Transcribed
and translated to English by Jan Hoel and Robert Dwyer
Foreword by Robert Dwyer
First, I want to take a second to thank Jan Hoel, who has gone beyond the call of duty to research these old Scandinavian Sabbath gigs for us. He has spent a good amount of time at the library in Oslo digging up all of these great old articles and reviews for us to read!! Thank you again, Jan!!
When Jan first sent these to me, he was fascinated about the idea of having done his acrobatic training as a kid in the same hall that Sabbath had played - Njardhallen!
Pre-concert Newspaper Clipping
"Black Sabbath in Oslo on Thursday
night"
Originally,
the name was Earth- now it's Black Sabbath, and they play in Njaardhallen in
Oslo on Thursday night. They are an English progressive band, who are the
first since Pink Floyd and UFO to have any success as an underground band.
"We would rather die than play commercial music" stated one of
the members of Black Sabbath. And 95 percent of what they play underlines
that statement, all self-written material by Tony Iommi, John Osbourne, Bill
Ward and Geezer Butler, the four members of the band.
Tony Iommi, the guitar player, also created a crisis for the band when he for about a year and a half ago quit and joined Jethro Tull to replace Mick Abrahams who had joined up with Blodwyn Pig. But Iommi rejoined Black Sabbath not more than a couple of weeks later. Black Sabbath has been compared to another English band called Black Widow, mainly because both bands are reputed to hold "black magic rituals" during their their performances. However, both bands claim that this isn't so. Black Sabbath even goes to the length as to say they are "anti-magicians" (or opposed to Satanism).
Their
music is tough, hard and inspired by the environment they grew up in in
Birmingham-Aston, with coal and smoke from the factories as their closest neighbors.
Before the group comes to Oslo, they will have played in Stockholm and
Copenhagen. Stockholm
was a huge success, while the Copenhagen show was a giant flop. 800 people
were in attendance, as opposed to 4000 three months ago. The reason could
be that the two concerts was too close in time to one another without any new
material being released in the meantime. As of date, Black Sabbath has
released two LP's. The first album "Black Sabbath" was a huge seller
and the second "Paranoid" also did
well. Both is by the way a manifestation of the groups opinion that they
can manage to stand on their own two feet and do what they want - without black
magic."
---------------------------------------------------------
Concert Review
"Discothèque -and Black Sabbath"
After the concert last night in Njaardhallen, Black Sabbath probably
aren’t what they used to be to the 780 attendants. As part of an experiment by the arranger, Gottschalk, the
crowd had to stand on a new, mercilessly hard Njaardhallen floor. The
show was delayed, both because of a 45 minute long non-engaging warm up by folk
singer Jonathan Swift and 15 minutes of discothèque music while waiting for
everything to function properly. Which
it didn't when Black Sabbath entered the stage.
The band started out very slow and once started it became apparent that the only thing which couldn't be described as a disappointment was lead guitarist Tony Iommi. More than once he proved his ability on the guitar and displayed a mixture of classical and jazz in his improvisations. More than enough amplified, but still very good. He thereby also showed his irreplaceable role in Black Sabbath which he once left in order to join up with Jethro Tull. The rest of the band, Ozzy Osbourne, Terry Butler and Bill Ward, didn't stand out. Maybe just Osbourne who does the vocals and had more than enough to do trying to cling to the microphone pole. His voice was impossible to hear.
The music also turned out to be simple and boring, in spite of good and precise interaction between the band members. The style is tough and heavy with few variations, which can mostly be written off as the problem with having just bass and lead guitar. The whole time the four played with a total lack of inspiration and interaction, which resulted in no contact with the crowd. By the end of the concert no clapping could be heard. With this, Black Sabbath proved that they are no better than the concert that was shown on Norwegian television last New Years Eve [possibly the Paris show?]. And they surely didn't show any evidence that the band will have any sort of long career ahead of them!
