That was a pratical joke among my friends back in the day. We used to say that the witch in the cover of “Black Sabbath” was Ozzy Osbourne dressed as a witch. In fact, very little is known from the whereabouts or who was the woman in it. Now we from Metal Addicts are going to elucidate you another mystery of Metal music. Come with me.
Ok, what everybody knows about the cover is that it was shot in front of the Mapledurham in the Thames, Oxfordshire, England. It’s the only info took to public knowledge about the iconic album to this day. So far.
It was only in 2020 that the Rolling Stone magazine published a report about the very mysterious and even most important album cover of Heavy Metal history – some people say it’s the first Heavy Metal album ever made, a thing that I said before that it’s total nonsense. The magazine chased Keith “Keef” Macmillan, the artist who elaborated the cover, to discover that the mysterious woman’s name is Louisa Livingstone. So sorry about that if my fans had the same idea I had, I guess that the idea of the ‘woman’ to be Ozzy Osbourne was far more exciting. By the way, not even Black Sabbath’s guys knew who she was. They thought that her name was Louise or something similar, but no one knew her identity. Another curio about it is that Louisa Livingstone was about 4,9 feet high because Keef wanted to everything look much bigger than she did.
Louisa Livingstone also contributed a lot to make the cover even more mysterious. She’s never given an interview about it. But the truth is that she couldn’t talk about it. No, no contract implied. She claims that she can’t remember a thing about the shooting. The only thing she really remembers is that she was cold, but very cold because she was wearing only her underwear and the coat. It was Keith’s desire to reproduced in the cover the mood of the album the impressed him so much. However, the initial idea was to do something sexy, but soon the idea was left behind – can you wonder a Black Sabbath’s album cover with a naked woman? I can’t.
Thanks to the Rolling Stone magazine and Igor Miranda’s page.
