Current line-up

Ozzy Osbourne - vocals
Tony Iommi - guitar
Geezer Butler - bass
Bill Ward - drums

Black Sabbath were formed Birmingham England. The original band line up of Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Terence "Geezer" Butler (bass), and Bill Ward (drums) is the same as the current line up (2007) although there have been many shifts of personnel over the years.

Black Sabbath formed in Birmingham, England in 1968 under the name Polka Tulk Blues Company (soon shortened to "Polka Tulk"), and later were called Earth, playing blues rock and hard rock.

The group found its signature sound almost by accident. When the group was rehearsing in a studio, which was situated opposite a cinema showing a horror movie, Osbourne recalls that Tony Iommi  remarked to the rest of the band how it was strange that people willingly paid to see a movie intended to scare them. The band began to purposely write dark, ominous songs in an attempt to be music's answer to horror films, and in rebellion against the prevalent happy pop music of the 1960s

Pairing their new heavy sound and the stage antics of Ozzy Osbourne, the band found success beginning with their first album, the eponymous Black Sabbath, released on Friday the 13th, February, 1970. They signed to Warner Bros. Records in the U.S. and Canada, and Vertigo Records for the rest of the world. Their follow-up album Paranoid, also released in 1970, brought them even greater attention in America and the UK. The song "War Pigs" was written in protest against the Vietnam war and was originally planned as the title track. The band recorded "Paranoid" at the last minute simply to add length to the album. The song ended up becoming the title track for the album and the band's first single to garner substantial radio airplay.

Another innovation was the by-product of an accident. Tony Iommi lost the tips of two fingers on his fretting hand while working in a sheet metal factory. Initially, he forged himself prosthetics from a melted plastic detergent bottle. The injured fingers were understandably tender, so Iommi downtuned his Gibson guitar from standard E to C# (starting with the third album, Master of Reality). The reduced tension of the strings allowed him to play with less pain to his fingertips. Butler lowered his bass tuning to match Iommi's. The lower pitch gave the music a "heavier" or more substantive tone matching the band's lyrics.

Osbourne and Ward supposedly took LSD every day for two years between 1976 and 1978. Towards the end of Osbourne's tenure in 1978, he was so embroiled in drugs that he claims he was "very unhappy and got drunk and stoned every day". Many of the band's songs address drugs.

Due to internal conflicts and an evident lack of commitment due to drugs, Ozzy Osbourne was asked to officially leave the band in 1979. Ozzy Osbourne stated in a later interview that eventually he was glad to leave the band because of the band's daily drug and alcohol problems. Ozzy Osbourne later married Sharon Arden, daughter of Black Sabbath manager, Don Arden.

Ozzy was replaced by former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio. Black Sabbath's next album (and first with Dio), Heaven and Hell, proved to be a revitalising success for the band with the band's highest charting since 1975's Sabotage.
Drummer Vinny Appice joined to complete the tour and then record the next album Mob Rules, the title track appeared in the movie Heavy Metal.
The release in 1980 of the live bootleg Live at Last (recorded in the Ozzy Osbourne era during the 1973 Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath tour) prompted the band to properly record a live album on the Mob Rules tour, titled Live Evil. However, during the mixing of Live Evil, Iommi and Butler accused Dio of sneaking in to the studio at night to increase the volume on his vocals, leading them to fire him from the band and sending Appice with him.

Ian Gillan of Deep Purple fame then became the new singer. To quote the singer ; "I had no plans to join Black Sabbath. I went out with Geezer and Tony and we got drunk, and I found out the next day that I agreed to join the band. And they're such nice guys. It was great fun and it paid the bills, I had a lovely year with them and that was it." He left shortly after.

A degree of stability had returned to the Black Sabbath line-up by 1988 with the retention of Tony Martin and Geoff Nicholls and the addition of loyal drummer Cozy Powell. they were all gone 2 years later.

In 1996, Ozzy Osbourne launched his successful Ozzfest metal festival tour, which he headlined on a nightly basis. On the 1997 tour, for the last part of his set each night, he was joined by Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi for a rundown on several Sabbath classics, in December 1997, original drummer Bill Ward joined forces with Osbourne, Iommi, and Butler to officially reform the original Black Sabbath on a permanent basis for the first time since 1979.

The band had writing sessions together in 2001, with legendary producer Rick Rubin. The band ultimately decided that all work done in that time was not good enough for the "legacy" of Black Sabbath. After no activity at all in most of 2002 and all of 2003, the band returned in 2004. The session keyboardist was Rick Wakeman's son. In November 2005, Black Sabbath were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame. That same month it was also announced that they would be inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13, 2006.
In 2007, Ozzy Osbourne stated on his website that the original lineup of Black Sabbath would join forces in the studio record a new album, the first in over 30 years.Whether this will occur has yet to be confirmed by Tony Iommi or Geezer Butler who have remained vague, though they and Bill Ward have confirmed plans of some sort by Black Sabbath in 2008.