Readers of Pitchfork will know that the frankly magnificent Mr John Darnielle has made the introduction of his forthcoming 33 1/3 book on Black Sabbath's Master Of Reality available to anyone who emails the publisher here: sabbathsampler@yahoo.com.

But I know that hardly anyone here reads Pitchfork, and that those that do are lazy and easily distracted, so rather than urge you to email the people and get the pdf - which you'll mean to, but won't - I've pasted the sampler below. Hopefully this won't offend John or the publishers (and if it does I'll take it down), but I know that a full register of 3 of you who read this (hi mat, petra, amp) so...

Darnielle has picked a somewhat more novel approach to analysing Masters Of Reality than the usual score of bloggers, musicians and amateur US rock writers who have penned 33 1/3 works. A former psychiatric nurse - and, I may be wrong, but I think someone who went in and out of a couple of institutions as a youth - he uses the character of a 15-year-old mental patient in 1985 to describe the album in a journal he is forced to write by his captors.

Some might not be convinced... but I have faith in him and reckon the full thing is gonna be awesome. Pre-order it now! Also, Heretic Pride.




October 15, 1985
I am sitting here writing this, it is 10:30 at night and lights out was half an hour ago (which is stupid by the way) and I am angry I want to kill somebody and that is not a threat so if you write that on my chart all it will do is make me want to kill MYSELF!!! EVEN MORE!!!
As you know because you read this every day,* my sister's birthday was yesterday. My family had to bring her onto the unit with a cake and no candles because oh no we cant have any fire in here because the stupid adolescents would probably burn everything down, well actually we probably would because you DESERVE IT, but they came with a cake and we sat and ate it until I started to cry because I felt so STUPID sitting around a hospital table in my STUPID hospital slippers, and the bigger kids could see me crying and then I felt worse than I ever felt in my whole life, thanks to YOU, and my mom was looking at me all sad and sorry and my sister wasn't saying anything and then they finally left and I felt like I had ruined my sister's birthday when really it was you doctors and nurses and stupid staff who ruined my sister's birthday for me and for my whole family, even if my family is fucked up we deserve better than that, and so I went back to my room but could I put on my Walkman headphones
and listen to my tapes to calm down like any normal person would do no, because you took all my stuff away from me when I got here and you won't even give it back, when I go to the nurses station for meds I can see my notebook and my Walkman and my bag of tapes all sitting in a cubby with my name on it but you should take my name off it because if I can't have anything in it then it's not mine, it's YOURS. You should do that, you should just put the hospital name on the cubbies instead of the patients names because you are just taking people's stuff and keeping it. But!!! You do not have the right to take my stuff away!!! And if you really wanted to help me you would just give me my Walkman and my tapes back because THEY HELP ME and YOU DON'T HELP ANYBODY!!! I have never felt worse in my life!!!

*which you do not have the right to do by the way, make me keep a journal and then read it, that is like the stupid most evil thing but what else can I expect from people who lock somebody up for things he SAYS when he DID NOT DO ANYTHING WRONG

October 19, 1985
Yesterday I had therapy and you said "this journal is not for me, it's for you" (Roger) "so you should write in it for yourself, not to me." Yeah right Gary, that is probably why I have to hand it in to the PM staff every night before lights out right? If it is for me why can't I just keep it? And how would you even know to tell me that if you were not already reading it? Come on. Maybe these other kids are dumb enough to believe that, better luck next time though.
