Today marks the 40th anniversary of at least two important musical events. On television, your parents were likely watching ABBA win the Eurovision Song Contest with their campy hit song Waterloo. In California, kids were going bananas to Black Sabbath at the California Jam festival.
Both bands were wearing outrageous costumes. Ozzy Osbourne chose to take his off, though. Later, when Björn from ABBA was asked about the ridiculous costumes he honestly admitted that they were simply for tax reasons. They had to make sure that they were not wearable as normal street clothes to be able to deduct them according to Swedish tax regulations.
I love ABBA. They make wonderful pop music (this is the most popular blog single on one of my many music blogs). And I really liked their legendary recording studio in Stockholm, Polar Studios. That’s where Led Zeppelin recorded my favourite album, In Through The Out Door, and favourite Zep song, In The Evening. I always gave credit to Sweden for that record.
I mostly listened to glam rock like T. Rex, David Bowie and Slade as a teenager. But when I discovered Black Sabbath and Kiss (you have to read this) everything got a little more dangerous. I still listen to them all, but Black Sabbath has a special place in my heart. I must have bought the first 6-7 albums at least five times over. I just listened to Technical Ecstacy (full album here) again last night!
This is my favourite Black Sabbath song:
Here is a photo of Tony Iommi and me with Geezer Butler in the background backstage at Roskilde Festival in Denmark. I must have posted that photo 50 times over on social media. But it was a very special evening for me. I have seen Black Sabbath several times. But it was the first time on stage. Real close. Next to Geezer. He is such an awesome bass player.
There is a funny anecdote connected to my headline. Back in 1996, I traveled with an entourage of people from the Carlsberg Breweries and the European MTV office during the UEFA football championships in Holland and Belgium. We had to change our local Danish currency (incredibly and extremely annoyingly, we still do!) to Dutch guilders. When we ended our insane (and believe me, it was as crazy as any Led Zeppelin party!) ride through Benelux, we ended up in Amsterdam ready to drive home to Copenhagen. I knew there was a cool record store near where we were parked. Still holding my beer in hand, I jumped out of the bus and ran to the store.
I pulled out whatever Dutch guilders I had left in my pockets, put them on the counter and asked:
“How much Black Sabbath can I get for this?”
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PS. There is a Black Sabbath reddit.
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