Rock and metal fans were thankfully treated to one final performance from heavy metal icons Black Sabbath at last year’s “Back To The Beginning” farewell show. Sadly, Sabbath frontman and metal/pop culture icon Ozzy Osbourne passed away just weeks later.
Since then as the surviving band members have coped with the loss, they’ve slowly begun emerging again in the public eye. Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler recently appeared at the Steel City Con in Pittsburgh where he participated in an interview and Q&A session. Butler admitted that the band didn’t think they’d make very long they first started. “We thought we’d last about two or three years at the most when we put the first album out,” he said. “Everybody completely slagged it in the press. They hated us, calling us Satanists and all this crap, because they didn’t really listen to the lyrics.”
However, the band’s second album, “Paranoid,” ended up being their breakthrough and first No. 1 album in the UK. The title track, which was recorded at the final hour and was thought of as a throwaway tune, also became their biggest hit.
While Butler said he likes the album from a musical standpoint, the cover art is another story. “[It came from] my manager at the time, [whom] we quickly left,” Butler said. “I still don’t know what the cover represents. Some guy dressed up with a sword. It is the worst cover ever.”
Guitarist Tony Iommi previously revealed that the album was going to be called “War Pigs,” but that it was deemed too controversial. “The album cover on ‘Paranoid’ has nothing to do with ‘Paranoid’ [the song],” Iommi said. “It was going to be called ‘War Pigs,’ so we had a bloke with the shield and a sword, which remotely made sense — more so than ‘Paranoid.’ They banned that, you couldn’t use it as a title in them days. It was so awkward for us to move forward with things.”
Iommi’s full appearance at Steel City Con can be seen below.
