WHAT IF… What If Black Sabbath Were Not Called Black Sabbath

If it weren’t for Boris Karloff, the world would not be facing environmental disaster. And much more importantly, Jack Osbourne would not be on the telly so goddamn much. Journey back with us to 1969, and we will explain…

It’s 1969, and a little-known blues band by the name of Earth are dreaming of the big time. Their set consists of covers of Cream and Blue Cheer songs, and they have just welcomed back their prodigal guitarist from a brief spell in Jethro Tull. If that all sounds a bit flute-and-flares, at least they have changed their name from their original moniker, the drippy-sounding The Polka Tulk Blues Company – named after an Indian clothing emporium. Let’s all chant Ommmm and light a joss-stick.

Anyway, Earth played one local gig and were surprised when the promoter reminded them to be sure and play their single, because the crowd were looking forward to hearing it. Earth were surprised because they hadn’t released any singles. They played, and it became clear that the audience were expecting someone very different. There was another band called Earth: they needed a new name.

Rehearsing in a Birmingham basement soon after, their bass player looked out of the window at the cinema opposite, where a long line of people were queuing up to see a 1963 Boris Karloff flick. “It’s strange,” thought bass player Geezer Butler, “That people spend so much money to see scary movies.” The name of the movie, Black Sabbath, struck a chord and he wrote a song of that title, based on a Dennis Wheatley occult book. Its brooding and unsettling tone and musical structure were not in keeping with the fashion of much of the late Sixties, but the band liked this new, darker direction so much that they kept the name, and began work on their eponymous debut album, and the immortal follow-up Paranoid that would define a genre. With Black Sabbath, heavy metal was born. Their name crucial to the sound, image and the lyrical content of the band.

So what if they hadn’t seen that cinema poster, and had stuck with the name Earth?

For a start, this new Earth developed a heavy but wholesome sort of blues music with songs about love, fun times and the understanding of a good woman. There’d have been no devilish under-current to their music, no lyrics about black masses and no
out-raged denizens of middle-America thinking in all seriousness that Ozzy, Geezer, Bill & Tony were the four horsemen of the apocalypse and not just four Brummies who liked drugs and loud music.

Sabbath where to devil worship what Carry On Screaming was to the occult but Earth could have been rock’s first environmentally aware band. Clearly, it was important to the boys to live up to their name, so Earth would have written songs about how nice flowers are, why its important to stroke cats and how to make successful compost.
They would have been the first group to be powered by windmills, would have toured in a giant balloon to save on carbon emissions.

In their later career, Ozzy would have become increasingly concerned with conservation issues, grew obsessed with the plight of the Peruvian Honey Bat, spending months at a time lurking in the suburbs of Lima in a bid to save the species from overenthusiastic pest controllers, while Tony & Geezer would use their substantial facial hair as a home for rare species of beetles.

Living a clean, drug free life, untroubled by blindness brought on by hoovering so much cocaine, the band would have become erudite and tireless campaigners for the environment, eventually persuading George Bush to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol over a game of golf and a pot of Rooibos tea.

As the bands spokesman Ozzy would have convinced Tipper Gore to found the Parents Music Resource Center after their mutual concern that New Kids On The Block might be setting a bad example to children and would have made Al cry by showing him film of Polar Bears floating towards Jamaica in a make-shift solar-powered freezer in a bid to stay cool in an over heated environment.

Earth’s career was characterised by a rock solid line-up that never changed, with the members bound together by a shared teetotalism, a strong anti-drugs ethic and a love of globe artichokes. Ozzy famously fronted the 1980s ‘Just Say No’ campaign and later became reclusive, shunning media attention, as did his two children, who said they “certainly didn’t want to use their father’s celebrity to forge meaningless media careers.” He now lives in London with his famously publicity-shy wife.

Earth. What band they were. Boris Karloff, you have robbed us of so much.