FADE TO BLACK PART 1: THE LAST HURRAH

Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward walk us through 57 years of Sabbath history — from the very beginning to Back to the Beginning, the band's history-making farewell bash in Birmingham, England, this July 5

- By Dave Everley

THIS IS HOW IT ALL BEGINS.

It's May 1969 and four men are crammed into a room in the Newtown Community Centre in Aston, Birmingham, England, inventing the future. Between them, they sport an array of haystack hairstyles and unkempt moustaches, although they’re all barely out of their teens. The eldest is a dark-haired figure who plays his guitar left-handed and emits an air of menace. At 21 he’s their unofficial leader. The rest of them are barely 20.

They've been playing together for nearly a year by this point, briefly under the name the Polka Tulk Blues Band, then even more briefly as plain Polka Tulk, and now as Earth. For most of that time they’ve been grabbing gigs wherever they can, mostly playing blues and blues-rock covers. But recently they realized they needed some material of their own.

They've written one song already, a jazzy, bluesy track called “Wicked World” whose fearful title plugs into the turmoil and angst in the air. And they’ve got the beginnings of a few others, jammed out during a recent residency in a grotty club in Hamburg.

But the song they’re finishing up now is something else. The inspiration came from Gustav Holst’s ominous “Mars, the Bringer of War,” from his early 20th-century suite The Planets, but they’ve summoned some dark magic and transformed it into something else entirely.

The guitarist, Tony Iommi, lays down a thick, doom-laden riff before wild-eyed, wild-haired singer Ozzy Osbourne lets out a terrified cry: “What is this that stands before me?” The music suddenly erupts into a terrified gallop, bassist Geezer Butler lost in his own world as he rocks his head from side to side, and drummer Bill Ward battering his kit like he's trying to keep a wild animal down.