Earth was created in 1967 in the heart of industrial Birmingham, by a skinhead vocalist then known as Ozzy Zig, guitarist Anthony Frank ‘Tony’ Iommi, bass player Terry ‘Geezer’ Butler and drummer Bill Ward first united, albeit briefly, under the name Polka Tulk Band. Within a short space of time the revised band had altered their moniker to the shortened to Polka Tulk before another name change was enforced, the foursome becoming the Earth Blues Band and subsequently simply Earth. Earth signed up to a management deal with Jim Simpson’s Big Bear Management during 1969. Simpson owned the legendary Birmingham haunt Henry’s Blues House and managed nationally known acts such as Bakerloo, Tea And Symphony, his own band Locmotive and he would also later be manager for Judas Priest. Earth recorded their first demo and one of the tracks from that demo was ‘The Rebel’ which was written by Locomotive keyboard player Norman Haines. Right across Earth rehearsal space was a movie theatre and the theatre was showing the Mario Bava movie Black Sabbath featuring Boris Karloss. Butler noted that it was ‘strange that people spend so much money to see scary movies’. Butler would soon have a nightmare where he had a vision of a black silhouetted figure standing at the foot of his bed. That vision, the Mario Bava titled movie and the work of occult writer Dennis Wheatley got him and Osbourne to write the track Black Sabbath. The ominous sound and dark lyrics pushed the band in a darker direction, a stark contrast to the popular music of the late 60s which was dominated by flower power, folk music and hippie culture. Just a month earlier the band was presented with a problem when arriving for a gig in Manchester just to discover that the promoter had in fact thought he was booking a Tamla Motown styled R&B band of the same name. The band had within a short time written tracks like ‘N.I.B.’, ‘Warning’, ‘The Wizard’, ‘Faeries Wear Boots’ and ‘Rat Salad’ and were now performing them as Earth. It was at the Banklands Youth Club in Workington on the 26th of August 1969 that they announced they had now become Black Sabbath named after one of their new songs. Their very first gig under the new branding came on 30th August 1969 at the Winter Gardens in Malvern. To mark the transition the ‘Earth’ logo on Bill Wards bass drums was covered by a hastily rendered ‘Black Sabbath’ in gaffa tape. The Earth demo sessions on this album are comprised of 3 heavy bluesy numbers and a Black Sabbath version of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ from 1970. The Flying Hat Band was originally a quartet featuring vocalist Pete Hughes (who quit to join the army), went through numerous line-up changes and finally becoming a power trio with Tipton doing both guitar and vocals. The trio line-up of 1973 featured bassist Andy Wheeler and drummer Trevor Foster. It was this trio that recorded this 4-track demo in 1973. The material on this demo has a similar sound to Sabbath but also sounds like many of the other bands of the time like Horse and Fuzzy Duck. Tipton does rip it up especially on the great Reaching for the Stars track, which reminds me of the Danish band Hurdy Gurdy. Lost Time is an acoustic track. Coming of the Lord is nearly 7 minutes and by far the longest track on this record. It features some long dual guitar solos in each channel, even though the band is a three piece. Really cool stuff. Flying Hat Band actually recorded an album for Vertigo Records, but this was never released due to its supposed similarity to Black Sabbath. The band folded following a European support tour to Deep Purple when Tipton joined Judas Priest in May 1974.
