Black Sabbath didn’t set out to change music forever — in fact, they barely thought they’d survive a few years. Speaking at last December’s Steel City Con, bassist Geezer Butler looked back on the band’s earliest days and admitted that rock immortality was the last thing on their minds when Sabbath released their groundbreaking debut in 1970.
“We thought we’d last about two or three years at the most when we put the first album out,” Butler told the audience (via Ultimate Guitar). “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.”
Any doubts about Sabbath‘s future were erased later in 1970 with the release of Paranoid, the band’s second album and eventual breakthrough. It remains their only UK No. 1 album until 2013’s 13, and the title track — despite Iommi feeling it didn’t fully represent the band’s sound — became Sabbath‘s biggest hit, peaking at No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart.
But while Paranoid cemented Sabbath‘s legacy sonically, Butler has long had issues with its visuals. “We thought that was a terrible cover,” he said. “[It came from] my manager at the time, [whom] we quickly left. I still don’t know what the cover represents. Some guy dressed up with a sword. It is the worst cover ever.”
According to Tony Iommi, the confusion around the Paranoid artwork stems from a last-minute title change. Speaking in 2020, he explained that the album was originally meant to be called War Pigs, with the cover designed to reflect that concept.
“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.'”
However, the title was deemed too controversial at the time. “They banned that, you couldn’t use it as a title in them days,” Iommi added. “It was so awkward for us to move forward with things.”
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