Rock ‘n’ roll stage production has come a long way since the mid-20th century, and that’s not even including the extreme examples of shock rockers like Alice Cooper and Gwar. Even rock bands not explicitly trying to gross out the crowd have found ways to excite and delight their audience members with pyrotechnics, acrobatics, and other rollicking antics. But even five decades later, I think standing in the crowd for this iconic Black Sabbath performance would be just as scary today as it was in the late fall of 1970.
Black Sabbath was already a hit in their native U.K., but their popularity in the States took a bit more time to catch on. After all, their first two albums had only just been released. Black Sabbath’s eponymous debut came out in February of that year, and Paranoid arrived seven months later. While audiences would soon come to expect a certain level of untamedness from Black Sabbath in the years that followed, the band hadn’t fully fleshed out that reputation yet. But drummer Bill Ward certainly got close.
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The heavy metal pioneers made their Fillmore East debut in November 1970, opening for Rod Stewart and The Faces. That night, Black Sabbath struggled with the headlining band and with the audience, the latter of which had to have asked themselves at least once: “Uh, should I duck and cover?”
Black Sabbath Explodes Into Fillmore East in November 1970
Performing internationally is a major step in an artist’s career, but it’s also a significant hurdle. Not every country shares the same kind of concert etiquette as a group or artist’s home country, which can lead to confusion, disappointment, or, in Bill Ward’s case, straight-up anger. Years later, the Black Sabbath drummer recalled watching the crowd at the Fillmore East politely clap to their heavy metal offerings. Not the reaction he was going for.
So, he said, “I tore my floor tom off the riser and threw it at the audience. I was like, ‘F***ing move! Do something!’ Soon, everyone was headbanging. It was primal. There’s a lower self that went onstage, and it was just dynamite” (via Rolling Stone). The story sounds cool in theory, but if the drummer started throwing pieces of their drum kit at you—and not particularly small pieces, either—would you not also wonder if you should duck and cover before he starts taking apart a crash cymbal to use as a frisbee of doom?
In hindsight, the band was already up against it when they first took the Fillmore East stage, polite crowd or not. According to Ozzy Osbourne’s memoir, Black Sabbath was already “p***ed off with The Faces, actually, because they didn’t give us any time for a sound check. And Rod [Stewart] kept well out of our way. Looking back now, I don’t suppose he was too happy about having Black Sabbath supporting him. We were the unwashed hooligans, and he was the blue-eyed boy. He was all right, though, Rod. Always very polite.”
Maybe that would’ve changed if he had been on the receiving end of Ward’s floor tom.
Photo by Chris Walter/WireImage