(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros. Records)
Fri 26 September 2025 21:30, UK
Black Sabbath has never been known for having the best reputation in rock and roll.
They should be celebrated for breaking down barriers and bringing heavy metal into existence, and yet the minute that Ozzy Osbourne started singing about demons coming after him on their debut, there were already religious fanatics decrying the band as one of the worst things to make their way onto the charts. Sabbath could take those critiques with a grain of salt, but the last thing they wanted to do was to not do right by their fans.
For as much as the grandparents of the world were freaking out, this was exactly what a lot of kids needed around this time. The Rolling Stones were a heavy alternative to the other pop music on the radio, but they looked like old-school crooners compared to Sabbath, who took the basis of the blues and channelled it into some of the meanest riffs to ever come out of rock and roll.
They definitely had their own lane, but Sabbath fans weren’t exactly the kind to listen to everything on the pop charts. I mean, take a look at the kind of competition that they had on the charts. When Paranoid came out, they were displacing Simon and Garfunkel at the top of the hit parade, and when they were making their other classics in the 1970s, there was a slim chance that any Sabbath fan was going to pick up a Carpenters record or anything that Barry Manilow was singing at the time.
If Sabbath wanted to reach the widest audience possible, though, they would have to play the game a little bit. They weren’t going to be doing any of the cheesy variety shows that every other pop starlet was trying at the time, but as soon as they went on Top of the Pops, Ozzy Osbourne remembered a lot of their fans being absolutely pissed seeing them in neon colours.
It may have given them more exposure, but ‘The Prince of Darkness’ remembered getting a few strange looks from fans, saying, “There was a time when it was unfashionable to play Top Of The Pops because people would think you’ve sold out. When Black Sabbath did Top Of The Pops, we just did it because it was Top Of The Pops. But then we got flak because people like Ten Years After and other bands at the time refused to do it.”
Then again, every other band that flirted with hard rock still needed to play the game at this time as well. Even looking across the pond, Kiss had to spend time on cheesy talk shows like The Mike Douglas Show, which is especially hilarious to watch today and see Gene Simmons try his best to look like the embodiment of evil next to actors that are seeing through every bit of his bullshit.
Even if Sabbath did get away with playing Top of the Pops, that didn’t mean every metal band had to cower to that pressure. There were acts like Def Leppard that were more than happy to lip-sync their tunes for the crowd, but Iron Maiden’s appearance on the show is still one for the history books, as they proceed to switch instruments midway through the song and generally mugging for the camera instead of actually playing.
While Sabbath may have been more diplomatic, the fact that they got their songs onto a show like this is more of a musical flex than anything else. They could have spent their time making the most commercial music that they could to satisfy the stations, but since only the poppiest artists were featured at the time, it’s oddly comforting knowing that those same TV programmers figured that they had time for the same band that made tunes like ‘Children of the Grave’.
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