Heaven and Hell (Black Sabbath song)
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| “Heaven and Hell” | ||||||||||||
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| Song by Black Sabbath | ||||||||||||
| Album | Heaven and Hell | |||||||||||
| Released | April 25, 1980 | |||||||||||
| Recorded | Criteria Recording Studios, Miami, Florida & Studio Ferber, Paris, France,1979 |
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| Genre | Heavy Metal | |||||||||||
| Length | 6:58 | |||||||||||
| Label | Warner Bros. Records | |||||||||||
| Writer | Ronnie James Dio, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward | |||||||||||
| Producer | Martin Birch | |||||||||||
| Heaven and Hell track listing | ||||||||||||
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"Heaven and Hell" is the title track to Black Sabbath's ninth studio album, Heaven and Hell. It was written mainly by Tony Iommi, but as with almost all Black Sabbath albums, credit is given to the entire band. The lyrics were written entirely by then-newcomer Ronnie James Dio.
Although some Black Sabbath purists dismiss the album (let alone all the ones that would follow for the next 15 years) for the absence of singer Ozzy Osbourne and thus marking the end of the band's original line-up, the album was quite successful, being the band's biggest selling since 1975's Sabotage. It has also been cited as a personal favorite by many other Black Sabbath fans. Ronnie James Dio himself cites it as his over-all personal favorite song of his career, the one that he feels most proud of.
In an interview for VH1's "Heavy: The Story of Metal," Dio stated that the song is about the ability of each human being's ability to choose between doing good and doing evil, essentially that each person has "heaven and hell" inside themself. When the song has been performed live by Black Sabbath or Dio, it's usually stretched out with an extended guitar solo, audience participation, adlibbed lyrics and/or additional lyrics regarding angelic and demonic apparitions and personal judgement. There is also a bootleg version sung by Ian Gillan. Tony Martin also sang it many times live with Black Sabbath as well as with his solo band.
Keyboardist Geoff Nicholls, who joined the band with the recording of this album, is said to have been responsible for this song's famous bassline. A guitarist himself by trade (though his role with Sabbath has always been as keyboard player), Nicholls likely got the idea from the Quartz song "Mainline Riders." Nicholls himself was a member of Quartz before joining Black Sabbath.
"Heaven and Hell" was covered by the American doom metal band Solitude Aeturnus for their album Adagio, and by San Diego-based band Benedictum on their debut album, Uncreation (which also featured a cover of Black Sabbath's "The Mob Rules"). It was also covered by Liechtenstein based gothic metal band Elis.
The song was also briefly covered by Tenacious D for Dio's music video "Push". At the beginning of the music video, Jack Black and Kyle Gass are shown standing on a sidewalk busking and singing Heaven And Hell with a few alternate lyrics. They stop when Dio walks up to them and tells them that he'll pay them if they would just play some Tenacious D songs.
In 2007 Sabbath announced they would do a tour with Dio as their singer in place of Ozzy. As Ozzy is once again a full time member of Sabbath they decided they would name themselves Heaven and Hell for this tour and focus on Post-Ozzy material, most of which hasn't been played for a long time.
The song is featured in the 2007 movie Halloween and the 2008 video game Grand Theft Auto IV.
