The Beach Audio Blog

The absolute truth!

This is not another bit bashing Ozzy Osborne, but a hair raising story about a Black Sabbath session. It’s the Dio era, and the session was “The Mob Rules” for the sound track of the epic cartoon feature “Heavy Metal’. Day 1: meet and greet... Martin Birch and the Sabbath crew Vinny, Tony and Geezer Butler. Before starting, the band hung a voodoo coconut head mask at the front of the control room between the main speakers. They then jammed a cigarette into it’s mouth and let it burn down, leaving a long sagging ash precariously hanging there. Sabbath approved, nodded favorably, and got the session under way. The recording went on for well over a month, and every morning I would check out the mask to find the ash still intact. By the way, if you ever heard the guacamole dip in the patch bay urban legend, well that was me at my L.A. studio CanAm, and the band that pulled off the stunt was guess who? Anyway, at the very end of the session while running the final masters for Martin Birch, I was still mesmerized at the durability of that magical ash still firmly intact. I handed Martin the tapes, he thanked me, walked out of the door and slid it shut... the ash fell to the floor! This is the absolute truth.

Black Sabbath: In league with the devil? Doubtful. Voodoo masters? Maybe....

I'm the Studio Rat.