Composition and recording
After frustrating legal battles that accompanied the recording of 1975's Sabotage , Sabbath chose Miami's Criteria Studios for the making of Technical Ecstasy, which continued the band's separation from the doom and darkness that had been a trademark of their earlier albums. "Some people may have heard the band in 1970", noted Iommi, "and be thinking, 'Oh no, not them again!' But if they heard us now, they probably might like us." [7]
In the July 2001 issue of Guitar World , Dan Epstein wrote, "The sessions proved extremely relaxing for everyone except Iommi, who was left to oversee the production while the others sunned themselves on the beach." Iommi explained to the same magazine in 1992, "We recorded the album in Miami, and nobody would take responsibility for the production. No one wanted to bring in an outside person for help, and no one wanted the whole band to produce it. So they left it all to me!"
In the liner notes to the band's 1998 live album Reunion , Phil Alexander writes that, while the band struggled to finish the album, "rock had spawned a new set of iconoclasts as the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned… Suddenly Sabbath found themselves both unsure of their musical direction and labeled as has-beens." "It's not like now: If you're a heavy metal band, you put out a heavy metal album", Butler explained to Uncut in 2014. "Back then, you had to at least try to be modern and keep up. Punk was massive then and we felt that our time had come and gone."
To make matters worse for the band, manager Don Arden began spending more of his time focusing on another of his acts, Electric Light Orchestra, whose 1975 album Face The Music was their first to make the US top ten. Iommi's determination to move Sabbath in a new direction was misguided according to some, with Mick Wall noting in the 2013 book Black Sabbath: Symptom of the Universe that while future soft rock million-sellers Hotel California and Rumours were just around the corner, "to try and force that sound on Black Sabbath was like trying to put lamb's wool on a suit of armour. It just didn't work, pleasing nobody."
In his autobiography I Am Ozzy, vocalist Ozzy Osbourne admitted he had begun to consider leaving the band during this time: "I'd even had a T-shirt made with 'Blizzard of Ozz' written on the front. Meanwhile, in the studio, Tony (Iommi) was always saying, 'We've gotta sound like Foreigner', or 'We've gotta sound like Queen.' But I thought it was strange that the bands we'd once influenced were now influencing us." Osbourne also wrote that the cost of recording in Florida "was astronomical" and that he'd "lost the plot with the booze and the drugs" during the recording of Technical Ecstasy, eventually checking himself into the Stafford County Asylum on his return to England.
"That was the beginning of the end, that one", bassist Geezer Butler confessed to Guitar World in 2001. "We were managing ourselves because we couldn't trust anybody. Everybody was trying to rip us off, including the lawyers we'd hired to get us out of our legal mess. It was really just getting to us around then, and we didn't know what we were doing. And obviously, the music was suffering; you could just feel the whole thing falling apart."
While the band were recording the album, the Eagles were recording Hotel California in an adjacent studio at Criteria Studios in Miami. "Before we could start recording we had to scrape all the cocaine out of the mixing board", Geezer divulged to Uncut in 2014. "I think they'd left about a pound of cocaine in the board." The Eagles were forced to stop recording on numerous occasions because Sabbath were too loud and the sound was coming through the wall. [8]
Musical styles and songs
Technical Ecstasy is an attempt by Black Sabbath to mature as a group and explore novel musical directions. [9] Compared to the band's earlier albums, the record's songs are more eclectic, complex and flowery, with studio effects and synthesisers appearing prominently. [10] As Greg Pato of AllMusic describes: "The band was getting further and further from their original musical path, as they began experimenting with their trademark sludge-metal sound", citing the funky "All Moving Parts (Stand Still)" and the melodic, Bill Ward-sung "It's Alright" as examples. [11] The latter song – the first time Osbourne did not take lead vocals on a Black Sabbath track – has been compared to the work of Paul McCartney and Badfinger and is among the group's most controversial songs. [10] The prominence of guest keyboardist Gerald Woodroffe throughout the album was considered a "surprise left turn", [12] though Steven Rosen of Sounds considers his work on the album to be "supplemental in nature", adding that "the new synthesized wheezings are nice and so long as he remains in a back-up role there should be little problem with his being accepted by the Sabbath fans." [13]
Butler has described Technical Ecstasy as a response to punk rock. Music journalist Michael Hann disputed this, saying: "Given it was recorded in June 1976, that suggests they were either way ahead of the curve, or that Butler is mistaken." [14] In a 2021 interview, Ward cited Technical Ecstasy in asserting the band's "punk and prog credentials"; while admiring punk rock because "I came from a violent band as well", he said "We never made music to fit into anything or to reach a certain audience". [15] With regard to Iommi being the only member determined to work on the album, Peter Watts of Uncut comments that Technical Ecstasy is "the sound of Tony Iommi being left to his own devices and getting pulled in several different directions at once", believing that he wished to eschew heavy metal for hard rock, while also "nodding at punk and soft rock" but still remaining "quintessentially Black Bloody Sabbath", with the resulting record combining aspects from all their earlier albums – including the drive of their earliest work and experimentation of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) – as well as a straight pop song with vocals by Ward. [16]
Technical Ecstasy's lyrics dealt with a variety of topics. Tony Iommi's autobiography Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven & Hell with Black Sabbath reveals that "Dirty Women" was about "all these hookers" Butler had seen around Florida. "All Moving Parts (Stand Still)" is about "a transvestite who becomes President of the United States", Butler told biographer Mick Wall in 2013, "because America was such a misogynistic society at the time." As with their previous two albums, the band continued experimenting with keyboards and synthesisers on Technical Ecstasy. The music itself was less dark and more atypical than that of previous albums, especially on the ballads "It's Alright" and "She's Gone".
