Black Sabbath was formed in Birmingham, England back in 1968 and is the band that created Heavy Metal music, mixing a heavy and distored sound with doomy lyrics. One of the main inspirations for the band’s songwriting was when they were rehearsing across the street from a movie theather where people were going to see horror movies. That made them think that if people would pay to go see a movie and get scared, they probably could do the same for music.
Even though Black Sabbath talked about many the devil, war and death in most part of their songs, Ozzy Osbourne, who was later nicknamed the Prince of Darkness got really scared when he went to watch the classic horror movie “The Exorcist” back in 1973. The movie directed by William Friedkin and starred by Linda Blair was a huge hit and made many people so scared that they would leave the movie theatre at the time. In an interview with Metal Hammer the musician recalled his reaction when he went to see the movie.
Ozzy Osbourne recalls his reaction watching “The Exorcist”
“Our manager came to us one day when we were on tour and says, ‘You have to go and see this film called ‘The Exorcist’. We said, ‘The Exorcist? What the fuck does that mean?’ He said, ‘Just go and see it.’ We were in Philadelphia in this fucking movie theatre and we were shitting ourselves!”
“That one was just so real. We were freaked out! Here we were, Black Sabbath and I’m the Prince Of Darkness and all this, and we had to go see another movie – [US caper film] The Sting – just to stop thinking about it. It was so amazing,” Ozzy Osbourne said.
At the time Black Sabbath already was one of the biggest bands in the world with five classic albums: “Black Sabbath” (1970), “Paranoid” (1970), “Master Of Reality” (1971), “Vol. 4” (1972) and “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” (1973).