Black Sabbath - Paranoid

I could go on and on about my personal history with Black Sabbath’s Paranoid. I could bury my point in backstory, saying how I was turned on to the album by the guitarist in my first ever band, that our first cover was the title track. I could dredge up the memory of blaring “Iron Man” from my car while stopped in traffic next to cranky geriatrics at Myrtle Beach my senior year of high school.

So what? None of that actually tells you how I feel, personally, about the music. How to get to the point at hand? How can I put in words what this record does to me?

Three specific moments within the grooves of Paranoid tell the story of why I think this album is great. They are as follows:

1. The pull-off guitar lick immediately following the line “In the fields the bodies burning,” in the first verse of “War Pigs.”

The impact of that single guitar lick on my adolescent ears cannot be underestimated. It’s placement within the song illustrates the subtle genius of the band as arrangers that is not always apparent to casual listeners. Black Sabbath’s sound is not terribly subtle, but the implementation of that lick is. It comes right off of the taut, pressure-building verse intro, consisting only of Bill Ward’s ticking hi-hat and Tony Iommi’s thick, two chord punctuations. The entrance of Ozzy’s brash, unpretty, declamatory voice kicks up the tension another notch, and then comes the four-note lick, barreling through the headphones, mixed significantly louder and closer than the rhythm guitar. The muscular trill that follows the next line prolongs the pressure-valve ecstasy, and two lines later the song explodes with massive drums and glorious overdubbed guitar mayhem.

2. The explosive push into the final verse of “Fairies Wear Boots,” and Ozzy’s vocal on its last four lines. Like “Hand of Doom,” the song is structured in evolving movements, mixing in the instrumental “Jack the Stripper.” The relentless back and forth power chords that accompany the verses-of which there are only two-and chorus-which consists essentially of one line-constitute one of the most monstrous riffs on the album. After numerous instrumental breaks and guitar solos, the riff returns, muted, under the chorus, before all hell suddenly breaks loose, and Tony Iommi lets it rip at full blast, a good two or three notches louder than anywhere else in the song. Ozzy delivers the next lines with a gibbering, lunatic ferocity “So I went to the doctor to see what he could give me/he said son, son you’ve gone too far/ ‘cause smokin’ and trippin’ is all that you do,” before ending it all with an apocalyptic YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAH” drowning in echo, resigned to his waste-case fate, utterly justifying the ridiculousness of the lyrics. This climax is the final glorious release in an album full of them, and a perfect example of the genius of a band that knows exactly when to dig in and fire on all cylinders.

3. The one-two, one-two, CRASH entrance of Bill Ward’s drums over the inimitable opening riff of “Iron Man.” There is little I can say about this, except that this moment embodies everything right and wonderful about big, dumb, LOUD rock music. And that’s it folks. That’s all I gotta say.