The ballad "It's Alright" was written and sung by drummer Bill Ward. Initially reluctant to sing the song for fear of offending Osbourne, he was encouraged by the band to do it. [8] In his autobiography, Osbourne praises the performance, enthusing, "He's got a great voice, Bill, and I was more than happy for him to do the honours." It was released as a single because, said Iommi, "We want to break out as far as we can… so we've decided to hit the singles market." [7] It has since been covered live by Guns N' Roses, and features on their Live Era '87–'93 album. It also featured in the 2010 film It's Kind of a Funny Story .
Artwork
The cover art was designed by Hipgnosis. Osbourne once described it as "two robots screwing on an escalator". [17] Hipgnosis' Storm Thorgerson, who had been assisted by graphic designer George Hardie, discussed the cover with Zoom magazine in 1979: [18] "We're very fond of that cover. From the title of the piece, Technical Ecstasy, I thought of something ecstatic rather than something technical, and I immediately thought of ecstasy in sexual terms: some sort of mechanical copulation, which would be tricky to do. I then thought of ecstasy as falling in love, perhaps during a brief encounter on an escalator – and, since it was 'technical', I thought of two robots ... It's really quite simple – he's just done curves for the female and hard, angular, macho lines for the male. It's really quite sexist, actually – stereotyped. Anyway, it's love at first sight, but I felt robots wouldn't do it like humans would do it, so instead they're squirting lubricating fluid at one another." The UK release had a two-sided insert of lyrics and credits.
Critical reception
The album received mixed reviews, with Phil Alexander writing in 1998: "While today hardcore Sabs fans defend some of the bold steps taken on Technical Ecstasy, it was a confused offering which still hit Number 13 in the UK but limped into the US charts at 52." In 2001, Guitar World was less kind, calling it perhaps the "least-loved effort of the original lineup" with the band "trying to stretch its sound in several different directions, none of them exceptionally successful". It deemed "Rock 'N' Roll Doctor" "a bad Kiss imitation", while eschewing "It's Alright" as "a sub-par Paul McCartney-style pop ballad". In 2013, Mojo magazine opined: "Technical Ecstasy is the sound of Sabbath trying to make a grown-up, radio-friendly rock record and, in some parts, it works ... Mostly, however, it doesn't with tracks like 'Back Street Kids', 'Rock 'N' Roll Doctor' and 'Dirty Women' resorting to clichéd and ill-fitting rock moves." Greg Prato of AllMusic agrees: "it was not on par with Sabbath's exceptional first five releases", but praises "Dirty Women", the "funky" "All Moving Parts (Stand Still)" and the "raging opener" "Back Street Kids". [11]
In The Great Rock Discography (2006), Martin C. Strong bemoaned the album's "ill-advised experimentation" and believed it marked "the beginning of the end". [22] In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Technical Ecstasy is described as "the Seventies-era Sabbath album least likely to be found in a hard-rock fan's collection. It's not horrible, but you wonder if anyone in the band remembers making it. Is it an ill-fated attempt to snag some of the boogie-rock money that Ted Nugent was rolling around in? Or had they just run out of steam? Tony Iommi's guitar is the only thing left alive." [23] In his Uncut piece, Watts wrote: "Punk is on the horizon and Sabbath try reinvention, with mixed results." [16] Writing in the Spin Alternative Record Guide (1995), Rob Michaels deemed Technical Ecstasy far inferior to the surrounding Sabbath records, adding: "While the album's aimless synthesized wankery is arguably technical, ecstasy comes only to those who consign its cover to permanent dope de-seeding detail." [24]
In 1992, Iommi admitted to Guitar World: "Black Sabbath fans generally don't like much of Technical Ecstasy. It was really a no-win situation for us. If we had stayed the same, people would have said we were still doing the same old stuff. So we tried to get a little more technical, and it just didn't work out very well."
In rankings of the band's albums, Technical Ecstasy was listed 10th by Eduardo Rivadavia of Ultimate Classic Rock , [9] 11th by Paul Elliott of Classic Rock , [12] and 13th by John Hadusek of Consequence of Sound , [10] Nick Ruskell of Kerrang! , [25] and Michael Hann of The Guardian . [14] Hadusek believed Technical Ecstasty marked "where Black Sabbath changed, and not for the better", adding: "On one hand, the songs had become more complex, flowery, and aurally varied — nothing wrong there. But it’s awkwardly executed by Iommi, who produced the album. Instead of coming off as progressive, these experiments reek of a band losing touch with the traits that made them great. The studio effects and synthesizers often overtake the bass and guitar." [10] Ruskell believes the album is "actually pretty good", despite its reputation as the first Black Sabbath album to reveal "cracks", but still believed it lacked the "hungry, stoned-out blues" of the band's first three albums, or the "coke-guzzling creativity" of the intermittent three. [25] Rivaavia called it a "bold but ill-fated attempt to mature and explore novel musical directions", believing it could have been comparable to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) if not for "the largely unimpressive songs to carry those innovations to fruition" [9] Elliott believes that it was the first album on which the band "faltered", believing some songs, such as "Back Street Kids", to be "hokey", but adding that there are several great songs, including "Dirty Women" and the ballad "It's Alright". [12] Hann wrote that while "Back Street Kids" may back Butler's claim that the album was a response to punk, "most of the rest of Technical Ecstasy was a mess." [14]