Last night my mom and my sister came again. They looked like somebody had been kicking them all day. My sister tried to bring me more of my tapes including Krokus Headhunter, Rush Hemispheres, Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy. She is super-sweet sometimes. It was so great when she tried to give those tapes to staff. It was a whole big thing. First she tried to give them to me in the visiting room, that was when I said "They don't let me listen to music in here." Well my sister knows that pretty much the only thing I care about is music so she said "Why" that was when I started crying again, but it was not as bad as last time because now that I have my clothes back I can visit in the visitors room instead of in the day area. But my sister she was all mad and she just got up and left, mom tried to stop her, but she walked up to the nurses station and just started yelling at them to give me my Walkman. Those stupid nurses were all "Oh shit what are we gonna do we can't restrain somebody who isn't even a patient!" And they were just helpless and freaking out! And my sister was up there yelling and yelling and waving my tapes at them, "There is nothing wrong with my brother's tapes!!" ha ha ha, when they saw the giant brains on the cover of Rush Hemispheres I thought they were all going to start peeing in their chairs. Only then after my family left I thought, how stupid do you have to be to look at a cover with a giant brain and some naked guy or whatever and then think you know everything about the album just from that? When actually Rush is a band that you might like. Some of their songs are 18 minutes long. So then I was mad and sad again, like as soon as they left, because my sister was trying to help me. You are not even trying to help me! My sister knows, if I had my tapes they would help me. I can really figure things out when I am listening to my tapes, otherwise I get so distracted. If you want me to focus you should let me do it the best way I know how! You should at least give me back Black Sabbath MASTER OF REALITY. It is my favorite.

October 21, 1985
OK, that was the most retarded day ever. For one thing the nurse was somebody from adult unit, she is what is called a float. That means she does not usually work adolescent but she floated over from adult because somebody (Peggy) called in sick. We missed you Peggy, you don't know what you've got til it's gone!! The float looked like she thought we were all going to go insane and storm the unit like monkeys. She kept threatening to "put us all on lockdown." Good luck stupid float! You are just a float and nothing you say is going to make any difference here. Go back to the sad alkies and divorced people over on the adult open unit. This unit is already locked, there isn't anything you can do to us anyway.
So after the most retarded morning medication ever where she made us all stay in our rooms and get called out one by one like a bunch of psycho babies, they brought over another person from the adult unit and this is where we graduated
from half-retarded to drooling on your lunch retarded. My theory is that the whole thing was the float's idea. But it was a social worker, we call them anti-social workers, her name was Joan and she talked for about ten minutes about how it is important to take care of the spiritual side of yourself.
And she made a big deal about how everybody is spiritual and it doesn't mean you have to go to church or believe what your parents tell you to believe, you only have to look inside yourself and listen to "that still small voice." OK 1 you can fool some of the people some of the time but do not try your weasel bullshit on us because we will pull your card. Joan I like you but your still small voice, that shit is straight out of the bible and everyone knows it. Do you think we don't have prissy purity queens running all around our high school wearing t-shirts that say the still small voices like it was a band name only when you ask them about it they start quoting the bible?? Well we do, so we already know where you are getting
your still small voice from. From the bible. If you want to read your bible all day, cool for you, I can't judge you and you can't judge me. But anyway so she gives us the pep rally about how spirituality is important and then the presentation starts, which is a special guest named Tony and aren't we all so proud that he graduated from the adolescent unit four years ago and now he has graduated from high school and has a really interesting life and let's all welcome Tony to the unit! Well, no, Joan, fuck that guy actually, because all he is going to do is tell us how your rules are for our own good and how we should do what we're told.
So Tony's up there in the dining area talking about what he was like before they brought him to the hospital, and what it was like for him once he got here and how he started to understand things better after he had been here for a while. There are eight of us staring at him but we are not really listening because who really cares, we are mainly thinking no Tony you do not understand. Because have you noticed how many kids are here for your pep rally? Eight kids. And how many beds are there on the unit? Thirty, and they're all full, and do you know where the other kids are today? Well yes you do because you were one of them when you were here. They are off in the classrooms, or on off-grounds activities having fun. The kids who are here to listen to you are the kids who are NOT GOING TO GET BETTER. We get streamlined into the classroom after we have been here three days usually. Well today was my seventh day and they haven't even talked to me about school yet and the other kids who were at your happy talk, well they have mostly been here longer than me. They are not trying to get better, because they are not part of your world. They walk a lonely road!!! "Oh, it's a hard road!" as Ozzy would say. The older ones have figured out the system enough to know that their parents' insurance will run out after ninety days and then they'll either be sent to the state hospital or they'll get to go home. If they go to State, there's no way out of there, so that will suck, but if they go home, that will also suck, maybe even worse. So they are hopeless and they don't even try, because what is the point. Which is kind of a "How much does Jesus hate me" situation when you think about it, hey Tony?
