 We've gone from pouring rain where buckets are coming down to beautiful sun. I'm a loose guy, some loose guy. We're alive and we've united once again with our pal Martin Popov. Excellent. There's the man. Good to see you again, Martin. Yeah, good to see you guys. It's been too long. A show together. Yeah, so here we go. Today, a celebrant anniversary of Sabotage. It was released, boy. July 28th, 1975. How many years did we see that was again? Forty-seven years ago today. Yeah, that's it, Jim. You know, you said you wanted to do an anniversary show. I'm saying you're 25th, 30th, 50th anniversary. Forty-seven. Is this something a new trend will get us started in the middle, boys? 36th anniversary. I don't know, like. Look, that's today. And any day to talk about Sabotage is a good day, so. I think this is like a real interesting album out of the whole sort of black Sabbath catalog. It's got a lot of backstory. The songs are, you know, not your typical Sabbath songs. At least they're a little bit more different. The real reason is it's because it's your favorite Sabbath album with Ozzy. That's why. That's why. Yeah, Alan knows me too good. Alan knows me too good. Alan, 47 years. That's a new thing, right? That's a new thing, yeah. Alan knows me too well, mine. I've often called it my favorite album of all time. Oh, wow. There's mine. This is one of my proudest joys. Your copy all torn up. Check it out. I feel so inferior. I feel so inferior. All-time favorite album. It's signed there, guys. Fully signed. Wow, by who? Everybody. Everybody. Tony, where's the Ozzy on there? Ozzy, yeah, Ozzy's up here in red. It says Ronnie James Deal where Ozzy is. What's going on? It says Ozzy in red. There's Geyser in blue. There's Tony down there. And then Bill is that one, so. Fabulous, fabulous. I love it. Wow. And then, of course, I named my first Sabbath book, Sabotage. I thought you were going to say you named your first Charles Sabotage. Yeah, first Charles Sabotage. But I have called this my favorite album of all time. I've said Queen One. I've said Led Zeppelin, Fist of the Graffiti, Clash London Calling. But I've often rated this my favorite album of all time. And I used to kind of joke that, oh, in 1975, it took Led Zeppelin two records to make a record this good. And Sabbath did it in one kind of thing. The background, the songs, the reception. There you go. Those three things we'll talk about today. And we'll talk about this, one of my favorite Sabbath, Black Sabbath albums. The background. For me, it's a- A lot of craziness going on. A lot of craziness. It's a less immediate album for me. It's definitely a grower. I mean, compared, you know, you don't have the Warpigs and the Children of the Graves and Iron Man and Paranoid. There's nothing obvious like that. But it is a, you know, it's a deep album or deep tracks on this album, so. All right, let's talk about the legal wranglings here. Big, so the band starts off, they come out with five albums, doing great. The band's doing great. The critics are not really digging the band. But over time, they're sort of getting used to them. And here comes Sabotage. Or actually, we shouldn't even go there yet. Lots of legal problems, trying to get away from old management to get new management. Martin, just give us a little background right there. Yeah, so they're coming out of Sabbath, buddy. Sabbath, they're still with Patrick Meehan and Patrick Meehan Jr. And then basically they say, we realized that we were getting ripped off by management and all this. And so they're trying to get out of the situation and they've got lawyers involved and there's a song called The Rit because they would say things like we were working at the mixing board and lawyers were serving us notices and we were constantly dealing with lawyers. And then they'd say things like when we went on tour, it was to pay off all the lawyers. So Megalomania is about management and The Rit is about management. There's quips about Bill Ward manning the phones and trying to hold the whole ship together management-wise. But yeah, so they're just very distracted making this record. There's a lot of drug problems going on as well, a lot of distress. And it makes for a very sort of angry, stressful, creative, foreign, strange, weird album. Going into this album, they still owed 35,000 pounds according to Tony and I always booked to Simpson which was their managers even before me. And so everybody was coming after them with Ritz trying to get money or bleed money from a stone I guess is the expression because they had no money, right? They weren't seeing any money. And in Ozzie's book, they said they got rid of me and they got a new lawyer to came in. He says, I'm taking your all up for a drink and then they all had their drinks and he starts to tablet if you had- It's on you. He's gonna charge them back for the drink. So that goes, you know, in other books it's been described as business managers at this time were just gangsters that had interest in the music industry. So their cars, their mansions and everything they bought them is what you're saying Alan was basically owned by me and right at the time- It's all a front. It's all a front. It's all a front, right? And but from tragedy comes great music, right? Yeah, this is a funny album. I'll tell you one weird story. Like, you know, when we were kids, everybody like the guy who bought the album that was the album they were supposed to represent and be the spokesman