RIP Ozzie Osbourne
“Paranoid” Live 1984
HELP ME OCCUPY MY BRAIN -
A young Black Sabbath perform “Paranoid.” As the title suggests, this song is about a man who is paranoid. The driving guitar and bass create a nervous energy to go along with Ozzy Osbourne’s desperate vocal. Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler, who wrote the lyric, explained the song’s meaning to Mojo magazine June 2013: “Basically, it’s just about depression, because I didn’t really know the difference between depression and paranoia. It’s a drug thing; when you’re smoking a joint you get totally paranoid about people, you can’t relate to people. There’s that crossover between the paranoia you get when you’re smoking dope and the depression afterwards.”
Although this was the first Black Sabbath-penned single, the band’s debut single was actually a cover of Crow’s “Evil Woman Don’t Play Your Games With Me” a few months before the “Paranoid” release. “Paranoid” was much more successful. It was released six months after their self-titled first album and had a huge impact in their native UK, going to #4 and becoming one of their signature songs. The group never charted again in the UK Top 10, but that wasn’t a problem since album and ticket sales more than made up for it. This was the title track to the second Sabbath album. The band wanted to call the album “War Pigs,”but the record company made them use “Paranoid” instead because it was less offensive. The album art, however, is a literal interpretation of a “War Pig,” showing a pig with a sword and shield
Ozzy Osbourne - Shot In The Dark 1986
Ozzy Osbourne interview 1982
