Black sabbath

Following the breakup of their previous band Mythology in 1968, guitarist Tony Tommi and drummer Bill Ward sought to form a heavy blues band in Aston, Birmingham.The two enlisted bassist Geezer Butler and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, who had played together in a band called Rare Breed, Osbourne having placed an advertisement in a local music shop: "Ozzy Zig Needs Gig- has own PA". The new group was initially named The Polka Talk Blues Band (after a cheap brand of talcum powder Osbourne saw in his mother's bathroom)and also featured slide guitarist Jimmy Phillips and saxophonist Alan "Aker" Clarke.
After shortening the name to Polka Tulk, the band changed their name to Earth (which Osbourne hated)and continued as a four-piece without Phillips and Clarke.While the band was performing under the Earth title.Black Sabbath were signed to Philip's Records in December 1969, and released their first single,"Evil Woman" through Philip s subsidiary Fontana Records in January 1970. Later releases were handled by Philip's' newly formed progressive rock label, Vertigo Records. Although the single failed to chart, the band were afforded two days of studio time in late January to record their debut album with producer Rodger Bain. Iommi recalls recording live: "We thought 'We have two days to do it and one of the days is mixing.' So we played live. Ozzy was singing at the same time, we just put him in a separate booth and off we went. We never had a second run of most of the stuff.In February 1971, Black Sabbath returned to the studio to begin work on their third album. Following the chart success of Paranoid, the band were afforded more studio time, along with a "briefcase full of cash" to buy drugs."We were getting into coke, big-time"Ward explained. "Uppers, downers, Quaaludes, whatever you like. It got to the stage where you come up with ideas and forget them, because you were just so out of it.
Production completed in April 1971, and in July the band released Master of Reality, just six months after the release of Paranoid. The album reached the top ten in both the US and UK, and was certified gold in less than two months,eventually receiving platinum certification in the 1980s and Double Platinum in the early 21st century.Master of Reality contained Black Sabbath's first acoustic songs, alongside fan favorites such as "Children of the Grave" and "Sweet Leaf".Critical response of the era was again unfavorable, with Lester Bangs of Rolling Stone dismissing Master of Reality as "naïve, simplistic, repetitive, absolute doggerel", although the very same magazine would later place the album at number 298 on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, compiled in 2003.