Black Sabbath's 'Born Again': The Videos

Ian Gillan tells stories about being in Black Sabbath

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Black Sabbath’s Born Again is an underappreciated classic, but everything else about the band at the time was a disaster. There was a tasteless album cover with a devil baby some claimed was a jab at Sharon Osbourne’s pregnancy, a Stonehenge stage set that inspired the film This Is Spinal Tap, and dwarves on stage with fake yellow fingernails. Sabbath hadn’t lost their musical footing, but they seemingly lost their grasp on sanity.

Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan describes his tenure in Black Sabbath in a typically understated manner: “It was a peculiar year for Sabbath. We made the best of it”. Gillian chronicles his adventures with Sabbath in the interview above, including how he needed cue cards for lyrics and the Dethklok-sized amount of dry ice at shows.

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Perhaps the strangest component of the Purple Sabbath era was the music videos. They’re so nonsensical, they almost defy description. Videos were shot for two songs, “Trashed” and “Zero the Hero”. The videos did their best to undermine the songs.

“Trashed” is about a night Gillan went drinking in the English countryside and ended up in an automobile accident. Drinking plays a role in the video, but it’s like Bachelor Party with a few Dukes of Hazzard moments. A teenager straddles up to a bar, grabs a bottle from a bug-eyed bartender, and swigs enough liquor to topple a rhino. Strippers wearing hoods like Guantanamo prisoners are later revealed to be deformed. People are assaulted with bottles. Chaos ensues. Is the moral that if you get wasted, you’ll be abducted by zombie strippers and survive a car wreck? Was this video directed by Troma Studios? Sign me up!

The video for “Zero the Hero” makes “Trashed” seem downright sensible. It’s like The Hunchback of Notre Dame meets Eli Roth’s Hostel. I always thought “Zero the Hero” was a cautionary tale about apathy, but apparently it’s a bad horror movie. A Quasimodo figure walks around carrying a body mummified in what appears to be plastic sandwich wrap. Quasimodo and a bunch of other deformed creatures act like doctors. The body morphs into a Buddy Holly clone and shoves ketchup and food in his mouth. It must be seen to be believed.

Both videos appear to use the same concert footage of Gillan-era Sab. If that’s not enough, freeze at 0:54 in “Zero”, where a chicken takes over the entire screen. See if you can spot the chicken a second time and a Bathory-style goat.

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BLACK SABBATH’S ‘BORN AGAIN’: THE VIDEOS

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“Trashed”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEawt270iGI

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“Zero the Hero”

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The band talks to MTV about the videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq6FUM4q2XU

This may be the worst interview ever

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