The two Black Sabbath songs that were nearly ruined by their awful titles: “I am Iron Bloke”
Entering the 1970s, Black Sabbath beckoned a new era for rock music.
The 1960s had been an era of sociopolitical transition as rock music spread its wings in the western world. The next decade would take bold new steps, with dynamic genre propagation working listeners into tighter niches and cliques. Ozzy Osbourne’s four-piece took the heavy rock sound of The Who, Led Zeppelin and The Beatles’ proto-metal anthem, ‘Helter Skelter’, and malleated it into a beast of their own: heavy metal.
Setting out with their eponymous debut album in 1970, Sabbath set the bar high for themselves and their heavy metal competition, which at the time, consisted of Deep Purple and, at a push, Led Zeppelin, who were more associated with the prog-rock scene. Had Osbourne and his bandmates called it quits after this seminal beauty, they would still be a household name with classics like ‘N.I.B.’ and ‘The Wizard’ on the roster.
Just seven months later, Sabbath released their second album, Paranoid, which consolidated the band’s position as the figurehead of metal. The album remains the most popular of the Sabbath LPs and is widely seen as their finest studio release; however, two of its most popular tracks were almost spoiled by their original titles.
That kind of near-miss feels almost unthinkable when looking back at Paranoid now. The record is so embedded in the DNA of heavy metal that every detail, from the riffs to the song titles, feels almost sacred. Yet, like any creative process, it was still subject to moments of spontaneity, offhand comments, and decisions that could have easily gone another way had the band not trusted their instincts at just the right time.
It also speaks to how loosely structured Sabbath’s early writing sessions could be. Rather than meticulously planning every lyrical detail, much of the material came from riffs, images, and half-formed ideas that were refined in the moment. That freedom is part of what gave Paranoid its raw, unfiltered edge, but it also meant that something as simple as a working title could have ended up defining a song forever if no one had stopped to reconsider.
In a strange way, these almost-absurd alternate titles highlight just how fine the line is between myth and misstep in rock history. One wrong choice, one joke taken too far, and some of the most iconic songs ever recorded might have carried a very different weight. Thankfully, Sabbath knew when to lean into the darkness with conviction rather than undercut it, ensuring that Paranoid sounded every bit as ominous and era-defining as it was always meant to be.
Firstly, ‘Iron Man’, the album’s second and final single after the title track, was very nearly ‘Iron Bloke’. Guitarist Tony Iommi had just written one of rock’s most instantly recognisable landmark riffs when frontman Osbourne described it as “a big iron bloke walking about”. Inspired by this derivation, they began planning the lyrics with an iron bloke” as the protagonist. Fortunately, they saw sense in rewording the title; just imagine those harrowing first seconds if Osbourne had sung, “I am Iron Bloke”.
Elsewhere on the album, the immensely popular non-single track’ War Pigs’ was initially titled ‘Walpurgis’. “Walpurgis is sort of like Christmas for Satanists, and to me, war was the big Satan,” bassist and lyricist Geezer Butler told Classic Rock in 2004.
“It wasn’t about politics or government or anything. It was [about] evil. So I was saying ‘generals gathered in the masses/just like witches at black masses’ to make an analogy. But when we brought it to the record company, they thought ‘Walpurgis’ sounded too satanic. And that’s when we turned it into ‘War Pigs.’ But we didn’t change the lyrics because they were already finished.”
Listen to the two Paranoid classics below.