for and all this. So this one was bought by a different buddy of ours Jeff Kahoon picked up this one. And we were sort of jealous of them and stuff and say, ah, it's not that great. You know, your Sabbath album is as good as mine which was a volume four and, you know, so it was like that with Kiss Records as well. But the point I want to make is it's kind of a funny, weird point. We, when we first heard this record, we thought it wasn't very heavy. And, you know, it's an odd thing to think but then I was kind of going through it again to prepare for this. And the funny thing about this album is you could play long segments of the major songs on this record and think it's not even a heavy metal album because Symptom of the Universe turns into like an acoustic jazzy song for the last part of it. Megalomania, the first three minutes of the whole thing is mellow. It basically sounds like solitude or planet caravan. Let's go in the sequence of the songs here. Hole in the sky, right? Let's just jump right into that song right there. Is that possibly one of the angriest sounding songs that Sabbath has ever done? Yeah, and that's one that doesn't change throughout. It's just big swinging. You know, it's got a little bit of, well, it's got some swing to it. It's got, but it's got a little bit of a shuffle feel to it. Big, beautifully recorded symbols by the band and Mike Butcher. And yeah, that is the one rock song on this entire album that doesn't make a huge about face. It's basically the same thing throughout. Now, is that attack or chicken that they scream at at the beginning? We still don't know, do we? If you hear somebody say chicken, okay. Oh, yeah, I can't remember that story exactly how that, but yeah, that's, and you know, that song basically reminds me of, it almost feels like the song that the entire career of Cathedral was built on. Like Cathedral does a great, great job of songs that sound like Hole in the Sky. I mean, Ozzy's like singing so high and he's just yelling it out. And you know, it's just actually throughout the whole album. He's kind of like that. This might be his highest register album, I would think vocal wise. Yeah. All right, that's great. Anything else that anybody else want to say about Hole in the Sky? Good, bad, you like it? It's a great song. It's relentless. Environmental, relentless. Yeah, it's beautifully recorded, pounding, pounding guitars, the bass is in there properly. It's not very articulated bass. It's more like the bass sound of bass. But yeah, everything's just recorded great. Really nice snare sound out of Bill as well. But there you go, right off the bat, after the first song and instrumental already. I mean, are we talking filler here or is this like a nice little piece of music of 49 seconds? Yeah, beautiful little song. Don't start too late. I just did an episode of my podcast, History in Five Songs with Martin Popoff that was, it's called First Day Guitar Solo. And I talked about songs that were intro'd by guitar solos and the first category was the named ones. And this is a great named one. And, you know, after kind of thinking about it and doing that episode, I thought, this is like a really super cool creative, creepy way to do kind of a Spanish guitar thing. Whereas Rick Emmett or Eddie Van Halen or Alex Lysen all basically do Spanish guitar traditionally and conservatively. But Tony, Tony's, you know, the riff master, the creepy guy. So he makes this thing sound like a ghost pitter pattering through the hallways or something with this thing. I mean, previously this, we had Fluff, I think, you know, something similar to this. So it kind of fit into what they were doing on previous albums. So, but it was a nice new twist to it. Fluff and Orchid, right? Fluff and Orchid are both like, they sound kind of funerial, like something that you would play at a funeral, which frankly, the beginning of Rock Bottom by Kiss is kind of that same way as well. It's just got kind of like a moody edginess to it and it's so mellow and so acoustic. I don't like don't start a lot more because a little more finger picking there, you know, versus, you know, Fluff, which I think is more strumming. Yeah. And the title is because they would start playing before Mike Butcher was ready to record. So they, so it's a little in joke. It's like, don't start too late. Too late. Symptom of the universe. Pomuted power chords. You know, they say some people say this is the beginning of thrash metal as we know it. Yeah, I don't know why that's ever brought up. I mean, I don't find it particularly, you know, prescient of thrash. It's just a great super, super heavy song. But as I was saying earlier, I mean, this one basically turns into like a, a folky acoustic jazz song for the last, how much is it? I wrote it down. In three minutes, I would say. Yeah, a couple. Yeah, last two minutes of 629. Yeah. So the last third is a mellow song. And that's why us as kids, maybe we were trying, we were remembering the parts where the song went south. You know, it went bad. And we were remembering all the mellow parts, right? Or you didn't want it to go south and mellow. That's maybe that's why you guys were a bit disappointed with it. We were jealous of our buddy Jeff getting this album. We're putting it down as well. Like, like, fault in it, right? And I always, out of biography, he writes that he agrees with the people that think symptoms of the universe is the first progressive metal song. Do you