Paranoid Ironmen and Fairies are dining on Rat Salad.
In the VH1 series Behind the Music episode which profiled Black Sabbath, a critic whom I sadly cannot remember his name said something to the effect of “If in the 60’s you did not feel loved and felt completely alienated, Black Sabbath was singing for you”. In the 60’s musicians like The Who, The Doors, Cream, Jeff Beck Group (with Rod Stewart on vocals), Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and several others created a firm foundation for what would become heavy metal…and then came 1970 and with it came Black Sabbath!!
Transitioning back to my childhood at an exceptionally young age I was very well versed in heavy metal. My father especially loved AC/DC, Van Halen, Rush, Scorpions, Styx, Journey, Deep Purple, and Kansas when I was a kid as well as a wide range of music which my brothers and I enjoyed listening to with my Dad. My father liked Black Sabbath very casually, but his take on them at that point in the 80’s was he had bought Paranoid in 1970 and could not really get into it (however, he did see Black Sabbath live in Salt Lake City in 1972). Other than sporadic airplay of “Ironman” and “Paranoid” I did not know the music of Black Sabbath all that well. But thanks to an amazing chain of events in 1987 would introduce me to Black Sabbath and greatly influence my musical direction.
Shortly after my older brother Alan started middle school in 1987 he crossed paths with a friend that had a cassette of Paranoid he was trying to sell and Alan bought it from him. I still remember coming home from school that day and Alan had ‘Ironman’ cranked up on his bedroom stereo and just being thrilled. As much as Alan gave the cassette a few listens, like my dad, other than the very classic songs ‘Ironman’ and ‘Paranoid’ he could not really get into it either. One of my favorite activities as 10 year old kid was going bicycling through my neighborhood with my cassette Walkman cranked up and a hip bag full of cassettes to pick from (I am so glad they invented the iPod). From the moment I pushed play on my cassette Walkman and the opening chord of ‘War Pigs’ I was completely flabbergasted! My energy went through the roof as I biked through my neighborhood like I was being chased by Wile E. Coyote as I listened to Paranoid for the very first time. Forgiving the fact that the song ‘Planet Caravan’ did not do much for me at age 10 (but I would grow to love ‘Planet Caravan’), this cassette was awesome. As much as I was already a fan of heavy metal, something clearly set Black Sabbath apart from other bands, even other heavy metal bands. The guitar heavy and dark, the bass was cranked up, the drumming very quick, intense, and methodical in the vein of Keith Moon and Ginger Baker, and the vocals of Ozzy Osbourne had defined and for me at the point redefined heavy metal.
With Paranoid at age 10 I have really discovered a gem. In the 5th grade there were a lot of my classmates that liked Bon Jovi and other metal that was way main stream as well as all things top 40 pop, however, only one other kid in my grade into metal other than me, which made me very different amongst my peers. I was literally the only person listening to Black Sabbath (and for that matter AC/DC, Rush, and all of the other stuff I was into at that point). Through my life since elementary school Paranoid has become one of the standards I have used to judge a lot of metal music.
It’s tough for me to narrow down what my favorite song is on Paranoid, the first one to come to mind is ‘War Pigs’. In the 60’s as the Vietnam War was in full force many bands wrote countless anti-war songs. As much as many of these songs are hailed today as classics (“Take It Back” by Cream, “Subterranean Homesick Blues” by Bob Dylan, and “Fortunate Son” by Credence Clearwater Revival are some of my personal favorite 60’s antiwar songs), however some of these songs to me are very fluffy and the central thesis was more about we can defeat war by dodging the draft, free love, and using drugs. ‘War Pigs’ in my opinion is the greatest antiwar song ever written. The lyrics make a very bold statement about the political motives and all out horror of war without sugar coating anything.
My most favorite song on Paranoid is “Fairies Wear Boots”. This is going to sound weird, but to me this song is in many ways the heavy metal equivalent of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procal Harum, in the respect that it just has a haunting feel to it that I have never quite been able to put my finger on. I especially love the guitar solo that ends the song as it fades into an unknown destination. To this day my car stereo and my iPod get cranked up a little louder for “Fairies Wear Boots”.
When I was 14 years old my parents gave me a bass guitar they had purchased from my uncle and I started to learn how to play. By the time I was 15 I was good enough at bass that I could get around on the instrument. I was ready to learn more challenging bass lines and I looked to Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath. Bass guitar books in 1992 were hard to come by and because this was before the glory of the internet, the only option I had to learn Black Sabbath on bass was to put on my tapes and figure out the songs. I used to listen to Paranoid over and over again while attempting to play along on my bass and in less than six months I had the whole album figured out, which was a huge milestone for me on the bass guitar. For the first time I felt I was a good bassist.
As time went by I would later purchase the Master of Reality and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and some of Ozzy Osbourne’s solo albums which I also really enjoyed, however, Paranoid was always the album that stuck out the most. When I turned sixteen years old I got a job washing dishes with my older brother at the Chin-Wah Restaurant in Sandy, UT. At this point I was earning a lot more money compared to my paper route and I bought my first CD player. One day I was going through the bin of $9.00 CD’s at a records shop and I bought the first Black Sabbath album…little did I know what I was in store for (see my next blog).
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