Black Sabbath ‎ Paranoid Rare Warner Brothers Records Vinyl LP

$

50

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Paranoid Studio album by  Black Sabbath Released 18 September 1970 Recorded 16–18 June 1970 Studio

• Regent Sound, London
• Island, London

1. "Paranoid"
   Released: 7 August 1970 (UK)
2. "Iron Man"
   Released: October 1971 (US)

Paranoid is the second studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, released on 18 September 1970, by Vertigo Records in the United Kingdom and on 7 January 1971, by Warner Bros. Records in the United States. The album contains several of the band's signature songs, including "Iron Man", "War Pigs" and the title track, which was the band's only Top 20 hit, reaching number 4 on the UK charts.

Paranoid is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all time, often cited as a key influence for the development of the genre as well as one of its earliest albums. Paranoid was ranked number one on Rolling Stone‘s list of the "100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time" in 2017 and number 139 on its list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” in 2020. Paranoid was the band's only album to top the UK Albums Chart until the release of 13 in 2013.

Recording

In an effort to capitalise on the recent UK chart success of their eponymous debut album, Black Sabbath returned to the studio with producer Rodger Bain in June 1970, just four months after the album was released. Paranoid was recorded at Regent Sound Studios and Island Studios in London, England.

The album's title track was written as an afterthought. As drummer Bill Ward explains: "We didn't have enough songs for the album, and Tony [Iommi] just played the guitar lick and that was it. It took twenty, twenty-five minutes from top to bottom." In the liner notes to the 1998 live album Reunion, bassist Geezer Butler recounts to Phil Alexander that they wrote the song "in five minutes, then I sat down and wrote the lyrics as quickly as I could. It was all done in about two hours." According to Alexander, "Paranoid" "crystallized the band's writing process, with Iommi initiating the ideas with his charred riffs, Ozzy [Osbourne] working on a melody, Geezer providing drive and the majority of the lyrics, and Bill Ward locking into a set of often pounding rhythms beneath Butler's bass rumble." The single was released in August 1970 and reached number four on the UK charts, remaining Black Sabbath's only top ten hit.

Most of the songs on Paranoid evolved during onstage improvisational jams. In the Classic Albums documentary on the making of Paranoid, guitarist Tony Iommi recalls that "War Pigs" came from "one of the clubs" with Butler adding, "During the song "Warning" we used to jam that out and that particular night when we were jamming it out Tony just went da-dum!" In the same documentary, Iommi demonstrates his approach to the guitar solo in the song, explaining that "I always tried to keep the bottom string ringing so it fills it out nicely." On "Planet Caravan", Osbourne sings through a Leslie speaker, with the singer telling Mojo in 2010, "Then Rodger Bain used an oscillator on it – whatever that is. It looks like a fridge with a knob on."

Release, reception and legacy

The album was issued in the United Kingdom in September 1970, where its sales were enhanced by the success of the "Paranoid" single. "That single attracted screaming kids", Iommi recalled in the liner notes to Reunion in 1998. "We saw people dancing when we played it and we decided that we shouldn't do singles for a long while after that to stay true to the fans who'd liked us before we'd become popular." Paranoid's US release was delayed until January 1971, as the Black Sabbath album was still on the charts at the time of its UK release. Paranoid reached No. 12 in the US in March 1971 with virtually no radio airplay. From contemporary reviews, an uncredited writer in Disc praised the album, declaring the group's music as "tight, loud, simple and exciting" with material based on "simple, catchy riffs [...] with lyrics that don't put them in the Dylan class."

In a retrospective review, AllMusic's Steve Huey cited Paranoid as "one of the greatest and most influential heavy metal albums of all time", which "defined the sound and style of heavy metal more than any other record in rock history". Ben Mitchell from Blender said it was "the greatest metal album of all time". According to Rolling Stone's Joe Levy, "Sabbath ruled for bummed-out kids in the Seventies" and "nearly every heavy-metal and extreme rock band of the last three decades", including Metallica, Nirvana and Slipknot, "owes a debt of worship" to Iommi's "crushing" guitar riffs, Ward and Butler's "Visigoth rhythm section" and Osbourne's "agonized bray" on tracks such as "Paranoid", "Iron Man" and "War Pigs". Robert Christgau was less enthusiastic in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), feeling he could not take the band's horror-themed music seriously enough to appreciate it as anything other than "camp", noting that the title cut is especially "screamworthy". However, he did note that the band does take musical heaviness to "undreamt-of extremes".

