“Heaven and Hell” by Black Sabbath

The title track of Heaven and Hell, Black Sabbath's ninth studio album, arrived in 1980 with a new voice out front: newcomer Ronnie James Dio, who wrote every word and sings it like a sermon. Tony Iommi wrote most of the music, though as usual the whole band shares the credit.

Martin Birch produced and engineered it, with Iommi on guitar, Bill Ward on drums and Geezer Butler on bass, though Butler wasn't around when they first started cutting it in late 1979. Session keyboardist Geoff Nicholls is said to have come up with the bassline, which closely echoes "Mainline Riders" by his old band Quartz.

On stage it became a sprawling showpiece of extended soloing and crowd participation. It followed Dio to his own band and to Heaven & Hell, and later Sabbath lineups handed it to Ian Gillan, Glenn Hughes, Ray Gillen and Tony Martin.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.