Rare Black Sabbath footage from 1976’s ‘Technical Ecstacy’ tour has emerged online
Over 30 minutes of rare Black Sabbath footage from their 1976 ‘Technical Ecstacy’ tour has now emerged online available for fans to view.
According to Louder Sound, the newly unearthed live film was shot at the iconic metal band’s show at the Selland Arena in Fresno, California on November 9, 1976. The venue held a 10,000 capacity and saw the likes of Bob Segar & The Silver Bullet Band and Boston open for the group.
The footage shows a young, fresh-faced Ozzy Osbourne dominating the stage while adorned in what appears to be a navy blue jacket with a long white fringe hanging down across its wingspan.
Of the night’s 14-song set, the newly released footage only shows Black Sabbath’s performances of ‘Symptom Of The Universe’, ‘Snowblind’, ‘All Moving Parts (Stand Still)’, ‘War Pigs’, ‘Gypsy’ and ‘Children Of The Grave’ – with the latter song previously available on YouTube for a few years now.
The new 1976 ‘Technical Ecstacy’ tour footage also has the company Reelin’ In The Years’ watermark on it throughout the whole video. Reelin’ In The Years is a production company that licences live music and interviews for use in feature films, documentaries, TV commercials, DVDs, CDs, museum exhibitions and concert tours, and it appears that they may be the original source for this new Black Sabbath release.
It is also the same company that posted the video clip of the band’s ‘Children Of The Grave’ performance back in 2017 onto their official YouTube channel, and currently has 12 songs from the band’s show listed within its database.
Speaking about the tour in his 2011 memoir Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath, guitarist Tony Iommi wrote: “For the Technical Ecstasy tour we didn’t have a very big production, just musical equipment, a snow machine and dry ice. Nothing fancy, no coming in through the stage or flying in from the rafters. But Bill had this brilliant brainwave of having a big sea shell built behind his drums, (as per Louder Sound).”
He continued: “It was made out of fibreglass and it was loud, as it projected the sound. And every night he had tons of fresh flowers around his kit as well. He started getting more loony, but the shell was better than his original idea, where he wanted all these tubes around his kit with water going through it, changing colour. He had all these fancy ideas. They were great until you tried to get them to work: impossible.”
In other Black Sabbath news, Geezer Butler recently shared the plans that Osbourne has for the final Black Sabbath performance.
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Anagricel Duran
NME
