Butler had misgivings about including it, because he thought it sounded too much like Led Zeppelin’s Communication Breakdown. Based around Iommi’s sizzling riff, which starts on an E5 powerchord played on the 5th and 6th strings at the 12th fret, it was, Iommi has said, “a bit of nonsense”. The title track, the band’s only Top 10 single, was written and recorded in anywhere from 25 minutes to two hours, depending on who you believe, because the band didn’t have enough material to fill an album.
#Paranoid black sabbath full
In doing so, Iommi inadvertently invented the sludgy, dark sound of British heavy metal, his style full of techniques that became rock staples for years to come – chunky powerchords, rhythmic solidity, pentatonic licks, fluid vibrato and searing unison bends. He would later begin tuning down to C♯, too. Iommi fitted Fairy Liquid bottle tops to his fingers and initially used banjo strings before settling on 8-gauge sets for his SG, because they were easier to bend. Told he would never play again, Iommi was spurred on by the story of Django Reinhardt’s recovery from severe burns to his hands suffered in a fire. In an industrial accident that’s become the stuff of rock legend, 17-year-old Iommi, on his last day at work in a sheet metal factory before becoming a full-time musician, severed the tips of his fretting hand’s middle and ring fingers. Iommi cut his teeth on British guitar greats such as Hank Marvin, Eric Clapton and John Mayall, but his pioneering playing style was forged out of necessity. The genre-defining sound of Paranoid owes most to the super-human determination of Iommi, a man who would be a rich source of inspiration for countless heavy-rock players over the next 50 years. Sabbath had perfected the doomy riff-heavy sound previewed on their debut album and conjured a record that would see the Birmingham quartet, along with contemporaries Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, change the face of British guitar music. With Iommi putting down his Strat and picking up a Gibson SG that he swapped with a right-handed player in a Birmingham car park, and adding a modified Dallas Arbiter Range Master Treble Booster to the mix, the stage was set.
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