But of course nobody says anything, because that will only make the boring spiritual counseling last even longer, plus like I said we like Joan, she is sweet, and we don't want to wreck her group. Or most of us don't, anyway, which brings me to the other piece of retarded news which is my new roommate. They brought him in while I was asleep. I sleep pretty hard so I didn't even know he was here. I just woke up and the other bed in my room had some kid in it. He was awake and crying with his face down in the pillow. That is how everyone wakes up on their first day here. It is really sorry. So he is still in his gown walking around the unit like he wishes he could die, and everybody knows how he feels so we are just giving him some space, but of course the float has made him go to spiritual counseling to watch Tony tell everybody that he has "gotten down deep in the word," that means he reads the bible all day and thinks every word was written just for him. And everybody is sitting in the day area pretending to pay attention and wondering what's for lunch when my new roommate completely fucking goes OFF. He just stands up and starts throwing chairs. Everybody is kind of scared because it is a scary situation, but at the same time the chairs are all flying in just one direction. Tony wants to run to the nurse's station but the exit is all the way across the room. So he ducks behind a table. Meanwhile my roommate is screaming so crazy you can't even follow what he is saying, the tears are rolling down his face and he's all red and his gown is coming off his shoulder
and you just know that's making it even worse because he probably feels like a big angry baby of evil destruction but he has decided "fuck it I am going for it." Nobody even knows his name yet because he wasn't at breakfast and the float just sort of dropped him off at spiritual counseling when it started. I bet she wishes she let him sleep!! Instead she had to help three other techs restrain him, he spit in all their faces and called them evil fuckers. I would like to hear what his still small voice sounded like just then, I bet it was more spiritual than most of you could even deal with.
After that they really did put the unit on lockdown until lunchtime which was still two hours away. My roommate was in the happy room tied to the bed so I was alone with this notebook and some crayons, and I drew a picture of the cover of Master of Reality. I can't draw pictures! But that's OK because there are no pictures on the cover of Master of Reality. It is just words written in a wavy style which you would probably say is drugs but I think the point is to make you say "What is reality?" which sometimes you might say is a stupid question. But I would say to you then, oh really? If "What is reality" is such a stupid question then what the fuck just happened in the day area with Joan and Tony and my psycho
roommate who is everybody's new hero now? That was reality, but at the same time we are old enough to know that Tony's boring reality where he goes to church probably every day, that is also reality. And then people you've never even heard of, living their lives in countries whose names you can't even spell, that is also reality. And if there was a god, then he would have to be super-mean or he wouldn't let it get so bad in my roommate's head. And even he couldn't keep track of so many people! He would go insane! So who is the master of reality? The whole question is wavy and shaky like the waves coming off of the street in the summer that you see but you can't really see them. And also like the shape of the words on the cover of the album! That is what I think about when I see it anyway. Though Ozzy also has some weird things to say about who is the "master of reality" which when I tell you about them they are going to blow your mind and you are going to tell Joan and then maybe you will all turn evil!!

October 23, 1985
So because of the retardedness on Monday I did not get a chance to really keep going with the Black Sabbath story. It is a very good story full of valuable lessons for you Gary so I hope you are paying attention. Thank you for telling the PM staff to let me journal in the library by the way, now I can use a typewriter! I took typing last summer in summer school and I am really fast at it. I will staple the pages into my journal for you so that it will not be a big mess.
