“in tol of ways it was also the end of innocence for Sabbath because we had grow into a really tight live band, and now we knew what we were doing in the studion.” Remarkably enough, Ward is of the opinion that despite the significance of the first six classic Sabbath albums, none of them really matched the firepower of the band live.
“I was always disappointed with our albums because of the fact that we were a fucking great live band. I felt we always lost something by trying to record what we did. People would come and see us and try sit on the floor and Ozzy wouldn´t have any that, instead he´d have a fight with them. There were always fights and souffles and you never knew what was going ot happen, but the band was always really, really powerful. You didn´t have that tension on the records.”
While Master of reality allowed the band to elabore on their original sound, it successor, Vol.4, saw them progres even further, aided and abetted by newfound addictions. Relocating to California, the band hired a mansion in Bet Air to rehearse and write the album.
“by the time we got to Bel air we weretotally gone,” admits Tony “it really was a case of vine, women and song, and we were doing more drugs than ever before.”
“ By that point we had a guy who travelled around with us with a suitcase of cocaine, confesses Ozzy. “I´m sure most of it was Johnson´s arse powder, mind you. Anyway, we were just taking stuff trying to pretend that we felt good.”
“By this point we hadn´t stopped working and we were exhausted,” offers Bill. I was getting bad cocaine addiction and I suppse when we decided to try and kick back in a house in LA, things started to sound different behind that wall of cocaine.”
“ we had six millions groupis, booze, coke and heroin- wich we sniffed, we never shot up. We were still enjoying it,but ou could feel everyone changing, confirms Geezer.Whether this state of mind inspired Changes, the most melancholic trac on Vol.4, is anybody quess. The band´s spiralling presonal addictions were nothing that troubled those aroundthem. Just a long as the music kept on coming.
“No one really cared what we did. We never had anyone coming to the studio to see what we were doing, “recalls Ozzy. “ It was a case of total freedom. We even had lock- ins whwre it was just us and a bag of white powder.”
Released in September ´72 Vol.4 was another Sabbath tour- de- force spearheaded by tracks lije Tomorrow´s dream, the gargantuan rifferama of Supernaut/ resplented with Bill Ward´s drum break/ and the tell- tale coke anthem Snowblind. In many respects the album also marked the beginning of the end for the band´s original line- up.
“The album cost around $65,000 to make we´d spent about $ 75,000 on coke. We also managed to wreck the house in Bel air, with Ozzy having waterflights with hose pipes inside the house all the time.