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Tony Iommi Tells The Story of Black Sabbath's Paranoid

12/22/2010
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(Gibson) Tony Iommi has revealed that the song, "Paranoid," might never have happened, had Black Sabbath not been pressured to come up with an additional track to flesh out their second album. In an interview with Total Guitar magazine, the legendary guitarist also said the band was "shocked" when the song became a hit.

"We were recording the album and the label suddenly said, 'You don't have enough songs!'" Iommi explained. "We didn't know what to do �. Within a few minutes I came up with the riff to 'Paranoid,' played it to the other guys and they liked it, so off we went. That's how simple 'Paranoid' was � we wrote and recorded it in a day."

Iommi went on to say the band never strived to come up with a hit single. "� in [those] days, to have a hit single was selling out," he said. "We just did ['Paranoid'] as a filler track. Most of the tracks on the album were quite long and a lot of people probably wouldn't have played them because they were too long, so 'Paranoid' was an ideal track to release, being short and up-tempo. It just took off. We were as shocked as anybody when that got in the charts."

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