OK so after that one day when I borrowed Black Sabbath from Mike I knew I had to have more! Because it was so weird! So I asked him what else I should hear. Mike knows a lot about music. He told me, "The one album you have to hear is Paranoid!" So I borrowed that one. It is great but a lot of these songs everybody already knows so it's hard to really feel like they're special. Like, "Iron Man" and "Paranoid," these are just two classic songs that everybody knows. "War Pigs" too. So I loved the album and it also had some very scary stuff on it ("Fairies Wear Boots" for example, what is Ozzy talking about?) but I still wanted more! And then one Saturday I got my allowance which is five dollars now, and I went to Rhino Records where they have used tapes which are cheaper than albums. They are behind the counter and when you look at them you are sort of hidden from everybody so you can just take your time. And I looked and looked, and they had lots of stuff I wanted and then there it was, Black Sabbath Master of Reality! This is the album they made after Paranoid and in my theory it is like "Black Sabbath the real thing." Because when a band makes their first album, they are like a guy in a room trying to find the light switch. That can be great but it's always later that they get good. Then on their second they write all these amazing songs, but they are still figuring out what they have to say, and maybe they can't even believe that they get to do this, so they still try to make everybody like them. Then on the third one they have all been working together for a long time and they really know what to do! Plus in Black Sabbath by this time they are all rich so they can do whatever they want, so you are really hearing what's going on in their heads for real.
So I bought it for two dollars and I brought it home and I connected my good headphones to the tape player, I had to find a special connector cord to do it. Smarter than you think! And I listened to it all by myself with no distractions and starting
tomorrow I will tell you all about this album which I sing to myself under the blankets which is probably driving my roommate crazy. But you gotta do what you gotta do!! And when you hear how important it is to me, I am going to ask you, I will just tell you now, to please give me back my tapes and my Walkman so I can listen to my music. Please!
What else happened today, I got a letter from my exgirlfriend.
It was nice. And we played ping pong after dinner in the day area and that was fun. You can get real good at ping pong in here. And at evening meds they called me up and said now I get one pill a day, at night. I don't know what I did to deserve that but it's only one pill and I didn't really feel much after I took it so I am trying to stick with the program because I want to get out of here fair and square.

October 24, 1985
I guess I better just get the first song out of the way because you are gonna find out about it anyway. I wish Black Sabbath had put this song at the end of the album so I could talk about it later! I could probably just save it for after some of the other songs but I don't want you to think I am trying to fool you. Unlike you people I have a policy that I always tell the truth first and then if people don't like it well then at least I can say that I was honest.
So, the first song on Master of Reality is called "Sweet Leaf." Since you have my tapes you should just put it on right now. I'm serious, do it. The nurses have them, they will give them to you. Which makes me mad just to think about it but this is a science experiment so I have got to just put my feelings off to one side! So, go get my tapes now and pick out Master of Reality, if you can't figure out which one that is then you are the dumbest person on earth. OK. Now make sure it is rewound to side A and press play. I know you have a ghetto blaster because the PTs use it for relaxation therapy. Did you know they just go into your office and take your boombox for their stupid yoga class? They do.
OK is it all rewound? Are you listening? Then you probably
noticed that the first sound was a person coughing real loud. He goes like, "C-cough!" only then it sounds like the record is skipping. But this is a tape and tapes can't skip. (They can melt though if you put them in the microwave, I know because that is what we did with my sister's Jesse Johnson tape, which I feel bad about now but you have to admit it was funny.) And then you notice that the skipping cough starts on the left side of the stereo and moves over to the right side. It makes you feel like the person who is coughing is sort of flying through the air past you. I think that the reason they did this is they want to sort of put your head in a weird space super-quick so that you will be kind of dizzy when the song starts, so that it will hit you even harder.
