Black Sabbath

Cream gets a nod for bringing the bass, the mighty Zep gets credit for wailing vocals and embracing the occult, and Steppenwolf gets a point for first immortalizing the phrase "heavy metal" in a song, but really, these four long-haired dudes from scruffy Birmingham brought it all home. Without Black Sabbath, there would be no heavy metal. While the band was nearly as famous for their personnel upheavals as their music, for many fans, the original lineup of Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, Tony Iommi on guitar, Geezer Butler on bass and Bill Ward on drums represents the "real" Sabbath. Black Sabbath came together in 1966 and played under a few different names before settling on Black Sabbath. They released their eponymous debut in 1970. The title track of their follow-up album, Paranoid, got significant radio airplay. The world had been exposed to Black Sabbath, and the juggernaut had begun. While Black Sabbath played with other styles and genres - such as orchestras and Gregorian chants - they are best known for darkly melodic, heavy riffs. This sound was more the result of a coincidence than anything deliberate: Tony Iommi had lost part of two fingers in an accident, and the "heavy" sound was simply a result of him downtuning his guitar to make playing easier. The 70s were the most prolific period for Sabbath; they were also the years when the pressure of their popularity led to their real-live demons coming out. Most famously, Ozzy Osbourne threw himself into alcohol and drugs with a fervor that led to his departure in 1979. He was replaced by Ronnie James Dio. While Dio's introduction brought some much-needed commercial success to the band, the fracturing of the original quartet had begun, and every other member except for Iommi would at some point rotate in and out of Black Sabbath. Dio eventually left to form Dio, and Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan came on for a short stint. After more than a decade's worth of lineup shuffling, the band hit a period of stability in the late 80s, releasing Headless Cross and TYR, both dark, occult-themed albums, to a positive reception. Most of the 90s saw more personnel shuffling along with the release of Black Sabbath's last studio album, 1995's Forbidden. However, in 1997, the original members of Black Sabbath reunited to play at Ozzy Osbourne's Ozzfest; since then, the original lineup has played together numerous times, and are reported to be working together on new material.
Sure, some of that drug-fueled mid-career stuff was nothing to write home about, and Ozzy Osbourne is better known today as the befuddled stay-at-home dad, he even had his own MTV show for a while, The Osbournes. He's also the Grand Marshall of the annual metal head Woodstock that is Ozzfest, but when these guys burst on the scene in the late 60s, there had been nothing like them before. They essentially invented heavy metal, and nearly every hard rock and heavy metal musician since them has cited Black Sabbath as a critical influence. They embraced the dark side with gusto, even when it came close to killing them, and that's why they're so kick-ass!