Then Frank leaned over and whispered in my ear, ‘Got any blow? It’s not for me – it’s for my bodyguard.’ When it was my turn, I took a long gulp, screwed up my face, and said, ‘Ugh, tastes like piss.’ Then everyone had to have a ceremonial drink of the champagne, starting with Frank.
You could have heard a pin drop in that place until the band finally started to sing ‘America the Beautiful’. But the craziest thing about it was that they’d rigged up a little pump, so champagne was squirting out of her vagina. It was made into the shape of a naked chick with two big, icing-covered tits – and her legs were spread wide apart. Later, after we’d finished eating, I was sitting next to Frank when two waiters burst out of the kitchen, wheeling a massive cake in front of them.
I didn’t want to get involved, so I just went, ‘Nah,’ even though I had a big bag of the stuff in my pocket. But have you got any? Just a toot, to keep me going.’ But it was really weird, because the guys in his band kept coming up to me and saying, ‘You got any blow? Don’t tell Frank I asked you. We introduced ourselves, then we all started to get pissed. When we arrived at the restaurant, there he was, sitting at this massive table, surrounded by his band.
So come eight o’clock, off we went to meet Frank. Then the next day we got word that Frank wanted us to come to his Independence Day party, which was going to be held that night at a restaurant around the corner. At the time he’d just released this quadraphonic album called Apostrophe (’), which had a track on it called ‘Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow.’ Fucking classic.Īnyway, so there we were at this hotel, and we ended up hanging out with his band in the bar. All of us looked up to Zappa – especially Geezer – because he seemed like he was from another planet. We were doing a gig there, and it turned out that he was staying at our hotel. The singer expanded on these remarks in I Am Ozzy, adding a lot of colorful detail:Īnother crazy thing that happened around that time was getting to know Frank Zappa in Chicago. He said, ‘The song “Supernaut” is my favourite track of all time.’ I couldn’t believe it – I thought, ‘This guy’s taking the piss: there’s got to be a camera here somewhere…’ Ozzy gives the short version of the story in Barney Hoskyns’ Into the Void:įrank Zappa – who was a very techno guy – invited us to a restaurant once where he was having a party. Everyone seems to agree that there was a party in an American city around 1974. On the strength of “Supernaut,” Zappa invited Black Sabbath to dinner, a Rashomon-like encounter that Ozzy and Tony Iommi recall differently in their memoirs. And a lot of critics went, “Well, if Zappa likes Black Sabbath, maybe we should give them another listen.”įrank Zappa talking to Let It Rock magazine, 1975 And I thought he was joking! (Laughs.) But he thought “Supernaut” was the best riff he’d ever heard. They were asking him what music he was listening to at the time, and he said, “Black Sabbath.” And at the time, Frank Zappa was really well thought of critically. I think some of them got an inkling when Frank Zappa did this interview in one of the big English music papers. Sabbath bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler, a Zappa fanatic who says his “musical life completely changed” when he first heard the Mothers of Invention at the age of fifteen, credits Zappa’s endorsement of “Supernaut” with changing critics’ attitudes toward the band: I used to like ‘Supernaut’ but I think ‘Iron Man’ is the one now.”īut in the mid-70s, it was strictly “Supernaut,” and the Sabs benefited from Zappa’s enthusiasm. Are you kidding me? ‘Iron Man’! That’s a work of art. Also, I happen to like the guitar lick that’s being played in the background.Įventually, Neil Slaven’s Zappa biography Electric Don Quixote reports, “Iron Man”-the Sabbath song Zappa chose to play in his DJ set on BBC Radio One in 1980-replaced “Supernaut” in the maestro’s affections:Ī couple of years later, he’d changed his mind. I like it because I think it’s prototypical of a certain musical style, and I think it’s well done. 4, the number one spot in his list of “faves, raves, and composers in their graves,” published in the June 1975 issue of Let It Rock: Ozzy Osbourne backstage at the 1974 California Jamįrank Zappa gave “Supernaut,” the ur-metal monster that ends the first side of Black Sabbath Vol.
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