“I wasn’t participating in a lot that was going on around me and this was my means to make a living. “I know it will break people’s hearts but it was just another assignment,” says Struzan, who later rose to fame illustrating posters for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises as well as the recent Hellboy films. The fact that the images mesh effortlessly with Sabbath’s music was serendipitous. While the artwork perfectly encapsulates the essence of Black Sabbath – malevolence at war with man’s angelic nature - Struzan didn’t hear the record until it was played in his design shop after he finished the project. The illustrations- one on the front cover and one on the back - have been seen around the world on posters, tee-shirts, stickers, patches and tattoos. The resulting images, drawn with colored pencils on a white illustration board with guidance from creative director Ernie Cefalu, are the iconic album art of Black Sabbath’s fifth record Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Struzan realized he might be able to make it into something more: what if the front image depicted an evil man dying and the back depicted a good man’s last moments? He received a simple request for a Black Sabbath album cover: draw a picture of a dying man. He cranked out artwork on deadline in an office amidst a few salespeople and an accountant. In 1973, Drew Struzan was a 27-year-old illustrator and the sole artist for the Pacific Eye & Ear agency on La Cienega Boulevard in Hollywood. Here is the original dB feature Killing Yourself To Live: The Story Behind The Art of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath from issue 118 in August 2014. Struzan later became famous as the poster artist for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. The article features Struzan’s most comprehensive interview on the Sabbath art. In honor of Sabbath’s final trek around the globe, we are running our 2014 print feature on the story behind the cover art of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, which was illustrated four decades ago by a rising Los Angeles artist named Drew Struzan. The records will always be with us, of course, but the thought of a world without an active Black Sabbath is nonetheless sad. Heavy metal fathers Black Sabbath are in the midst of their final tour.

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