“He tries to do good”: Ozzy Osbourne’s succinct explanation about what ‘Iron Man’ means
When you listen to Black Sabbath, you will uncover a range of different themes and subjects that the band discusses throughout its music. Some of their biggest songs have withstood the test of time because of the timeless nature of the subject matters they discuss. They truly never pulled punches when it came to putting words to their intense style of music.
For instance, take a song like ‘Paranoid’, which was written by Geezer Butler. Butler has admitted that he misinterpreted his feelings at the time of writing the track and ended up making a song about his ongoing bouts of depression. Writing so openly about mental health was rare at the time, especially against such a doom-laden and distortion-heavy sound like Sabbath’s.
“Basically, it’s just about depression, because I didn’t really know the difference between depression and paranoia,” Butler said, “It’s a drug thing; when you’re smoking a joint you get totally paranoid about people, you can’t relate to people. There’s that crossover between the paranoia you get when you’re smoking dope and the depression afterwards.”
The band also wrote protest music with their track ‘War Pigs’, which is often considered one of the greatest anti-war tracks ever written. When you listen, you can hear why, as both the anger of the instrumentation and the frustration laced throughout Osbourne’s vocals are something to be marvelled at. Since its release, a great deal of people have covered the song, incredibly excited by its message and the power they can put behind singing it.
One of Sabbath’s most popular songs, though, is a complete work of fiction. ‘Iron Man’ was released in 1970 and is easily one of the band’s biggest tracks. It has been used in a number of film soundtracks and is generally considered one of the coolest songs ever written. The fictional element of the track might be viewed as a bit of fun for many people; however, it’s also a great representation of how good a writer Geezer Butler is.
The idea for the song was Ozzy Osbourne’s, and after he put the idea in Geezer Butler’s head, the bassist and lyricist started coming up with ideas. “I was walking down the street one day and thought… ‘What if there were a bloody great bloke made out of metal walking about?’” He pondered.
The story involves time travel and a man who manages to travel and see the end of the world but has his shape changed in the process. On the one hand, it’s a fun work of science fiction; on the other, it’s a heartbreaking story about the burden of knowledge, as words falling on deaf ears were enough to lead the protagonist of this Sabbath classic to turn violent.
“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,” explained Osbourne, “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.”
