“Neon Knights” by Black Sabbath

"Neon Knights" was the last thing Black Sabbath wrote for Heaven and Hell, their 1980 album and their first with the American singer Ronnie James Dio, knocked together and cut in a hurry at Studio Ferber in Paris that January because side one needed filling. Rush jobs don't usually hit this hard: Tony Iommi's electric guitar and Bill Ward's drums charge ahead, Geoff Nicholls adds keyboards, and Dio, who wrote the words, rides on top.

It's also the one song on the record where Geezer Butler definitely had a hand in the writing. The bassist, the band's main lyricist in the Ozzy Osbourne years, had sat out most of the writing, wrestling with personal problems and with whether he still wanted in. Martin Birch produced and engineered, and as a single it made 22 in the UK.

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