With 40 Years of Ozzy’s Blizzard of Ozz and 50 years of Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, it’s a big weekend to celebrate awesome music! Black Sabbath brought us not just ground breaking music, but also gave birth to the The Prince of Darkness: Ozzy Osbourne. Here are 6 interesting facts about them you might not know about.

 

 

 

1) The song ‘Paranoid’ was written AFTER the album of the same name was already done. The label wanted one more song, so the band quickly cooked up ‘Paranoid’. The label loved it and found it more marketable as an album title than the original title ‘War Pigs’

 

 

2) The intro to “Fairies Wear Boots” is known as “Jack the Stripper”. This intro apparently inspired what is now described as one of the worst Saturday Night Live skits that SNL has ever aired, also called “Jack the Stripper”. Video of the skit is hard to find!

 

 

3) The guys would rehearse across from a movie theater so they got the idea to make scary music after seeing how much fun people would have watching horror movies.

 

 

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?#tbt ?

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4) After Ozzy and Black Sabbath parted ways, Michael Bolton was considered has a replacement before they ultimately went with Dio.

 

 

5) Because of Ozzy commenting on the riff of what became “Iron Man,” which to Ozzy sounded “like a big iron bloke walking about.”, Geezer Butler was inspired to write the story of their time travelling Iron Man as the lyrics for the song.

 

 

6) After refusing to play at a Satanists group ‘Night of Satan’, the band was told a hex was placed on them. Ozzy got his dad to make some aluminum crosses that the band got blessed and wore for protection all the time after that.

 

 

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#FBF

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Catch the Sunday Night Vinyl Series with your host Howard Mandshein every Sunday at 8PM for more interesting facts about your favourite artists.