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Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality Subject Of New Book |
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Wednesday, 07 May 2008 |
 On June 15th, Continuum Books is releasing a new paperback by John
Darnielle called Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality. A description reads
as follows:
"John Darnielle describes Master Of Reality in the voice of a
fifteen-year-old boy being held in an adolescent psychiatric center in
southern California in 1985. Adolescents in treatment are often
required to keep a journal, and they write letters by the dozens: to
their parents, to their friends on the outside, to the nurses who
confiscate their belongings, to the teachers back at school who've
offered them an outlet for their creativity. Our narrator has arrived
in treatment with a Walkman and some tapes that are precious to him,
only to have them taken away on the ground that their content is part
of his greater problem. His various writings, aimed mainly at getting
his tapes and Walkman back, will explain how Black Sabbath differs from
their Satan-worshipping popular image, and how Master Of Reality is an
overtly Christian album, which it is. Our narrator will try to explain
Black Sabbath like an emissary from an alien race describing his
culture to his captors: passionately, patiently, and lovingly. This
album has a genuinely remarkable historical status: as a touchstone for
the directionless, and as a common coin for young men and women who
felt shut out of the broader cultural economy.
It'd be hard to overstate Ozzy Osbourne's totemic status among
adolescents in the early eighties. His public image, cobbled together
by his audience from occasional mainstream press mentions and niche
magazine coverage, made him a nearly perfect sponge for the aggressive
feelings of frustrated young men around the world. To this audience,
who continue to occupy a an enormous if ghostly position on the
margins, the early Black Sabbath albums were accepted classics in a
genre whose lack of real status only served to indicate its true value.
This, for me, is one of the places where the music does its most
interesting work: when it becomes a tool in the hands of its listeners,
and when the process of explaining it becomes part of its essence. This
was never truer than in the mainstream metal subcultures of the
eighties, where album titles served as passwords to a more accepting
world. I think Master of Reality, from its sweet Christian heart right
down to its ultimately incomprehensible title, is the perfect candidate
for illuminating these undersung passageways.
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