guys agree? Yes or no? No, I agree. I agree. I think it's beautiful. No, I think they were already doing that kind of thing on, on Sabota. I mean, a Sabbath, bloody Sabbath. I think Deep Purple was kind of already, you know, put it massaging in a lot of parts. And 75 Rush was definitely doing stuff, right? Yeah. We already have, we already, well, actually, what do we got? I'm not, I'm not sure. Well, I guess Fly By Night would have been out because that's, that's gotta be early 75 because Carissa Steele's gotta be late 75. So, so Fly By Night was already out. So that was progressive metal. No, but I think they do it in a different way. It starts off with these power chords and then it just like completely shifts gear into this sort of jazz, jazzy kind of food style. I was the first, I'm sure there's other ways. Yeah. I think they did it in their own unique way. They did it in their own unique way. That's kind of like- No, you're wrong, Jimmy Allen's right. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. The theme, is it love that conquers all or just some sort of trip? Symptom of the universe. Is that love? Is that rebirth? Is it reincarnation? Nobody knows, do they? Yeah. Very, very hippy trippy, right? This whole album, like it's really out there in a theory also. And that's one of the things revisiting this album that got reinforced for me is just how great a lyricist Geyser Butler is. How would you guys rate him out of one to 10? Oh, 10, he's incredible. Seven ardent unicorns, like figure that one out. Yeah, he is really economical with his words. They aren't big fancy words all the time, but just stringing together those few simple words all the time makes it really enigmatic. And cool themes. And cool themes, exactly. The pictures that he's building and the expressions he's using to get his point across. I mean, I can't think of anybody else that does it quite that way. He could find the right, I think economically like Martin said, but he can find the right word in the right place with the sort of right emphasis that just brings those images like Alan's talking about to your mind when you're listening to it. That's what I think. And then he's even got to hand it to a lead singer. Yes. A bit of a crazy man lead singer and make sure they come out right. So it's any doesn't. Yeah, it just works great with Ozzie. Yeah, megalomania. Guys, what do you think about this sucker? Alan, you go first. Epic, I guess would be the word to use. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so this one actually is different than the other ones in that it starts mellow and it goes mellow for, I think it's about three minutes. Yeah, three minutes. And the last six minutes is heavy when it picks up. But the first three minutes is a little bit of that rhyme of the ancient mariner. You're on the boat. It's floating around. You can't get anywhere. The albatross is coming by, right? It's got that feel. It's got the planet caravan feel, the solitude feel. It's just a weird, druggy, dreamy, gauzy sort of beginning. And then the power chords come in. I mean, power chords that are actually kind of similar to symptom of the universe power chords, right? Do you guys think that this was more a Gizer Butler state of mind or was it sort of aimed towards management and their megalomaniac? That's what they say. They say it's aimed towards management. That's what I read too, yeah. Yeah, all right. So there you go. There goes megalomaniac. What does everybody else think of it? I know that everybody's just waiting in here. Hello, boys. We have my favorite people right here. Also my favorite Sabbath LP. That's Kenny. Yeah, I'm gonna give a shout out to Kenny. Yeah, I was just about to do the same drum, so. And Rob and Francis and Richard, glad to see Popoff in the discussion. He's a great and smart and metalhead. Is that Kenny Kessel? A lot of Sabbath knowledge. Oh, excellent, yeah. What an only Kessel. We almost hooked up last week because we were gonna go see Blue Coupe, but then they canceled because Joe got COVID. So I was in Hamilton, he was in Hamilton and we just missed each other. Oh boy. I just turned around and drove home. It was like ridiculous. Crazy rush hour to get to Hamilton. You know, it's brutal in rush hour getting there. But yeah, too bad because, you know, I know Joe and Albert and Dennis as well. It would have been nice to see them. But Kenny and I were almost thinking that, you know, the guys were being a little cagey about even meeting people because of COVID. So maybe we wouldn't have seen them anyways, but then as it turns out, Joe gets COVID. So we did. There you go. But I walked right into the venue and got told by the bar man, you know? No, it ain't on. Popoff, go home, that's what they told you. Popoff, go home, that's what's happening. Yeah. All right, guys, now we're flipping on to the other side of the album and we have a thrill of it all. Alan, what do you think about thrill of it all? I always booked, they talked about the, actually then made some changes to the master tapes. It took them forever to get this track made. In fact, the whole album took them forever, it seems like. And they had the little indications you used to have to start the song, to stop the song. They kind of put that on the master tape. So he was completely disheartened that it took them forever to get the track and then it gets ruined by somebody. That's why it's written on the back here. It says engineer. You ruined