… Or he stubbed his toe on the coffee table. You might be thinking this is pretty standard stuff for a man who chomped on bats. However, the "black shape with eyes of fire" isn't actually about Ozzy's visions. Turning away from his Catholic roots to experimental religions and black magic for inspiration, bassist Geezer Butler received an old book written in Latin on the occult, gifted by lead singer Osbourne. At that point, Black Sabbath was still a journeyman pub band, the members working dead-end jobs. Butler, submerged in the writings of Aleister Crowley and Satanism, would have gladly signed away his soul in exchange for rock stardom. Let's just say he failed the job interview.
After receiving his present, Butler woke up that very night and saw a shadowy figure at the foot of his bed; the badass rock star left, pissing himself in panic at the entity in front of him. In the morning, Butler's gift was nowhere to be seen, as if he was found lacking to join the ranks of the damned, the offer rescinded. After his nightmare, Geezer dropped out of the devil's fan club and (we hope) painted some kittens and rainbows on those walls of his condo he had painted black. Though we'd like to chalk it up to a demon, it's more likely just a simple case of sleep paralysis or Ozzy barging in drunk, looking for paper to roll up a doobie at four in the morning. Not that that isn't terrifying enough.
The morbid classic defined the sound and persona of not just Black Sabbath but all of the heavy metal genre. We're surprised this song isn't more popular among Evangelical Christians. If this anecdote doesn't scare the wayward back to Jesus, WTF will?
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