And what did you hear after the coughing? Immediately after with no stopping? That's right Gary the therapist whose brains are probably blown all over the insides of his office right now. You heard a guitar riff that comes from a volcano under the ocean!! It is a super-simple riff and anyone can play it. I could even show you how to play it, and I am not really that good on guitar. It is a five-chord riff and it only takes eight beats to play the whole thing. But some of the hardest things in the world are also very simple like for example a sword or even a big rock. You might say that laser beams are more destructive than big rocks, but for a laser beam to hurt you there has to be a guy who knows how to operate it, and he has to be aiming at you, or you have to get in the way of the laser when he is pointing it at somebody else. Same with bombs. But with a big rock, you could just be walking down the street, doop-de-doo, whistling a happy little tune and some random crazy dude could chuck one at you from his porch because he woke up in a bad mood or he doesn't like your attitude. Then you would say, "A big rock seriously hurts, give me a guy with a laser beam any day, at least I would know where I stand!"
This is really why Black Sabbath is my favorite band. They are not trying to show off all the stuff they can do even though I am pretty sure they could be as complicated as they want to be. They just put all of their energy into this one riff and let it loose like an avalanche. Dunn-dunn, duh-duh-DUNN DUNN, dunn dunn-dunn. Fuck I wish I was in your office listening to it with you right now. That would be the best therapy session and would actually make me feel good for once!
Anyway I can't put it off forever so what happens next is Ozzy starts singing. He has a voice like a weedwhacker some say but I say it would have to be a custom weedwhacker because it doesn't sound like anybody else's, and also it sounds kind of like you know him. Like, when Robert Plant is singing
for Led Zeppelin, you can't really think you're ever going to see that guy at the arcade and play doubles on Galaga with him. But Ozzy, he sounds like the guy who changes your quarters at the arcade and you wonder, is that this guy's whole job? Is he married? Does his wife say, "Did you have a good day at the arcade today?" I don't know if I am telling this right but I will try again later maybe. But anyway this is why Ozzy is great, or part of it anyway, is that he sounds like he could be your friend. Which probably actually makes it kind of worse for me right now, because then he starts singing about pot (marijuana).
Yes "Sweet Leaf" is a song about pot. You would have to be stupid not to notice it. The words are, "All right now, won't you listen! When I first met you I didn't realize, I can't forget you or your surprise." Here you might still think he was talking about a person. It's like those riddles in The Hobbit that Gollum and Bilbo tell each other, where there is no question but you have to figure out who is the person talking. Only then he sings, "You introduced me to my mind and left me wanting you and your kind, oh yeah." So now if you had not already been told by me what the song is about, you might be saying "What is he talking about?" My friend Mike had a great way of explaining this line. He said, "I picture this pipe, and Ozzy is holding it, and it's like the cherry burning in the pipe is saying: 'Mind, this is Ozzy. Ozzy, meet your mind!'" Well I thought it was funny anyway.
Now we start the second verse. "I love you, oh you know it! My life was empty, forever on a down. Until you took me, showed me around. My life is free now, my life is clear, I love you sweet leaf though you can't hear." I have to say it sounds like Ozzy didn't have the best ideas for the whole second verse, but when you hear the music, it's like who really cares? There is an awesome guitar solo now. After that, "Come on now, try it out! Straight people don't know what you're about, they put you down and shut you out. You gave to me a new belief, and soon the world will love you sweet leaf. Oh yeah baby!" It's weird when Ozzy says "baby" because, one, that's not really something Ozzy says a lot, and second because usually
you would only say that in a love song. It's sort of confusing.
And so is the whole song, because even though it's totally obvious that he is singing about pot and trying to tell you that it's all great, the only thing he really says about it is that it introduced him to his mind. And what does that even mean? When I smoke out it's like the opposite, like my mind is going very far away and then when I come down that's when I get introduced to my mind again. Maybe that is what he means.