it, saboteur. Tape operator and saboteur, David Harris, because of that gaff that they did on the thrill of it all. I mean, this is a great use of, you know, orchestration in a sense, right? You know, I guess the tempo picks up the keyboards at the end. It's amazing. Martin, what do you think? Well, the cool thing about this one is, again, it goes to that theme of it gets, it gets mellow at the end, but not the same kind of mellow. It's not acoustic mellow. It gets, it gets to a point where you're thinking Sabbath, bloody Sabbath, looking for today, those kinds of melodic things. So the whole back end is kind of a, kind of a weird version of Poppy in a way, right? A Sabbath, bloody Sabbath, Poppy, but the front of it is just crushing, amazing riffing from Tony. Yeah, I agree. I do like the use of those keyboards, though, in the song, too. Superstar, Superzar, Superzar. How are they going to pronounce a Superzar? You know, another instrumental this time, big choirs, right? They're bringing the choirs, Ozzy walks in the room or the studio goes, where am I? Where am I? Am I in the right place? Just this big, I mean, is this filler or is this, you know, something that the band really wanted to put on tape? Alan? I don't think this is filler. I mean, like Ozzy said, how am I supposed to sing over this with all these choral voices and that? I don't think it's filler by any means, but I do think it's possibly the first symphonic metal song. Interesting, yeah. I think it's a masterpiece. I think it's a great marriage because it's a great marriage of heavy metal, and in this case, more or less, Tony, heavy metal riffing with classical. And I don't think, you know, in most future cases, going on decades and decades, you get anything that actually achieves the creative success that this does. I don't think it sounds like filler at all. I think it's a masterful song on here. It's super innovative. It's super proggy. Yeah, it's got all the, you know, the percussion bells and whistles. And yeah, I think even as kids, you know, as angry metalheads as we were, we did not hate this song. We kind of thought it was kind of cool. I think when I was 10 years old and I was in Sam the Record Man, my first impression of the album was what on earth is this cover all about? Like, oh my God, what is this? What decade is this? It's like a 1960s, right? Let alone the 50s. But we'll get into the cover pretty soon. Let's go to, am I going insane? And so they say that this was supposed to be penned for Ozzy's solo album, you know, and he brings the idea back to the band, a very commercial, more pop oriented, maybe in a sense. And I know it's not a radio, wasn't poised as a sort of position as a radio single, but it did have that very poppy melodic sound. Alan? Yeah, I mean, I agree, Jim, besides the actual lyrical content, it's the most optimistic sounding song on the album. It was just kind of... Like it doesn't even belong there, in a sense. Yeah, considering the title is Am I Going Insane? You know, it's going to be kind of dark lyrically, but the music is by far the most, I would say, uplifting on the album. Yeah, Martin. Yeah, I don't know if I'd say uplifting. I think of those chord changes and it does sound a little foreboding. And then when you do combine it with the lyric, it's, I guess it gets darker. And then you've got, you know, supposedly Ozzy's daughter, Jessica, you know, crying on it and then turned down. You've got the laughing, which I guess is a friend of theirs, Adrian from Australia or whatever. But this was released as a single and of course died because it just is not really single material, even though it is the mellow a song on it. The last story about it is, you know, the idea of the of the strange title, right? It's Am I Going Insane in Brackets Radio? And that's like Cockney or English slang for they had this place in Birmingham called Radio Rental. And so it was, it was slang for mental. So if you had a buddy, you know, somebody's crazy, somebody at yours is mental, you'd say, wow, he's radio because Radio Rental rhymes rhymes with mental. So it's Am I Going Insane mental kind of, right? You know, radio instead of mental. So and then, and then funnily, you know, it's like, it's like we're releasing this as a single to radio. So it's very weird that way. It's a very odd track, but nevertheless, I do like, and I've always liked it, you know, over time, the writ. Here we go, the summons, the writ, you know, and just to get back to Am I Going Insane and Chris Welch's book here, Black Sabbath, he says that this time he minds him of the who during their I can see for miles period. And I just want to get your guys thoughts on that. Wow. Yeah, that's pretty interesting. I don't, I don't really, I'm not sure I hear any, any who in it really at all. You know, maybe, maybe conceptually or you, or you think of those chord changes or theatricality of it, maybe, I don't know, Jimmy. I think it's just reflection of the times, you know, the whole album is a reflection of the times of, you know, if you listen to Judas Priest or Rush, like you were mentioning before, you know, it's not heavy metal just yet. It's sort of like hard rock and like a lot of integrated sounds like jazz. And I mean, Rush is a perfect, you know, like take the necromancer. Maybe necromancer is not a good, I think more the who. I think Alan, I believe, you know, there's a lot more that who-ish even leads up into a certain degree. I just think