![]() When we were tracking, we’d do a take, and he’d say, “Yeah, that was great. He’d come down, lie on the couch and listen and either go, “Yes” or “No.” He’d leave after about ten minutes, and we’d have to figure out what was working and what wasn’t. This time, we were writing at Ozzy’s studio. He was up to working on it, but we knew it just wasn’t up to standard. But as we played them for him we realized it was a lot of crap. And it worked.įor years, he’s told us, “If there is ever another Black Sabbath album, I want to produce it.” When we tried in 2001, we went to Rick with the songs we had written. Rick said, “Put bass on it, Geez.” I didn’t even know what he was playing! I was just watching the chords Tony was playing, making it up as we went along. There’s an acoustic track on the album called “Zeitgeist.” For that, Tony was fiddling around with an acoustic that Taylor Guitars had just sent him, and Rick asked him, “What’s that?” Tony was just trying the guitar out. Then Ozzy put vocal and harmonica on it, and we were like, “Yeah, that sounds really good.” We didn’t really even remember playing it! This particular song, we were jamming and Rick said, “That is absolutely great-you’ve got to do that one!” We said, “What do you mean? It’s just a jam.” It was 18 minutes long, so Rick told us to pick out parts and make a seven-minute version of it. What we’d do is jam together for about an hour in the studio, before we’d record the song we were there to work on. On the new album, there are two tracks that came together purely as jams in the studio, with one take. Practically always, I’m following Tony’s riffs, unless it’s something that I’ve written, like “N.I.B” or “Behind the Wall of Sleep.” On the new album- and about 95% of what we’ve done-the bass part is centered around Tony’s riff s. We all had suggestions for the music, and Ozzy and I collaborated on the lyrics together, like we used to in the old days.Īre your basslines always inspired by a song’s riff, or does it sometimes work the other way around? Before this, Ozzy had a lot of distractions- he was doing his TV show and solo albums, as well. Rubin got the four of you in a room together to work on new music, which is something you hadn’t done for years and years. We’d just come off playing a gig, and we happened to stop off at the studio on our way to do a residency in Switzerland. You did that first record in just a matter of hours. And I think fans of the first three albums are going to like this one. So it was about re-learning the blues approach. He told us he didn’t want a typical heavy metal album. We wanted to capture that live feel again, and that’s why Rick insisted we listen to our first album. On the first three albums, there were no keyboards or any of the experimental stuff we did later on. What we learned from listening to that first record was how basic it was. ![]() Rick said that was the feel he wanted us to get on the new album, so that gave us the direction to go in. Each song was different from the other there were a lot of different colors and flavors. We realized it wasn’t really heavy metal- it had a lot of blues to it. It was like listening to it for the first time. ![]() It was really weird! The four of us hadn’t listened to it together since back when we recorded it in 1969. When this process started we had Bill Ward with us, so there were the four of us, listening to the first thing that we had done together. He had us listen to the first album, which none of us had listened to for about 30 years. We got together with Rick Rubin at Kid Rock’s house in Malibu. That made a lot of difference.ĭid you go back to listen to the old records for inspiration? The three of us got together to listen to them, and we just knew that we had some good stuff to start working on. It’s sort of now or never, because we’re not going to be around much longer! The difference this time is that Tony had two or three albums worth of riffs. This time, for some reason, we just knew it was going to work. It just didn’t feel right-it was too forced. We’d rented a house to do the record, and we were all stuck in a house together, driving each other nuts. ![]() We did try in 2001 to do an album, and it just didn’t work. ![]()
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