Can a song written to fill a gap on an album become a band's most famous work? Episode 2 of Coverist tells the story of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid", written in under half an hour and still sounding new half a century later.
Four lads from Birmingham
Late-1960s Birmingham was an industrial, exhausted city, and Black Sabbath came straight out of it: Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward and Tony Iommi, a guitarist who had lost the tips of two fingers in a factory accident. To keep playing he tuned down, and in doing so found a sound heavier and darker than anything before it.
The night everything got darker
In the summer of 1970, days before recording their second album, the band was caught up in a street fight after a gig. The feeling that everyone was against them stayed, and it shaped the whole album.
A masterpiece in 25 minutes
Recording at Regent Sound in London was almost done when the producer said the album was too short. Iommi played a simple riff, the others joined in, Butler wrote a few lines and Ozzy sang. The song took about 25 minutes. The label loved it so much that it renamed the album from War Pigs to Paranoid and released the song as a single, against the band's wishes. It reached number 4 in the UK, and the album went to number 1.
Not the devil, depression
Critics called it simple and loud, and some people thought the band was satanic. But Butler's lyrics had nothing to do with magic. They describe being unable to feel joy, a mind drifting away from everything. In the episode we read them and ask why this might be one of rock's first songs about mental health.
Covers of Paranoid
Few metal songs have been covered as widely, from metal and punk to bluegrass, jazz and reggae. In this episode we play and compare:
- Megadeth
- Hellsongs
- Pickin' On Series & Iron Horse
- Dynamo's Rhythm Aces
- Gus Black
- Vince Neil, George Lynch, Stu Hamm & Gregg Bissonette
- Ultraviolence
- Adam Parfrey
- Ruder Than You