it's, this is an album of the 70s, you know, hard rock album of the 70s. It's not heavy metal as we know it today, right? Heavy metal today is drum, you know, blasts and chugging forever and, you know, high screaming vocals or high tenor vocals. But now you've got, I don't know, it's the sign of the era, the sign of the decade. But I think in total, it's probably Black Sabbath's most progressive album. Yeah, yeah. I agree, I agree. Even though people always label Sabbath Bloody Sabbath as the deep progressive album, right? No, I would agree with you on that. But I just think it's the sign of the times. It's what the music was sounding like, more or less. Yeah. There's a lot going on in volume four, too. We can't, there's a lot of different changes. The Guna sunrise and then you got the heaviness of snow blind and so it's up there, I would think. No, but I think there's way more tempo changes. There's way more time changes. There's just way more bits and pieces of different genres in this album versus like volume four. It's, that's, I find it's more straightforward, you know, but that's just me. And next to the song that of course summarizes all their frustration during this period. I mean, Ozzy apparently, you know, he wrote the lyrics to this. Is that true or not? I don't know. That's what he claims in his book on a biography. Yeah, it's a full band credit for everything. And it does sound a little, a little simpler or a different personality than, than geezer. But, and you know, the way, the way he says it, the way he says it in the book, it kind of, it kind of has some truism or some, some reality to it. I mean, we forgot to mention, I mean, am I going insane? Is supposedly Ozzy too, right? So, yeah, I mean, did he write just, did he have just the melody? Did he write the lyrics? I'm assuming, yeah, he probably did. And you're right, the lyrics are a little more simpler. They're not very geezer butlerish, right on the writ. It seems more like he's mad and he's just screaming at someone. But then you have that cool little harpsichord and a little tubular bell within the song, right? Yeah, this one goes mellow too. This one goes mellow, but then it has probably the angriest, doomiest Oni-Iomi riffs on it as well. So it goes mellow plus heavy, but, but it's, but the heavy bears no relation to the earlier heavy, which was this big slow open groove, right? With on just screeching away at the top, right? You were saying that this is an album of the 70s. It sounds like a 70s album to you. So I'm listening to it today and we get to the midsection of the writ and I'm like, that's only women bleeds, Alice Cooper. You're listening to the way Alice Cooper's song starts and you've got the midsection. So like who did it first? So to get back to the sound of the 70s, if we take that middle section, you got, welcome to my nightmare being released in March of 75 and this is in July of 75 and, and it's funny are those two sections sound so, so similar. Yeah, it's true. Like I think if we wrote out a list of all, but even Judas Priest, what did they have in 75? Was it only rock and roll at that point? It was a rock and roll or 74 or 75? 74, but Sad Wings wasn't, oh yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So 76, okay. Well, then you have blown a jug, but I don't know if we're going to like talk about that part. Yeah, that was always surprising to hear. I had that on my, my original copy of, of Sabotage. So that's, that's apparently Bill playing piano and Bill and Ozzy singing to record a very quiet. It's just a, just a silly little 23 seconds or whatever tune stuck on the end. But yeah, it was just another intriguing, weird little thing. You know, when I put on this album, I go, this is what I used to love about heavy metal and sort of the little ingredients from every genre in there, you know, mixed in with the heavy guitars and allowed vocals. I don't know, it's kind of what I missed. Well, just to add to that, the question I have for both of you is, if this was a debut album for a band today, would they be able to make it? I think so. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty darn creative and it's well recorded. I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's a weird question, but, but I would put it in a zone with, it would feel like an opath or a mastodon album or something like that, right? Or, you know, Lucifer, you know, that's kind of the doom angle that they have. You see, here's the problem with that, Alan. If it was released today, it's already been done. So it sort of feels like a copycat, but when this was done, it wasn't as done. That makes sense. Yeah. So it's hard, it's hard to say if it was released today. No, but I'm listening. I guess with a band with Black Sabbath, would they be able to exist today? Can I'm listening to it? I'm hearing all the changes. That's fine. And then you hear your Aussie's voice and you, you know, I'm just asked myself, you know, they're legendary. You can trace, and Martin probably has traced all the roots of every metal right back to this band, but it's like it would, if they were to launch today, would they succeed? Who knows? You know, there's so many different factors, right? The reason they succeeded back then is, is, you know, if you think about it, one of the reasons there are a lot of bands that quote, unquote succeeded is there were way fewer bands at that time, but also I think, I think people, I've always had this theory that people