‘Planet Caravan’: the Black Sabbath song the band thought was “good to get stoned to”
Nothing about heavy metal is designed to be the most inviting music to listen to. The whole point behind the biggest metal acts in the world is to make music to scare people to death, so there’s a good chance that people can’t kick their feet up and relax when listening to the smooth stylings of Slipknot and Mudvayne. That wasn’t how it was designed in the beginning, and even though Black Sabbath gets the reputation of being the doomiest pre-metal band, they had their mellow moments.
Then again, it’s hard to consider Sabbath heavy metal when the band themselves never adopted the banner. There’s no doubt that Tony Iommi inadvertently started the genre as soon as he started writing his signature doomy riffs, but listening back to the way that he wrote tunes like ‘Paranoid’ and ‘Iron Man’, he practically took the intensity of Led Zeppelin and added an element of danger back into the mix.
They had the power to be eclectic, but no one is going to find too much diversity on their first album. Much like Zeppelin’s debut, this was their excuse to make their bluesy introduction to the world, and while their namesake track does at least give them a firm basis for heavy metal, hearing tunes like ‘NIB’ and ‘Wicked World’ aren’t that much different from what bands like Cream had been doing.
After having some room to stretch, Paranoid was their way of establishing their sound a little bit more. The title track may have been the big hit, and ‘War Pigs’ helped give them more epics in their live setlist, but ‘Planet Caravan’ was the first time that they turned down all the distortion and made something low-key.
Even though acoustic guitars are practically the enemy of any metal act, Iommi always had a soft spot for the softer sides of music. He had been an avid fan of jazz greats like Joe Pass and Django Reinhart, and even if that didn’t gel with songs like ‘Fairies Wear Boots’, it blended perfectly with ‘Planet Caravan’, especially when things get a bit more psychedelic in the solo section.
But for bassist Geezer Butler, some of the more psychedelic effects weren’t exactly done by accident, saying, “We liked that. It was nice and relaxing. Good to get stoned to. It was really laid-back, so I didn’t want to come out with the usual love crap, so it was about floating through the universe with your loved one.” Even if it was meant as a psychedelic trip, this may have been the first time they accidentally invented stoner rock.
While the band wouldn’t take that mentality to heart until Master of Reality, all of the pieces of stoner rock ballads are accounted for. The tune is already fairly laid-back enough for people to not have too bad of a trip, and listening to how Ozzy Osbourne delivers every word, it could easily be redone by someone like Josh Homme and work just as well.
Although the pieces of stoner rock and heavy metal are in here somewhere, Sabbath were still only following their muse. Their heroes were still acts like The Beatles, and if they happened to make another genre out of writing a song for getting stoned, that was practically an added bonus.