Geezer Butler cited Paranoid as the one that stood out to him the most. He explained, "It was a totally complete album. It wasn't forced, and the chemistry between the four of us was so fluid. I remember getting together to do that record, and we wrote literally everything immediately. Each song came together so easily and had such fire. And each time we would go into rehearsal, we'd come out with a completed song. I think that's why that album is special, because of how naturally things came together. It was the most organic record that Sabbath – in any era – ever made. It was completely natural, as it should have been."

The album is currently ranked at No. 139 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Paranoid's chart success allowed the band to tour the US for the first time in October 1970, which spawned the release of the album's second single "Iron Man". Although it failed to reach the top 40, "Iron Man" remains one of Black Sabbath's most popular songs, as well as the band's highest charting US single. As of 2014, Paranoid is Black Sabbath's best-selling album, having sold 1.6 million copies in the US since the beginning of the SoundScan era.

Controversy

In 1974, nurse Hillary Pollard from Rawcliffe, North Yorkshire was found dead between a pair of speakers with the Paranoid album on her turntable. She had overdosed on sleeping tablets, with a small enough dosage to make suicide inconclusive. However, the album's possible influence in her potential suicide was still mentioned in the inquest, but ultimately it was decided that Black Sabbath were not to blame for her death. "A lot of the words in the songs – a lot of the moods of the songs – are aggressive," Iommi acknowledged. "Especially in the early days – Satanic, if you like ... That was the way it felt, so that was the way we played. But it got out of hand. With Paranoid in England, for instance. There was a girl found dead – a nurse she was: dead in her room with our album on the turntable going round. And it was taken to court saying that it was because of the album that she was depressed and killed herself, which was totally ridiculous, I think."

In a 1982 interview with The New Music, Butler claimed, "If the moral majority don't understand it they'll try to put it down, or get other people to read all sorts of things into it ... The moral majority sort of people picked up on the Satanic part of it. I mean, most of it was about stopping wars and that side of it, and some science fiction stuff. There wasn't that much Satanic stuff, and what there was it wasn't exactly for the devil or anything like that; it was just around at the time and we just brought it to people's attention." In the documentary The Black Sabbath Story, Vol. 1, Butler expresses his frustration at how fans misinterpreted the band's lyrics, stating that, "For instance, on 'Hand of Doom' they'll pick up one sentence out of that and blow it up into this big thing, like as if we're telling everyone to go and shoot smack, where the whole song […] is against drugs."

Accolades

• In 1989, Kerrang! magazine listed the album at No. 39 among the "100 Greatest Heavy Metal Albums of All Time".
• In 1994, Paranoid was ranked number three in Colin Larkin's Top 50 Heavy Metal Albums. According to Larkin, "Pretenders have often grasped at their crown, but Paranoid shows that Black Sabbath remain the quintessential metal band."
• In 1999, Q magazine (12/99, p. 170) included it in their list of The Best Gothic Albums of All Time, writing that, "[Black Sabbath] stamped their bombastic and doom-laden imprint on British rock forever."
• In 1999, Vibe (12/99, p. 162) included it on their list of 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century.
• In 2003, the album was ranked number 130 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, 131 in a 2012 revised list, and 139 in a 2020 revised list.
• In 2009, the album was ranked number 6 on Guitar World magazine's list of The Greatest 50 Guitar Albums of All Time.
• In 2010, Paranoid was covered as part of the Classic Albums documentary series, which examines albums "considered the best or most distinctive of a well known band or musician or that exemplify a stage in the history of music".
• In 2017, Rolling Stone considered it the greatest metal album ever.

Track listing

All songs written by Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, and Ozzy Osbourne.

Notes

1. ^ On the North American edition of the album, the song "War Pigs" was titled "War Pigs / Luke's Wall".
2. ^ On the North American edition of the album, the song "Fairies Wear Boots" was entitled "Jack the Stripper / Fairies Wear Boots".