who even thought they didn't like heavy metal, loved heavy metal, they just didn't know it kind of thing. And that's why, that's why Hart Barracuda was a big hit. And that's even why Money for Nothing by Dyer Straits is a hit. He turned on the fuzz pedal, right? So, I think Sabbath is just so uncommon and so strange during that time. And you think of, you know, Bill Ward always talks about, you know, downers and wine, right? We were all drinking Boone's farm wine and chucking back at each other. Look, look, look, when I had, we sold our soul for rock and roll and I opened that sort of inner sleeve and I saw that lady in the coffin and that scared the shit out of me. But now if I open it, it looks like a joke, right? Like compared to what's out there today, right? So I think they were at the right place at the right time with the right image, with the right sound, reflecting that sort of, maybe it was Vietnam that was happening right back then or that sort of counterculture and, you know. But now it's funny about right around the corner, right? You know what's funny about this? These guys were sort of anti-establishment. They were real anti-establishment where bands today are establishment. They're for the establishment. But back then they were the minority, right? They were representing the minority and how they felt. I don't know. I just have another question for you guys. My feeling is starting maybe at Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, maybe even as early as volume four was kind of like, okay, Tony, you handle the music, we're off to the pub and we're going to go snort something. And when you're finished, we'll all come back. And then I know that definitely happened at Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, but it's sabotage where we're starting to see that the weld's running a little bit dry if that was the case that you had on your shoulders. I want to add something to that. Think about this. This is really only six songs on this album, right? So I mean, you know, how hard is it to come up with six songs? Now, if they had to come up with 16 songs, we wouldn't be on the show talking about this album. There'd probably be like eight fillers and then six and we'd say, ah, it's an okay album. But because there are six real songs on this. You're not counting Superstar as a Superstar. Those are two instrumentals, we'll call them, right? Okay. There's only six complete songs. Okay. Now, the reason why we love this album so much because it has six great songs. Well, I could name you a few albums that I like six songs, but I didn't like the other six. So we probably won't do a show about that album. Plus two of these are really long and plus, like I say, four of these songs have an extra song buried in them, right? Yeah. I find this like a very creative album. I mean, like I say, I've called it my favorite album of all time. I think the whole idea, Alan, of the album with a lot of Tony taking over and having to do everything, the narrative for that situation is really technical ecstasy and then a super falling apart around never say die. But yeah. So I think on this one, it's almost like I've always thought, I always had that sort of analogy of like they're just hanging on for dear life. Their knuckles are white and it's just desperation and out of desperation and fear and running on fumes that the creativity just goes wild and they come up with their most creative album ever. And we should say for those people out there who don't know, sabotage is basically the theme of the album. They felt like they were being sabotaged against the theme. We should talk about the album cover itself, right? Bring it out there, Martin. Bring out the wardrobe. There you go. And here's the backside. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Apparently Bill Ward didn't have underwear on. That's his wife's stockings apparently. Yeah. So they were all supposed to wear black or whatever. I mean, people say, oh, it's a terrible album cover. I think it's pretty cool. I don't mind it. I think they all kind of look pretty cool in it. Ozzy in that kimono looks pretty cool. You know, I think they look all right. And then, yeah, there you've got the back. When I first saw that, Martin, when I first saw that, it sounded like a little kid. I go, what on earth is this? And it worked in that sense. It worked. Yeah. You know, it's almost like I almost draw a comparison to a band named the police or a band named the cars. They're so iconic. They're so amazing that you forget that it's a stupid band name and you forget the concept of actual cars or actual policemen. And that sabotage album is just iconic because it's such an amazing, amazing record. So you almost forget, you know, dissecting it down to the, down to the bits. It's just a Martin loves it. I don't like it. Alan, what do you think about it? The album cover. I have no idea what the album cover has to do with sabotage. I thought the mirror was kind of interesting. I mean, they switched their war pigs. You see the album cover, all of a sudden it's called paranoid. So, you know, again, you know, there's kind of, there's no continuity between the outfits. But I really like the idea with the mirror, but. Except the funny thing about paranoid is that, that album cover fits equally as good with paranoid as it does. The way they kind of, well, just like there's this paranoid guy. He thinks everybody's after me. He's running around with a, with a sword. Tony, I owe me who is that sort of scary guy in black, but he's wearing his white, you know, white shirt there. You get a cat Stevens look happening. You got a cat. You look billboard. I don't know what kind of look that's his best. I don't know. Lear and look or something. Yeah, you're right. That's the original camel toy. I think yeah. And geez, and geezer even you're right. Geeser as well is looking like, you know, stately 1970s fashion and Ozzy kind of looks badass though. And that Ozzy looks like he belongs on 2112 or on that. Yeah. Yeah. The kimono was really in back in the 70s. