![Black Sabbath Spent $75,000 on Cocaine in 1972](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2015/10/Black-Sabbath-630x420.jpg?w=980&q=75)
Black Sabbath Spent $75,000 on Cocaine in 1972
That Black Sabbath indulged in cocaine during the '70s is hardly news. But the cost of their abuse isn't as well-known. Apparently, the group spent $75,000 on cocaine in 1972 alone.
"We were young blokes, doing what young blokes do," guitarist Tony Iommi told the Guardian, before acknowledging the recklessness of their younger days. "Nobody could control anyone else. I was doing coke left, right and center, and Quaaludes, and God knows what else. We used to have [cocaine] flown in by private plane."
What's even more astonishing is that the album they recorded that year, Vol. 4, cost only $60,000 to make. In his 2010 autobiography, I Am Ozzy, Ozzy Osbourne said that the band was so indebted to the drug that the LP was nearly called Snowblind (a cocaine-influenced song of the same name did make the cut), but the record company wouldn't allow it. Black Sabbath did, however, get the last word. In the album's liner notes, they not-so-subtly write, "We wish to thank the great COKE-Cola Company of Los Angeles."
The excesses involved in making Vol. 4 proved a bit much for bassist Geezer Butler. At one point on tour, he drank something that had been spiked with acid, and he tried to jump out of his hotel window. "Tony and Bill [Ward] had to hold me down on the bed," he recalled. "I started going off drugs after that."
Though Butler was able to sober up quickly, the same couldn't be said of Osbourne. After 1978's Never Say Die!, he was fired from the band due to his substance abuse and replaced by Ronnie James Dio.
Black Sabbath Albums Ranked Worst to Best
You Think You Know Black Sabbath?
More From Ultimate Classic Rock
![Geezer Butler Details the Shock Black Sabbath Felt Watching Kiss](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2024/06/attachment-Geezer-Gene.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler Discusses What’s Not in His Memoir](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2022/06/attachment-GettyImages-74700191.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![Why Ozzy Osbourne Still Thinks Black Sabbath Is ‘Unfinished’](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2023/04/attachment-Black-Sabbath.jpeg?w=980&q=75)
![Black Sabbath Announces ‘Anno Domini 1989-1995′ Box Set](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2024/03/attachment-Sabbath2.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![Black Sabbath’s Favorite Studio Retreat on Sale for $2.4 Million](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2023/12/attachment-SabbathFeatured.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![Ozzy Osbourne Year by Year Photos: 1969-2023](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2018/11/Ozzy-Yearly.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![First Manager Says Black Sabbath Would Sneer at Shy Ozzy Osbourne](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2023/04/attachment-Black-Sabbath.jpeg?w=980&q=75)
![50 Years Ago: Black Sabbath Goes Deeper on ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’](http://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2013/12/sabbath.jpg?w=980&q=75)
![Ozzy Blasts Geezer Butler for Not Giving Him ‘One F—ing Phone Call,’ Butler Fires Back](http://townsquare.media/site/366/files/2023/11/attachment-ozzy_osbourne_geezer_butler.jpg?w=980&q=75)