In 1995, the album was certified quadruple platinum. And it took another 15 years to go platinum. The album went Gold in the States on May 7, 1971, almost eight months after it was released. So there wasn’t much future in anything for us.”Īs legendary as it became, Paranoid was a slow grower. “We felt hopeless and constantly frustrated and we thought at any second we’d be called up to drop in to the Vietnam war because it looked like Britain was going to get involved in it as well. “We were four working class people in the most industrial part of England and all we had to look forward to was a job working in a factory,” Butler said. They were surrounded by bombed out parks and when they looked around they saw unhappy people with dead-end jobs. Having grown up in war-torn Birmingham, ‘flower power’ was an entirely foreign concept. Much of the energy of Sabbath, especially on their first two albums, stemmed from their disgust with the rest of ‘60s youth culture. So atomic war was always imminent, we thought.” “I wrote about the Cold War in “Electric Funeral.’ It was always touch and go whether Russia would drop the atomic bomb on us or we would drop the atomic bomb on them.

“I wrote about whatever I saw going on around me,” Butler said. And in a way, I suppose we bought into that, but of course we never were.”Īnother song, “Fairies Wear Boots,” which was based on an incident in which the band members were harassed and threatened by a gang of skinheads wearing Dr. But then everybody turned it all upside-down and accused of being Satanists. So I was saying ‘ Generals gathered in the masses / Just like witches at black masses’ to make an analogy. “It wasn’t about politics or government or anything. “To me, war was the big Satan,” Butler said. For example, “War Pigs,” with the famous line, “Satan laughing spreads his wings” isn’t about the Devil at all. Black Sabbath, 'War Pigs' - Live (1970)Ĭontrary from being the Satanic album it was portrayed as, Paranoid is filled with relevant social and political commentary. “Imagine the questions we got asked after that? “What’s the have to do with Paranoid?” Well, nothing, really. “There’s a guy standing there with a shield and a sword, with the album title called Paranoid,” added Iommi. “The cover was bad enough when the album was going to be ‘War Pigs,’ but when it was ‘Paranoid’ it didn’t even make sense.” “The record cover is really horrible to begin with, but it was based on this idea of ‘War Pigs,’” Butler said. The band’s originally wanted to use the title Walpurgis, for the record, which Butler said is “kind of like Christmas for Satanists.” The label refused and a compromise was reached – or so everyone thought. Records had agreed to call the album War Pigs and were already working on the cover art. It was a strange suggestion since Black Sabbath and Warner Bros. “And then later the record company said, ‘Hey guys, this is the best song on the album. “We didn’t think anything of it because we thought it was just another song,” Butler said. “And then when the other guys came back I played it to them and they thought it was good, so we recorded that just as a filler.” Black Sabbath, 'Paranoid' Music Video “I sat there during the lunch break and came up with the main riff for ‘Paranoid,’ Iommi said. So after tracking the other seven songs, Black Sabbath wrote the title track on the spot. One of the biggest suggestions was to write another song for the album that would serve as a single. He came up with a few suggestions here and there and we’d do it.” A lot of producers tried that, but dismally failed. It sounds easy, but it’s actually a really hard thing to do - to record a band live in the studio and get the whole feeling across. We just went in, set up and played live in the studio and they recorded us. “We didn’t know anything about studios or production or engineering. “We literally went in and played as if it was a live gig,” Butler said. It was quite the opposite.”Ĭompared to the single day Black Sabbath had to record their first album, six days seemed like a luxury.įortunately, they had played some of the songs on the road, so when the stepped into the studio they acted on instinct. We didn’t feel like rock stars or anything. That brought us closer together and made us more determined to be successful. And our friends used to laugh at the idea that we’d ever be successful at what we were doing. “Our families had no nope in us whatsoever of ever making anything of ourselves,” Butler said.

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