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. That was too young. That was, I call that the bathrobe basically. Yeah. Okay. So, so again, Martin being one of my favorite authors, I've got all his books. Boom. Look at that. Quickly ask questions. So according to Martin's book here. Yes. Which album ranked by sound quality comes in at number one? Sabbath albums you're talking about with Ozzy or Dio? Everybody. Oh, heaven and hell. Wow. So this is according to me. So I have to answer my own like according to me. I'm saying heaven and hell. Remember, if you remember. You know, I would say it might be technical ecstasy. You are correct. Sabotage comes in number two. There we go. According to Martin Bobo. Is that Ozzy era? Is that Ozzy era? Oh, that's all of it. You know, because I think everything. Heaven and hell came in fifth. I think what about born again? What about born again? Where did that come in? No, but heaven and hell to me. I mean, it has it has that Martin Burt's trademark where everything's kind of pressed into the into the mid-range a little bit too much. What? Oh, yeah. Sure. I don't think it has much bottom into it. I mean, it has a biting bass sound. Listen to me on ice. That's real heavy. That's that's I don't know, but bottom in. I mean, you know, you think of what he did on that. Like mob rules has a ton of bottom in. Yeah, but fire of unknown origin doesn't cultosaurus erectus doesn't what he did for white snake doesn't. So I think that's really the trademark Martin Burt sound is is is a little bit compressed. Bring up the bottom end a little. There's there's ample treble everywhere, I think. So it's not like all crammed into the middle. But I think I think he brings up the base. He likes that that higher tighter bass sound. What's a bloody Sabbath is down there, right? Alan, what's that? We're Sabbath bloody Sabbath. It's down there. Right. It's it's on the sound quality. Sound quality. I'm sure it's not a great sound terrible. That was recorded in Nazi's kitchen. I mean, never see died be pretty low. Never say dies not too bad. I do like it. It's thin, but I do like the sound like Johnny blade. I just love it's crashy and clashy. Right. But air dance. But then, you know, all the Tony Martin ones, I mean, headless cross sounds horrible. I mean, which one we're asking about? Sabbath bloody Sabbath. Number six. Number six. Martin, what the hell's going on over there? Well, we'd probably have technical ecstasy sabotage. Master of reality might be higher. Right. I came in number three. You got the memory and that is so you put and you put mom rules number four. Yeah. I know exactly. Well, that's what I'm saying. It doesn't sound like a typical Martin birch album. It's just it's just really powerful. Right. Oh, what other questions you have there in that book? Oh my gosh, the whole book's questions. All right. So reception. It's called frequently asked question. And yes, yes. We only give us another one. I'll give us another one. Come on. All right. The reception. Martin, what was the reception sound? So finally the critics have accepted a Sabbath, but the fans kind of like fell off a little bit. I think so. I think it went a little over people's heads. I mean, when they when they started realizing, well, this song started here. It's ending here. What's going on? Like it just sounded like a really druggy strange album where they've got no discipline on on like the you know, the the structure of the songs, I suppose I did notice I was just kind of looking up. I mean, it did go gold and you think in your mind, oh, it's a gold. Oh, that's kind of cool. It went gold in 1997. So it went away later. Right. So so for a long time, it wasn't a particularly successful album. But as I was getting to earlier, you know, there weren't a lot of bands around and there weren't a lot of bands this heavy around. That's for sure. So, you know, you know, you didn't really measure your success on on record sales so much. I mean, they would go on tour and they played big places and get a lot and sell a lot of tickets. So it just felt like, you know, that was really the part of going to work that that stuck in their minds that the endless playing concerts versus, you know, oh, we just made an album and how's it doing kind of thing? Right. Seventh best selling album in their career sold 900,000 units in the U.S. to today. So it didn't quite hit platinum. It didn't quite hit. But I mean, 700,000 is pretty good. I would say. Yeah, right. I've been looking a lot like seven years. I've been like surmising lately that that I think there's almost like a job people could do in rock and roll that they haven't been doing. It's like go out and get the next level of certification based on streaming. I've I've looked at I did an episode of my podcast where I looked at Ace of Spades and I think I think Ace of Spades is a gold record