The idea of the black magic act came from the drummer Clive Box. Box was always full of good idea's that Jim Gannon (guitars) at the time put to music. Although this concept was very successful it worked against them in many ways.
The radio stations were very off about playing records that related to black magic on the air (this was in 1970) so their stage hit; "Come To The Sabbat" got very little airplay. In addition to all the lyrics containing nothing but pure evilness, much in the way of witchcraft etc., Widow didn't exactly change the view people had on them when teaming up with the "most powerful man in Europe" at the time. The self professed "King Of Witches", Alex Sanders. Sanders was the head of a cult of modern Wicca witches and had a certain interest in Black Widow's music. He gave them advice on the art of witchcraft and of the occult. Widow even did a film documentary together with Alex, where they played "Come To The Sabbat" live with a bunch of witches dancing naked all around them. This film has not yet been recovered.
Performing live, Black Widow had the help of a girl, Alex's wife Maxine Sanders in their show. She played the role of Lady Astaroth and ended up naked, having sex with the vocalist (not for real though) and sacrificed (not for real either) on stage. This, an extravagant mystic show (choreographed by members of Leicester´s Phoenix Theater Company) and outrageous effects like a magic circle on the stage, swords, candles, incense, and Alex telling them the correct words to say to conjure up the right spirits made the press to show up allot, but also other groups of people.... At concerts, the crowd where often met by Vicars turning up, waving crosses and telling the audience to leave and beware of the evil dark magic of Black Widow. Religious fanatics would preach at the waiting queues urged on by journalists looking for a story. But, of course, the crowd never did leave and clubs were forced to put up notices warning about the bands stage show and act. This only made kids show up by the thousand, so it was not a success for the church - but for Black Widow!
At a show at the Lyciam in London (where miss World was held in those days), Black Widow were told they could do the show if the girl wasn't naked at the end. Of course they agreed, but the girl ended up naked anyway and all hell broke loose.
The audience went mad when the owners tried to stop the show and everyone was searched for camera's when they left because of the nude girl. But a picture was smuggled out and made the Sunday papers the next day. News writer Paul Green said that Black Widow's music and stage show was not an example of Satanism, but more an example of Satanic bad taste. This was another reason why people where shocked by them. The band were due to go on tour to the USA (together with Black Sabbath), but at the same time Charles Manson did his black magic murders and the powers in the States decided that it would not be a very good idea to let them tour at that time. It is not certain why though.....where they thinking about the bands safety or that it might be bad publicity for them to let Black Widow into the country. Also when the album was released in the UK it came out on CBS the same week as they released Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water". That song was such a seller that they stopped printing Sacrifice and concentrated on that album(!) This left Black Sabbath free to go to the States because they always denied that they were involved with occult magic and Satan. It seemed like everything Black Widow tried to do was doomed all around. Still, the album Sacrifice reached the number 32 in the U.K. charts, and the group toured throughout Europe and appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. Their management wanted them to drop the black magic, hoping to get more sales and good publicity this time. This was something that split the band. Reasons were that Kip Trevor (vocalist) & Jim wanted to drop the ideas while Box and Clive Jones (flute, sax) were for keeping it and to hell with the bad publicity. They where "forced" to move away from the black magic, Box left in protest and their relationship with Sanders dropped. In the words of Jones; "We lost, and so did the band". Gannon and Trevor later worked on a project to turn the Black Widow stage show into a Broadway musical. This never happened...
Black Widow recorded three more albums after Sacrifice, but since none of them contained Sacrifice's occult witch style material, they are not added to this page.
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