I went through a brief but intense period of being a Black Sabbath fan when I was 15. I had at least three of their albums then, mostly from the early '70s, but also including Heaven and Hell, which really sounded like Rainbow, but was no worse for that. But soon I sold them all (mostly to John MacPherson, I think), probably to finance my acquisitions of Mahavishnu Orchestra and Tangerine Dream!
It was 21 years later that I reintroduced Black Sabbath to my collection, prompted by the 9 February 2002 edition of Stuart Maconie's Critical List programme. It was a great programme, the Critical List, and I followed it from its first edition at Easter 2001 to the final one five years later. For a while I was quite obsessive about it, and I still have many mini-disc recordings of the shows, with all the Eagles and Alanis Kitchenette bits edited out. If you check the list of albums featured, it's not bad at all, and I recommend Mick Fitzsimmons' notes on this album as well, sketching in the coke-fuelled LA atmosphere in which this album was recorded.
I don't connect with Sabbath in the way I did when I was younger. It's more chin-stroking than head-banging now. I ponder idly what it was about Sabbath's sound that made Lester Bangs a fan, and wonder if, to adopt the formula of Paul Morley's Words and Music
I believe Ozzy did a version of Changes, which is on Vol 4, with his daughter. Happily that has never crossed my bows. I did, however, download from iTunes Ozzy's duet with Lemmy on I Ain't No Nice Guy, which is great while you can hear their voices, but then they have to add the plodding drums and riffs and drown everything.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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