Text written by WikiBrother Marcello Lacerda for the column Scream For Me, WikiBrother
1971. I was 8 or 9 years old. The seventh child of a seventh child. The youngest. My whole family loved music, each in their own way (in my mother's case, it was the sound of a quince branch or a slipper snapping, but that's another story…), Jovem Guarda, bossa nova, MPB, Tropicália, classical music and rock and roll. I was born with The Beatles . My earliest memory of a record is the cover of Help !.
We had more singles than LPs ; I was addicted to the one with BJ Thomas's "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head"—even today, every time I listen to that song, I miss the crackling sounds it had on the single. And so I grew up, surrounded by all that musical diversity. Until the day I was introduced to Black Sabbath's first album.
As I said before, it was 1971, and the dictatorship left us completely behind in the cultural aspect as well: few radio stations played international rock, and when they did, they rarely identified the artists or songs. Records? Forget about it! Imported records were incredibly expensive! New releases sometimes took years to reach the shelves of national record stores. Luckily, there was always that friend of a friend of a friend who could get a record from the son of a consul or ambassador, or from a pilot of some airline that flew internationally, and so on.
To this day I don't know how that record ended up in the hands of a friend of one of my brothers, the most rock-oriented of the group, a very skilled guitarist. When he arrived at the building, carrying some records in his hand, all you could see was that ominous cover, with that green witch somewhat out of focus – curiosity and imagination ran wild in my head.
“This sound isn’t for kids! It’s the devil’s work!” He should have stayed silent… I won through persistence, and soon the needle was playing the vinyl. Rain, thunder, and church bell chimes brought a wide smile to my face, only to then widen my eyes and let my jaw drop at the three heaviest and most dragging notes I had ever heard. It was there that I sold my soul to rock, I’ll never forget it. I didn’t understand any English, but Ozzy could only be saying something about the demo, for sure. Hard-hitting rock, as we used to say, was the pinnacle there, in that song: guitar, bass, drums, vocals, chaotic solo, the end after the end. I thought it was already too good, then the harmonica from “The Wizard” came in… Then the game was won, by a landslide, but I still had many surprises until the last chord of “Warning” on side B.
I don't know if everyone has a moment etched in their minds when something happens that truly changes their life forever. I have a few; this was the first and perhaps the most impactful. I never stopped listening to music after that, of all styles, but rock and the seed of metal were planted at that moment, with those three notes that resonate in my head to this day.
This was the beginning, the first true chapter, even with a rich prelude; many, many more chapters would come, have come, and are coming after this one, much is still to be revealed and written because, no matter how much the cliché "rock is dead" has been repeated for decades, rock is still as alive as ever, generating children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, bastards, and rebels, and so it will be until the end of time, with many, many stories to be told.
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