Black Sabbath - Slapback (unreleased track from Geoff's 'Heaven and Hell' tape)

[Scott]

Geoff's stepson posted this unreleased track on youtube. The lyrics might be somewhat embryonic (Geoff's stepson thinks it might be a cover?), but the song seems to be all there. Would have made a good album track or b-side, IMO. Wonder if it's Geoff or Ronnie on bass for this one? The title 'Slapback' can be seen on the picture of the tape at 0:15 in the video.

Really wish this stuff had been at least offered for the DE. Although they could easily have taken it and sat on it in their own archives. A Youtube stream is still a pleasure.

[Jack the Stripper]

Its gold hearing this stuff. I wonder if it’s an unused song from Ronnie’s Elf days they jammed on? Certainly sounds Elfish, particularly the bass lines.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

I like that, but it's not very Sabbathy, in fact I thought it had a Rainbow feel about it!

[Charger]

Holy moses...I was hoping after that Heaven And Hell early version came up that something else might turn up from those tapes as well!

I would love to hear Tony's memories on this one...he did say that the reason for there not being any extra studio tracks on the Deluxe Edition of Heaven And Hell was that they simply didn't write any more songs...But this does seem to contradict that.

I don't really think this has a lot of Rainbow in it though...more Elf and maybe something left over from the NSD days...I can understand why they didn't go forward with this song though...but on the otherhand it's not worse than Walk Away...in fact I like the vocals more on this one than Walk Away.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

^^^
I'm not particularly familiar with Elf. But given Ronnie had just come off Long Live Rock n Roll the vocals and vibe reminds me of that album a little.

I'm not sure it would have suited H&H, but I;m sure it could have fitted in somewhere.

[Charger]

Yeah the vocals do have a bit of a Rainbow-esque vibe in them yes...I thought you meant the music.

I'm not all that much into Elf either to be honest...bit too soft for my taste. But they do also have some nice rocking numbers too.

[Zzzptm]

It strikes me at just how limiting a band name like "Black Sabbath" can be. It the band had just about any other name and any other opening track from their first album, they could have pulled this off and had some real fun with it. This is a clean little rocker, no downtuning or metalling up for it, and it's a great song. Catchy hook, fun chorus, could have been sold off to Foghat to let them have a go at it.