When Black Sabbath's self-titled debut album crashed into the UK Top 10 at number 8 in March 1970, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward became Britain's most unlikely pop stars, a state of affairs that bemused the Birmingham quartet as much as anyone. With this new-found success, however, came a new set of problems, not least of which was the need to convince the world at large that they were not, in fact, Satan-worshipping Black Magic practitioners but simply a loud, heavy rock'n' roll band. Throughout 1970, in interviews with the UK's influential 'inkie' music papers - New Musical Express, Melody Maker, Sounds and Record Mirror - each member of Sabbath was at pains to stress that they were not an occult band.
"Everybody thinks we're a black magic group, but we just picked the name because we like it," guitarist Iommi told the April 4, 1970 issue of NME. "I agree some of the numbers on the LP are about supernatural things, but that's as far as it goes. We don't make a habit of playing numbers like that."
