Dadblog

A very odd evening at Wembley Arena last night to see Heaven and Hell, which is basically Black Sabbath, minus Ozzy and the drummer, plus Ronnie James Dio and another drummer.

For those of you not up to speed with the biography of Black Sabbath, Ozzy was sacked right at the end of the 1970s. Ronnie James Dio, a man with the voice of an angel and the face of a glamorous cave troll, took over and they recorded two albums, Heaven and Hell and The Mob Rules, which I remember with enormous affection from my teens. Back then, when all my friends were throwing shapes with Morrisey, I was conjuring up demons and angels in my head while lying with my head between two enormous speakers. As you do.

Anyways, I have since corrupted my son in the ways of Sabbath, so when the chance came up to see Heaven and Hell (why they’re not called Black Sabbath on this tour is presumably some contractual thing) I grabbed a couple of tickets, and last night off we went.

Well. Here’s the thing. Sabbath were always a very, shall we say, blokey band, and the intervening two-and-a-half decades have not been that kind to the blokes (and their birds - they always were birds, too). I’ve become very used to seeing 40 year-olds at London gigs - I’m one of them myself. But those gigs - Blur and James and New Order etc. - were by bands who (there is no other way to say this) were largely frequented by university-educated middle class boys. And those boys (now men) tend to either have looked after themselves a little better, or to dress around their swelling paunches and receding hair.

Not so the brickies and mechanics and postmen who were into Sabbath. These men all looked 60, were all off their faces on Fosters (everyone drinks Guinness at indie gigs, don’t they?) and were all, to a man, fat, bald and a mite grumpy when it came to people standing up in the seated section. Not very rock and roll, in other words.

But the gig was enormous fun, nevertheless, and the three chaps in front of me - fat, bald, and pissed - were really enjoying it. Shame about the humourless, purse-lipped couple behind us, who looked like they shared a desk at the double glazing firm down their road, and who tutted every time someone stood up. Tutted. At a Black Sabbath concert. How very, very metal.