now based based on if you if you went and did the stream if you calculate the streams. Yeah, but it would take management or or or, you know, Maria or somebody, you know, because the band's all dead, right? It takes somebody to want to go and get that straightened out. But I swear, I think Motorhead has a has a goal. Nice. Just so you know that when I spoke to Sabaton a while back, you know, they told me their album went gold in Sweden and I go, really, you sold that many copies. I don't know 50,000, whatever it is. It was no, no, we count in Sweden by streams and downloads and no, but you do in America, too. And and and basically Ace of Spades because that song's been played however million times I did the math on this episode and worked it all out, you know, divided by 15 and 10 songs and all this stuff, the way you're supposed to do it. And and I think Ace of Spades basically now goes over the top. But, you know, having said that, I guess what I'm getting to is you actually somewhere if you see somewhere 900,000 official, I bet with the streaming sabotage is a platinum out. But it's not an RIA certification. But that's no, but that's what you get if you go ask for it to be certified because there is streaming math that you apply to this. And that's why you can go on if there's a neat thing on RIA you can look at what got certified in 2021 and 2022 and some bands have gone back for these old albums and redid their stuff. And you know, Rush, for example, moving pictures all my life. I thought of it. Oh, cool. Rush's got a four times platinum album right on 2021. It went five times platinum. And that's because someone went back and added in at that point that you're adding in, you're doing the math on the streaming and someone went back and got it officially done. And now when you open wiki and you look at it, it's like moving pictures is five times platinum. You know, Alan Martin is the the son of a mathematician. You know that? Yes. You know, the son of a mathematician. Well, I just want this little knowledge. I just want Ace of Spades to be certified gold. So somebody's got to go do that, whether it's Maria Ferrero or you know, whoever whoever management is of the legacy of Motorhead, somebody's got to go to work and go get that done. Just the fact we're hearing Ace of Spades and car commercials now, you know, these guys were the black sheep back in the 80s, right? You had the only a certain few had the gold or the balls to wear Motorhead vest, which I was one of them by the way, but you know, you're an outcast, you're a Motorhead fan back in the day. And now you got commercials for cars and everything else Ace of Spades used for all kinds of things. See, that's the point. Back in the old days, your record sold a lot of copies because you had Beth on destroyer or something, right? Nowadays Ace of Spades, the entire album is literally mathematically dragged into we sold this many copies and this many 10,000 this month or 10,000 this year, 10,000 next year. And all of those sales quote unquote is because of the single Ace of Spades in a different way than it was in the 70s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. There you have it. Sabotage, saboteur, black Sabbath. We're celebrating. What do we got? 47 years? 47 years. We're going to start a new trend. Yeah, every 37 or 27 or 17 years. We're going to do a show reviewing albums. Yeah, I think this is a worthy anniversary. There's a lot of backstory. You know, this is the rise and this is the definitely the fall of black Sabbath after this. This was the changing right this point. Well, it's definitely my favorite Sabbath album and it may be my favorite album of all time still. So that's how the show started and it's a great way to end as well. Guys, I think we're done. Okay. Thanks Martin. All right. Thanks guys. Always a pleasure. You want to work on anything you want to plug? Yeah, yeah, not particularly. I've got a lot of books in the pipeline ready to come out, but I'm not really working on much now. We've just got the contrarian show, the history and five song show, and I've been doing a lot of these rock star portraits, pencil crayon on black ink and then making prints of them and even making little cards of them and stuff. So I've been doing a lot of that. But yeah, a lot of video shows not really working on a lot of books, but I added it up. I think I've got eight books finished that are coming out eventually, right? We're finally going to get that Bee Gees anthology book. Absolutely. Yeah. Bee Gees. Can we see those drawings on your website? Yeah. Well, so martinpopoff.ca you can see all the fake ads that I've done in about half the portraits, but you could go to artpal.com and my gallery and see all 50 portraits. So there's 50 exactly now. Plus I've done seven new ones, but I haven't done prints of those. And yeah, that's it. Those are the two main new sites. So martinpopoff.com is still all the books plus my old paintings from the 90s. That's a whole another story. But yeah, for the art, martinpopoff.ca and artpal.com and my gallery. You know what? I think the next show we're all going to do together is Born Again, which is coming up the anniversary. Black Sabbath, Born Again. Alan, I always bring it up with Alan. Because that's his second favorite Black Sabbath album. And I was waiting for a phone call. He has the gall to pull it off at the end of this show. I think the next one, the 36 years. All right, guys. Cool. All right.