"I look pretty tall but my heels are high, the simple things you see are all complicated, I look pretty young but I'm just...(a new FNJ record--18 days!) late again.
I couldn't begin to tell you when I was introduced to this week's song (probably through some AOR radio station back in the day), but my best story about this week's tune was from my Camelot Music days. A woman I worked with got married and invited a number of us from the store to celebrate her nuptials. Rather than the usual quaint reception afterward, she and her new husband invited us all to join them at a heavy metal club which was a) absolutely gigantic in size, and b) completely packed on a Saturday night. A band was performing heavy metal covers and as I sat there in my suit and tie, just a wee bit tipsy, I wondered what I could do to liven up my already pretty interesting evening. My answer was to begin shouting at the top of my lungs for the band to play this week's tune. Over time, most of the wedding party was joining me in screaming the song's title to exhort the band to play it, but alas, they never did....
As may come as a surprise to my loyal readers (all three of them), I'm not exactly a metal head, but I do have to admit that I found the Wikipedia entry for Black Sabbath to be quite interesting. They are another of those bands for which a paragraph can't begin to cover their career, but what the hell, here goes.... Formed in 1968 (the original lineup was vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward), they would go on to musical greatness, including being what many consider to be the greatest metal band ever. The band would go through many incarnations (Iommi was the only constant), through the years, disbanding in 2006, reuniting in 2011 for six years, before reuniting for the last time in 2025. Along the way, they sold over seventy million records, were inducted into the U.K. Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, won two Grammy Awards, and were ranked 85th on Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All-Time." For their career, Black Sabbath released nineteen studio albums (with nine top ten and two #1's in the U.K., and two top tens and one #1 here in the States), eight live albums, fourteen compilations, and thirty-seven singles (one top ten in the U.K.). Sadly, Osbourne passed away in 2025 (just seventeen days after the band had reunited for a benefit concert); the other members continue to make music.
Fun Fact: Black Sabbath was often equated with the occult, but the band members hated it. As many of their songs were about the inequity of society (wars, class warfare, unequal justice), the members considered themselves to be a socially conscious band.
"Iron Man" was the second single from their 1970 album, the rather suspiciously entitled Paranoid. The single would hit #52 in the U.S. (their highest charting song here) and #48 in their native U.K. The album (considered by many to be the greatest metal album of all time) would hit #1 in Great Britain and #12 in America. The song was also ranked at #317 on Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" while the album was #139 on its list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time."
"Iron Man" tells the tale of a man who goes into the future and witnesses the end of life as we know it, and while coming back to warn us of our dire predicament is turned into a man of metal (writer Bill Ward says he was completely unfamiliar with the Marvel Iron Man character when he wrote it and the song has nothing to do with him). While he tries to educate people on their upcoming demise, they make fun of him and eventually he gets pissed off and becomes the one to destroy the planet. Ward said his Iron Man was an allegory for Jesus Christ, though with his ending being fuck your neighbor rather than love your neighbor. As noted above, I'm not a metal head, but Iommi's main guitar riff is apocalyptic (great solo later in the song, too), Ward's drumming (especially at the beginning) sets the ominous tone, and Osbourne's droning vocals capture the protagonist's angst and anger perfectly. If more metal songs were like this one, I'd probably be right up there with Beavis and Butthead in heavy metal fandom....
Lyric Sheet: "He was turned to steel/In the great magnetic field/When he travelled time/For the future of mankind..."
Enjoy:
Fuck Donald Trump
Peace,
emaycee
