Black Sabbath in the California Sun

A memorable Malibu meet-up with the high priests of darkness

Happy Monday, Jagged Time Lapsers!

We will return shortly to our Halloween playlist-in-progress. But today, here’s something special for my paid subscribers — an interview I did ten years ago with Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, most of which has never been published before…

It’s a postcard-perfect Malibu afternoon in January 2013 as I cruise north on the PCH: temps in the low 70s, sunshine sparkling intoxicatingly across the smooth surface of the Pacific, seagulls gliding idly overhead, and surfers and bikini babes — literally the only humans in sight — all seemingly moving as one in gorgeous slow motion.

I’m not here to soak up the rays on Zuma Beach, however. Instead, I make a right turn on Morning View Drive and head up the hill towards Shangri-La, the storied recording studio owned by legendary (and controversial) producer Rick Rubin. My mission: To get a sneak preview of Black Sabbath’s forthcoming album 13 — the first studio album by the massively influential heavy metal band’s original lineup (well, sort of) since 1978’s Never Say Die — and to interview Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler about the project for Revolver magazine.

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Quite frankly, the contrast between the music I’m here to listen to and the setting in which I’ll be listening to it is fairly jarring. Any hard rock or metal band that has even slightly flirted with darkness owes something to Black Sabbath, whose self-titled 1970 debut album set the template for things to come with an opening track complete with ominously tolling church bells, an impossibly doomy tritone guitar riff, and chilling lyrics involving a profoundly menacing apparition.

At its best, the original Sabbath’s recorded output was the musical equivalent of several particularly thrilling horror movies — if the band didn’t explicitly promote the darker side of mankind and the supernatural, then it at least gave it a thorough exploration. In other words, interviewing Ozzy and Geezer in a sun-drenched garden overlooking the Pacific feels about as right to me as interviewing The Beach Boys in a medieval dungeon.

Sure, the Sabs recorded 1972’s fantastically heavy Vol 4 — my personal favorite — at The Record Plant in L.A., but those sessions were so soaked with booze and drugs that even the album’s evocative instrumental “Laguna Sunrise” sounds more like the chill of a brutal comedown than the reassuring warmth of a new morning. But even though their hard-partying days are ostensibly well behind them, it’s still pretty weird to picture Ozzy, Geezer, guitarist Tony Iommi and Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk (filling in for original drummer Bill Ward, who left the reunited band under profoundly acrimonious circumstances in early 2012) actually recording bleak new tracks like “End of the Beginning,” “God is Dead?” and “Age of Reason” here amid the palm trees and sweet salt air.