When BLACK SABBATH released their second album, Paranoid, in 1970, few could have predicted the impact it would have on rock music. Yet, for bassist Geezer Butler, the album’s iconic cover has always been a sore point. Speaking at last December’s Steel City Con, Butler reflected on the early days of the band and shared his candid thoughts on the artwork.
“We thought that was a terrible cover,” Butler admitted. “[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.”
Butler’s perspective highlights the contrast between the album’s lasting influence and the band’s own uncertainty at the time. “We thought we’d last about two or three years at the most when we put the first album out,” he told the audience. “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.”
Despite the early criticism, Paranoid became a defining moment for BLACK SABBATH. It was their first major commercial breakthrough, eventually reaching UK No. 1 — a position they would not achieve again until 2013’s 13. The title track, though guitarist Tony Iommi felt it didn’t fully capture the band’s sound, became their biggest hit, peaking at No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart.
Even so, the album cover’s origin sheds some light on Butler’s disdain. As Iommi explained in 2020, the artwork was actually inspired by another track from the album, “War Pigs,” which was initially intended to be the album’s title: “The album cover on Paranoid has nothing to do with ‘Paranoid’ [the song]. 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.’
“But 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.”
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