Rat Salad Black Sabbath, the Classic Years, 1969-1975

"This book paints a picture of Black Sabbath at its beginning, from 1969 to 1975 - the time in which the band made its greatest albums: Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality, Vol. 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and Sabotage." "But Rat Salad diverges from routes taken by most rock biographies - its detailed, song-by-song analysis of the band's masterworks is interwoven with a personal account of the news stories and culture of the time, from Vietnam to Bloody Sunday to the space program. These narrative chapters - think Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head meets Spinal Tap meets Nick Hornby - explain the appeal of the music, its compositional artistry, and its frequently audacious inventiveness." "Rat Salad embraces a diverse cast of characters - from Ozzy Osbourne himself and the other members of the band through to Edith Sitwell, Breugel the Elder, John Milton, and Doris Day. The author's hand looms large in the piece, as he grows from schoolboy ingenue to inveterate devotee and looks back at a life populated with love, sex, drugs, and death and played out against a rich sonic backdrop of crucifixes and power chords."--BOOK JACKET.Wilkinson, Paul is the author of 'Rat Salad Black Sabbath, the Classic Years, 1969-1975', published 2007 under ISBN 9780312367237 and ISBN 0312367236.