU AWAY!
SUPERNAUT by Black Sabbath of their 4th album, mysteriously titled “Black Sabbath Vol. 4”. What demon of the Underworld rose up to give Tony Iommi that marvelous riff? I haven’t been able to get it out of my head all day. And Ozzy’s lyrics!! Check them out:
I want to reach out and touch the sky
I want to touch the sun
But I don’t need to fly
I’m gonna climb up every mountain of the moon
And find a distant man a-waving his spoon
Okay Oz, you had me until the last line. You want to try it all, experience it all, taste it all. I’m with you brother, I really am. But a man waving a spoon? WTF? I know, “moon” is hard to rhyme without resorting to Buddy Holly “June”, “soon”. What about “And when I’m 60 I’ll look like a prune.”? That would have been accurate if not poetic.
I’ve crossed the ocean, turned every bend
I found the crossing near a golden rainbow’s end
I’ve been through magic and through life’s reality
I’ve lived a thousand years and it never bothered me
A thousand years! A man I can look up to. A transhumanist before we had such a word.
Got no religion, don’t need no friends
Got all I want and I don’t need to pretend
Don’t try to reach me, ’cause I’d tear up your mind
I’ve seen the future and I’ve left it behind
Me either Ozzy. Who needs friends? I’ve seen the future too and it ain’t pretty. I’m running it. Trust me. Not pretty.
And then at the 2’50”, after a blistering Iommi solo, we go from the heaviest riff in history into a… samba??? Cowhorns, pepper shakers, and washboard??? WTF???
I dunno, but I’m loving it. Worked out the riff on my guitar (not hard, five notes) and been playing it LOUD for my neighbour’s appreciation for the last 15 minutes.
Thank GOD for the Sabbs.
Get a preview of the track at Amazon. I do not recommend downloading the whole 2CD Best Of Black Sabbath from a torrent service like this one. That’s just not on kids.
The spoon line was probably originally a placeholder and in the end they left it in. They were off their face, the audience was off their face, who’s going to question a dubious line.
Cam I would recommend that people did not use this site to obtain a torrent to download the Best of Black Sabbath:
http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=Best+of+Black+Sabbath
I would also recommend that the Cam if he were researching if said album could be obtained by a torrent that to use a better search engine.
The one that you have warned people not to use is indeed good advice, as it is laden with pop-ups and has reports of spyware, viruses and generally nasty stuff:
Source: http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/torrentz.ws
Not that I would recommend in any way shape or form such activities…
Ah thanks Dave, good advice. If people are NOT going to use torrents they should definitely NOT use torrent sites that have spyware.
Certainly a top song! Snowblind and Changes are also awesome songs from Vol. 4.
FYI, Gezzer wrote the lyrics to most Black Sabbath songs – including this one.
I’m still partial to the first album. The best tune on there IMO is The Wizard. Every time I listen to it I think: “gods of the fledgling heavy metal movement of the time”.
Jim, Geezer?? That’s news to me dude. Thanks for filling me in.
Krash – Speaking of Geezer, surely N.I.B. is the killer track from the first album, with that wonky bass intro and that riff. Classic! Wizard is a little 60s psychedelic for me.
I’m just having my first listen of Ozzy’s new CD “Black Rain”. Not bad.