War Pigs


“I wanted to write a song called War Piggers, the satanic version of Christmas. Write it about that satan isn’t a spiritual thing, it’s warmongers – that’s who the real satanists are. All these people who are running the banks in the world, trying to get the working class to fight the wars for them. I sent it off to the record company but they said, “No, you’re not going to call it that, it’s too satanic,” so I changed it to War Pigs.”Terry 'Geezer' Butler (1150)
“It’s about VIP people who are sitting there saying ‘Go out and fight’ and all the everyday people are forced to, but the VIPs never do. We’re not a political group, it’s just that most of our songs have messages.”Ozzy Osbourne (1151)

Iron Man


“It’s all about the future of the world. I was really into pollution and all that cobblers back then. You could just see a lot of things going wrong in the world and nobody was saying anything about it. Bob Dylan had long since faded from the present memory and there was nobody talking about the things I wanted to talk about, the political stuff and that’s what inspired me.”Terry 'Geezer' Butler (1150)
“This is about a guy who invented a time machine and he goes through time and finds the world is going to end. Coming back he turns to iron and people won’t listen to him, they think he’s not real. He goes a bit barmy and decides to get his revenge by killing people. He tries to do good but in the end it turns into bad.”Ozzy Osbourne (1151)

Planet Caravan


“It’s about floating through the universe with your loved one, instead of going down the pub and having some chips. That’s what it’s about, just taking a spaceship out into the stars and the ultimate romantic weekend.”Terry 'Geezer' Butler (1150)
“It’s a smokey jazz club number about someone going through space and seeing stars and things.”Ozzy Osbourne (1151)

Hand Of Doom


“I always remember doing these two American army bases which were where these guys who had finished their tour of Vietnam, instead of going back to America, they’d have to have a half-way house and there was one in Germany and one in England. We go talking to the soldiers and they were in a terrible state and telling me that a lot of them were doing heroin. Nothing on the news or anything, but a lot of the American troops, to get through that horrible war, were fixing up and everything. It just stuck in my head and when we did ‘Hand Of Doom’ that’s what I wrote it about.”Terry 'Geezer' Butler (1150)
“It’s about people on drugs and what happens to them — their skin turning green and things. There’s a lot of gory words, but we’ve seen a lot of people like that and it’s getting out of all proportion.”Ozzy Osbourne (1151)

Fairies Wear Boots


“Ozzy wrote the song “Fairies Wear Boots’ about these skinheads, calling them fairies ‘cos they had the big Doc Marten boots on they were kicking hell out of us with – that’s where it came from.”Terry 'Geezer' Butler (1150)
“It’s about LSD I think because we started messing around with that kind of stuff.”Ozzy Osbourne (1150)
“Again, it’s a warning about the use of drugs.”Ozzy Osbourne (1151)

Paranoid


“I used to go through a lot of depression when I was a teenager so that’s where the lyrics for ‘Paranoid’ came from because I couldn’t relate to anyone when I was getting my depressions.”Terry 'Geezer' Butler (1150)
“This is about a guy who has a hang up with chicks. It’s got a heavy riff. We’re not a single group and after the first single, which we didn’t like, we just wrote this in the studio and now its starting to sell.”Ozzy Osbourne (1151)

Electric Funeral


“I was being asked just with my own self if I was actually going to call someone and give them a reason to not want to end this existence, what would I possibly say to them? And that is what this song became. The person I wrote it for cried when he heard it.”Ozzy Osbourne (1151)

N.I.B.


“‘N.I.B.’, I wrote that, being quite humorous. I thought I was anyway – about Satan fallin’ in love with somebody. And his chat-up line is, you know, ‘I can give you the sun, the moon and the stars…’ And Satan probably could. It’s like a chat-up line that guys use, and people missed the whole point of it!”Terry 'Geezer' Butler (1152)

Black Sabbath


“Ozzy wrote the lyrics for ‘Black Sabbath’, the song. And the whole thing was about how you’ve got to be aware of what happens to yourself when you get involved in black magic. Most of the stuff…they completely misread [misinterpreted – Ed] our lyrics.”Terry 'Geezer' Butler (1152)
“It just vanished into thin air as I was staring at it. I just had the thought that it must have to do with this book that Ozzy brought round for me. I leapt out of bed, rushed to the cupboard to throw this book out and the book was gone. The next day I told Ozzy about it and about three days after that we came up with our first song, Black Sabbath, and Ozzy related my experience in the lyrics.”Terry 'Geezer' Butler (1261)

After Forever


“We were gettin’ accused of all sorts of things, the whole Satan thing and everything. And ‘After Forever’ is just about all these people that were followin’ us around that were into the occult, and all these so-called ‘Jesus freaks.’ I used to talk to these people that supposedly had, like, ‘dedicated their lives to Jesus.’ And I knew more about Jesus and the Bible and God than they did. Most of them had, like, done too much acid. So, as a response to them, I wrote ‘After Forever’. It raises the question, ‘When you’re on your deathbed, who ya gonna call: God or the Devil?'”Terry 'Geezer' Butler (1152)

Snowblind


“Cocaine is God’s way of saying, ‘You’re making too much money’.”Terry 'Geezer' Butler (1152)