![]() Record labels realized that heaviness and spookiness could sell and that Led Zeppelin, Sabbath’s favorite band, were just the beginning. In the U.S., where it nearly broke into the Top 10 mere months after the band’s small stateside debut, it has gone platinum four times. Propelled by its lead single, Paranoid was the only Black Sabbath album to top the British charts for the next four decades. The label was right about “Paranoid,” at least. After nearly 50 years, bassist and songwriter Geezer Butler ( and most everyone else) still hates it: “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 soldier simply stands there, an embarrassment in neon. ![]() But in the sprint to get the record into stores, Vertigo never bothered to commission an image that fit the new name. They wanted to remind potential customers of the song they’d seen four long-haired weirdos headbang to on “Top of the Pops” while avoiding the nasty business of saying something controversial in an era already fraught with civil unrest. Six months after releasing Black Sabbath, they issued the song as Black Sabbath’s second single and demanded that the album’s title be changed from War Pigs to Paranoid. Vertigo didn’t hear filler it heard a hit, a trouncing three-minute assault by a young band that still favored excessive jams. They recorded the song in a flash and called it “Paranoid,” the fulfillment of a legal obligation. When they needed one more tune, the band headed to the bar while guitarist Tony Iommi stayed behind and spent a few minutes writing a simple riff that chugged, paused, and kept prowling, like a predator always in search of its next meal. ![]() Their label, Vertigo, soon dispatched Black Sabbath back to the studio to record a follow-up, stretching their already-indulgent impulses into eight-minute songs about war and heroin and the glory of the guitar. In 1970, Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut did something few were expecting-it sold very well, charting both at their home in the UK and in the United States. Still, in all its grainy ignominy, Paranoid’s cover is one of the most transformative moments in the early history of Black Sabbath and, by extension, heavy metal.
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