Black Sabbath
John Peel's 'Sunday Show' (Radio Session)
London
England
01 [06:31] Fairies Wear Boots
02 [04:57] Behind the Wall of Sleep
03 [07:58] Walpurgis [a.k.a. War Pigs – original lyrics]
04 [09:08] Black Sabbath [contains a 3rd verse and different lyrics]
Total [28:34]
Notes from Rob Dwyer's sabbathlive.com
This BBC performance was mentioned in the April 18th, 1970 edition of New Musical Express:
"Black Sabbath and Medicine Head are the groups featured in concert in John Peel's 'Sunday Show' on Radio 1 on Sunday, April 26 - and this broadcast is repeated in the Wednesday edition of "Sounds Of The 70's" on April 29."
In 1997, Ozzy included 4 songs from his "basement tapes" on his compilation, THE OZZMAN COMETH. 2 songs were featured on the 1st disc, while the other 2 were added as bonus tracks (along with an interview). The odd thing about this version is that it has been edited to sound as if it were actually a demo or rehearsal recording. In fact, most of us who hadn’t heard their 1970 BBC radio appearance fell for this explanation. But upon discovering the other bootlegged version of these songs WITH crowd noise, collectors began to suspect that something was awry.
This uncut version of this radio session is often labelled as 'John Peel's Top Gear - 11/11/69' or even misdated as 11/27/70. But these dates are clearly wrong! If you compare the confirmed set list for the 11/11/69 radio broadcast with this one, you'll see that we're dealing with a different show here. It would make more sense that this recording is from their April '70 appearance on John Peel's Sunday Show - a performance which has been confirmed by the New Musical Express article.
The most notable track in my opinion is the early version of “War Pigs”, which was actually called “Walpurgis”. The lyrics are completely different from what the song became when they were re-written for the PARANOID album. Despite Ozzy’s decision to use the original lyrics for this song, this performance still took place after PARANOID had been already recorded. In fact, Ozzy continued to sing the “Walpurgis” lyrics up through the end of the year, as evidenced by the Paris 12/20/70 video.
Tony hits a few sour notes during the intro and main solo for “Fairies Wear Boots”, which makes this rendition stand out a bit from the rest.
For a while, I was hung up on the fact that "Fairies Wear Boots" had been performed, which forced me to push the date for this tape back as far as September '70! Based on their gigging schedule, it would have been next to impossible for Sabbath to have done this show any earlier than that. The "Fairies Wear Boots" theory (based on Chris Welch’s remarks in his out-of-print book Black Sabbath) was that “Fairies” was inspired by their June 13th, 1970 gig in Newcastle, where the band were attacked by some thugs onstage during their performance. Tony’s shiner in the studio photos taken just days later seemed to confirm this. The only fly in the ointment here is that I later discovered an interview with Geezer dated 6/13/70 (in NME) where he mentions having written “War Pigs” and “Fairies” already! So much for that theory!
Some other credible clues towards finding the correct source for this performance came in from Kev Hudson (from the U.K.) in April 2003.
Kev Hudson: “John Peel's Top Gear show was a programme consisting of records and BBC studio session tracks only, whereas Peel also hosted a weekly live show, originally called "The Sunday Concert Programme", but later shortened to simply "In Concert" (the series is also mentioned in Garner's book). I recall that Sabbath were also featured on this live programme some time late in 1970, and over the past few years I have been collating details of all the "Concert" shows, as no-one else has done it before! The concerts sometimes featured just one band for the whole hour, but more often two bands shared the time with 25-30 minute sets. I've managed to track down recordings by the Pink Fairies, Jody Grind, Lancaster, Caravan, Family, Tempest, etc., but I've never come across Sabbath's set until today, where I found it mentioned on Jarkko's site.”
Official Releases:
Ozzy Osbourne-THE OZZMAN COMETH (Sony): Best sounding version, but all of the audience sound has been edited out to make it sound like a demo?! Released on 11/11/97
CD-R's:
JOHN PEEL'S 'TOP GEAR' SESSIONS 11/11/69: Incorrect date; The only reason to get this version is for completeness, since the quality is worst than most versions I’ve heard; Also, the tape speed is too fast.
ULTIMATE RARITIES – VOLUME 1 (2002 Aces High): Contains audience sounds that are edited out of the OZZMAN COMETH version. Slightly better source than John Peel’s Top Gear Sessions CD-R.
RARE TRACKS - VOLUME 1: Contains all 4 songs.
RARE TRACKS - VOLUME 3: "Behind The Wall Of Sleep" only.
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