To be honest I don't even know why "Sweet Leaf" is on this album because it does not really belong. Soon when I talk about the other songs on the album, if you go back to "Sweet Leaf" you will have to agree. On the album Paranoid or even on that first album all the songs seem to go together, all the things Ozzy is singing about are like pieces of the same puzzle. But "Sweet Leaf" is just this song about how Ozzy really likes weed. My theory is, there is no way they could keep the guitar riff hidden from the world, so Tommy Iommi wrote it and gave it to Ozzy, and Ozzy was maybe high that day so he wrote about what was going on in his mind and the whole band was like "That's what it is then." If I was Ozzy I think I would have wrote the words differently and maybe made a song about living naked in a cave or being afraid that the house is haunted. But I am not Ozzy so I have to respect his decision!

October 25, 1985
Today I will still mainly be talking about "Sweet Leaf." I am pretty sure that you don't want to give me back my tapes ever now that you know what that song is about. So, I want to tell you what the song means TO ME. This is different from what the song is really about. There is so much more to it! You know that I was straight with you about how it is a song about pot, and only the good side of pot. It is a song that says "Get stoned people." I can't lie about that.
But there is the music too, the sound. I talked about this a little yesterday but it's the part you have to understand to really get it. Because the "Get stoned!" part, you know, really I have to admit that it is pretty stupid. Even if you like to get high, what is the point? It's like, good job Ozzy, you get high, of course you do, you are rich and nobody can tell you what to do. We would all get stoned every day if we were you. Even Gary would! Ha ha. I bet you love to eat apples too but you did not write a song called "Sweet Apples." So there is something
kind of stupid. But that's also kind of cool, because it's like Ozzy saying, "I am a chump like all of you, sometimes I just write dumb stuff that comes off the top of my head." Which is really great! Think about it.
But this is the thing about you guys and music here. You think that all we are doing when we listen to our music is either looking at the words like they were a bible for us, or looking at pictures of the singers like they were Jesus. It is not like that at all. When you guys talk like that, that's how we know that you are stupid and growing old has made you crazy. Because: music is like a whole world, and there are words and pictures and sounds and textures and smells probably, OK I didn't actually mean that I just got carried away. Albums do have a special smell though. Old ones smell different from new ones. Anyway you gotta know what I mean about this! It's like, when you sing "Row row row your boat," do you really only focus on the boat and rowing it? And think "Wow, this is a song about some guys rowing a boat, fucken awesome!" No of course not. Only if you are totally weird do you think like that. When you are singing, you hear the song, the part that is more than the words, and is also the feeling of just the notes in the air, especially if you are singing it in a round with a bunch of other people. We used to do that in my kindergarten. You hear a mood which is way higher (not "high" like that, come on) than the words, it is sort of always floating above the words. And that is why bands like the Beatles can be popular everywhere, even where people do not speak English, where to them the Beatles probably sound like trained monkeys trying
to talk.
Well OK now that you got that check it out. In "Sweet Leaf," if you can't hear the mood that just the guitar and the bass and the drums make, without anything to do with weed, then you are prejudiced or you are not listening. Imagine that you are a man from space! And you don't speak English and you never heard of weed, and you landed in California and the first person you met up with took you to his house and said "Hey check out this band." And then he played you "Sweet Leaf." In my opinion, the man from space would hear that song, just the crunchy guitar sound and those bass notes, Geezer Butler is the best bassist it sounds like his strings are made from lime jello salad, and he would start banging his head! Because the riff on "Sweet Leaf," that is something anybody could understand. ANYBODY. It doesn't really have anything to do with what Ozzy is singing about. The lyrics, that is just what Ozzy thinks of when he feels this groove. But it doesn't have to mean that to everybody,
and it means more no matter what, because it's like a physical thing. So when I told you yesterday, that I don't know how "Sweet Leaf" fits on Master of Reality, I think now I understand. It's there because the mood is right, even if the words are weird. And the mood comes first. This whole album is just about that mood. That feeling.
This is complicated to explain but I know you must understand what I mean! I am not trying to say the song is not about pot. Or even try to say that I don't smoke pot, because I do, but that's not why I love "Sweet Leaf." You should give me and all of us more credit than that. And I hope when we have therapy later today you have already read this so we can talk about it.