How Master Of Reality’s artwork came to define Black Sabbath

If Sabbath’s early musical output was faultless, the band had a more chequered start when it came to sleeve art. There was the flesh-creeping debut album with the ghoul girl at Mapledurham Mill. There was the

Paranoid sleeve, rendered nonsensical after the album’s proposed title of

War Pigs was dropped (“What the fuck does a bloke dressed as a pig with a sword got to do with being paranoid?” pondered Ozzy in the

Classic Albums series).

At first glance in ’71, Master Of Reality’s cock-eyed lettering seemed a little throwaway and cartoonish (described by Tony in his autobiography as “slightly Spinal Tap-ish, only well before Spinal Tap”). Yet the design has endured for a half-century, not only becoming the definitive Sabbath font (it appears across the band’s merchandise and endured right up to 2017’s swansong live release, The End), but making socio-political ripples last June when Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello appeared on Instagram with his 96-year-old mother, wearing a Master Of Reality T-shirt adapted to read ‘Black Lives Matter’.

Geezer was quick to comment (“Nice shirt & nice sentiment & awesome mum”), and that same month, Sabbath announced an official Black Lives Matter T-shirt, with all profits going to the movement.

“Master Of Reality is a very minimal design,” considers the bassist today, “but with a very strong image. Timeless…”