Black Sabbath Vol. 4
| Vol. 4 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Studio album by Black Sabbath | ||||
| Released | 25 September 1972 | |||
| Recorded | May 1972 | |||
| Studio | Record Plant, Los Angeles, California | |||
| Genre | Heavy metal | |||
| Length | 42:38 | |||
| Label | Vertigo | |||
| Producer | Patrick Meehan, Black Sabbath | |||
| Black Sabbath chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Vol. 4 | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |  |
| Rolling Stone | favourable |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide |  |
Vol. 4 is the fourth studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released in September 1972. It was the first album by Black Sabbath not produced by Rodger Bain; guitarist Tony Iommi assumed production duties. Patrick Meehan, the band's then-manager, was listed as co-producer, though his actual involvement in the album's production was minimal at best.
In June 1972, Black Sabbath began work on their fourth album at the Record Plant studios in Los Angeles. The recording process was plagued with problems, many due to substance abuse. In the studio, the band regularly had large speaker boxes full of cocaine delivered. According to Sharon Osbourne's memoirs, there was also a Doberman at the mansion that had gotten into a part of the band's cocaine supply that was laced with the baby laxative mannitol and soon became ill from the effects of the altered drug.
While struggling to record the song "Cornucopia" after "sitting in the middle of the room, just doing drugs,"Bill Ward feared that he was about to be fired from the band. "I hated the song, there were some patterns that were just horrible", Ward said. "I nailed it in the end, but the reaction I got was the cold shoulder from everybody. It was like 'Well, just go home, you're not being of any use right now.' I felt like I'd blown it, I was about to get fired." According to the book How Black Was Our Sabbath, Bill Ward "was always a drinker, but rarely appeared drunk. Retrospectively, that might have been a danger sign. Now, his self-control was clearly slipping." Iommi claims in his autobiography that Ward almost died after a prank-gone-wrong during recording of the album. The Bel Air mansion the band was renting belonged to John du Pont and the band found several spray cans of gold DuPont paint in a room of the house; finding Ward naked and unconscious after drinking heavily, they proceeded to cover the drummer in gold paint from head to toe.
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