August 14, 1975. Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward took to the Orpheum Theatre stage in Boston, and there was much rejoicing.
Think of it: if you were a metalhead or a hard rocker in the summer of ’75, having Black Sabbath come to town was like celebrating your birthday. And the icing on the heavy metal cake for this particular gig? KISS was the opening act for part of the first North American leg of the Sabotage tour.
This didn’t sit too well will Ward or Iommi, who quipped a year later: “I don’t particularly like Kiss. They’re not my type of band at all.” Be that as it may, those two bands sharing a stage in their prime is nothing to sniff at.
There’s no surviving footage I could find of Sabbath at the Orpheum, but I was able to find a high-quality live performance captured during the Sabotage tour, and it’s tremendous.