Classic Albums (TV Series) Black Sabbath: Paranoid (2010) User Reviews

Effective documentary. I wasn't a fan before watching this, BUT NOW I AM.

[rooprect · 9/10 · 1 October 2020]

Sabbath fans, don't even bother reading the rest of my review. Just watch this show already. To non-Sabbath fans or casual Sabbath fans (like me)... This documentary got me excited about an album that I never thought much about. That's the mark of a great documentary.

What got me immediately pumped was Tony showing us the guitar parts and explaining how he got that sound. There are generous uninterrupted, close-up shots of him playing so we can literally follow/stumble along with our own guitars in our laps. But even non-musicians can absorb what he's showing us because he's so articulate in explaining things.

Just as informative are Geezer's segments (bass and lyrics). Not only does he talk about the parts but he EXPLAINS THE LYRICS which is something that hardly any rockstars take the time to do. Geezer talks about the meanings as well as the lyric writing process: how he'd take Ozzy's random phrases and build entire poems/songs around it. We learn that he's a man of deep social awareness, and these songs reflect the troubled times of their decade (as well as *our* decade, unfortunately). Add the band's dark, musical edge, and there you have it.

This documentary takes time to show us that that's what really made Black Sabbath, and this album in particular, the first of its kind. Archival footage shows us that it was a time of great unrest (Vietnam War especially), and while the hippies were making flowery anthems like "Give Peace A Chance", Black Sabbath wanted to deliver the same message but with a dark, disturbing edge. Literally never done before on a major label. American record execs were sweating bullets because they felt songs like "War Pigs" (a brilliant and brutal skewering of wartime governments) were too politically incendiary. This fascinating point is covered in depth, showing how this album was not only a musical juggernaut, it was a cultural & historical one as well.

Ozzy's segments are, of course, hilarious. His anecdotes and bizarre humor contrast brilliantly against Tony's serious, technical content and Geezer's philosophical, cultural content. And Bill (drums) provides the glue, a bit of everything: showing us drum parts, talking about the recording process, and recounting stories. Sabbath and non-Sabbath fans alike should realize that these 4 members were the perfect compliments to each other, balancing the entire spectrum into a tight, solid band. The documentary does an excellent job of showing us this "personality" behind the band and the album.

I've watched maybe half a dozen of the Classic Albums series, all very good, but this episode really brings it home and shows us what a musical documentary should be like. If you're watching the DVD or blu-ray DEFINITELY watch the bonus features which provide almost another hour of informative segments and tutorials from Tony & Bill. "Classic Albums: Black Sabbath" is my 2nd favorite music documentary of all time, second only to the excellent "Anvil! The Story of Anvil" a very engaging, and very funny, behind-the-scenes peek at a band that never made it. Check that out too. Ok I'm done talking. Crank your amps up to 11 and enjoy \m/

Rock Gets Dark and Heavy - One of the Greatest and Most Influential Recordings

[Screen_O_Genic · 9/10 · 6 September 2019]

One of the best episodes of the excellent "Classic Albums" series "Paranoid" is a stellar feature on the making of the classic album and the men who created it. Interviews with the band members and the men associated with the recording and the band give a good idea on the creation of the masterpiece. The band members play some of their parts in the songs mostly focusing on guitarist Tony Iommi and reveals the unique brilliance and talent of the man. It's also interesting and surprising to know how talented Ozzy Osbourne was. Live performances of the band coupled with clips and footage from the time give a feel and idea of the tumultuous and world-changing events that were taking place at the time of the album. One of the greatest and most influential albums of all time this is a well-done tribute to a great band and the genre-defining album they made.

Another one

[kosmasp · 8/10 · 7 April 2021]

This classic albums show really seems to know their stuff. From getting pretty much everyone you'd want to hear from, to editing the interviews in a neat way to choosing quite the great albums. The last point might be a duh thing, but tastes are different and I reckon not everyone will like every album that is chosen. Still I would like to believe they at least appreciate what this show is doing.

The songs that are played and the way they are explained is also really good. Especially because you can't plan certain things - when genius strikes .. it strikes! And when a certain group of people come together and are creative ... you can bet that something worthwhile comes out of this. Now if you are a cynic you may question certain connections and if they were meant that way ... but everything said here seems genuine! And to think that they were considered "bad apples" ... it's kind of crazy ...

War Pigs and Iron Men

[Michael_Elliott · 10 August 2012]

Classic Albums: Black Sabbath - Paranoid (2010)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Original Black Sabbath members Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward and Tony Iommi are joined by Henry Rollins and various others as they discuss the making of the album "Paranoid" and the influence it had on all future metal albums. Sabbath fans should enjoy this look back at the making of the album and especially since everyone involved with it are here talking about it. We get a brief rundown of the band before this album and then everything else is pretty much devoted to Paranoid. We hear about the first few songs written and how the album began to take shape over time. The dark tone of the album is addressed as the band members talk about what they were going for and how they got it. The lyrics are also a bit topic as it's clear they wanted to do "protest" songs that at one time was being done by Bob Dylan. They talk about how they wanted the songs to have a message and how the album was originally going to be called "War Pigs" but record producers feared that title wouldn't go over too well in America. The song Paranoid also gets discussed as it was the last song done for the album and we hear why it was included and how the members came up with it in the matter of minutes. As is usual for the series, some of the highlights include us going into the mixing studio where we hear different aspects of the album including vocal only tracks or certain guitar tracks before they were put together.

Brummies Gather in Their Masses...

[owen-watts · 8/10 · 7 February 2022]

I've always loved the "Classic Albums" series for how straightforwardly it dissects, track-by-track, a nice album and they only seem to talk to the most relevant people. Performers, engineers etc. Paranoid is the show at it's most stripped down as Sabbath are fundamentally an extremely unpretentious group. You just have four likeable Brummies going: "well we just, you know, came out with it. It wasn't a big deal". That just adds to their appeal to me, utterly timeless and amazing tunes, just casually appearing out of nowhere. Their attitude does make every American in this (even sweet Rollins) seem wildly bombastic in comparison though.

Iommi's hippies.

[fedor8 · 14 September 2012]

BBC's "Classic Albums" series is infamous for getting it wrong, time and time again. And so it is again. "Paranoid" is certainly not the pinnacle of BS's existence. I wondered why they'd picked it over the more obvious choice: the innovative self-titled debut. After about 15 minutes I had my answer. I should have known.

"Paranoid" is chock-full of left-wing anti-war lyrics, which those Vietnam-war-obsessed aging Marxists at BBC eat up like flies eat dung. Any time the BBC can (mis)use an opportunity to spread its "latent" political dogma, they do. Instead of focusing predominantly on the music and the band's influence on future generations of metal bands, the documentary almost comes off as some kind of half-assed political propaganda piece, which I'm sure even the dim-witted lads of Sabbath couldn't have desired or expected. But they ARE such naïve pushovers, aren't they?

Geezer Butler, whose working-class roots protrude out of his every grammatically-challenged sentence, speaks about politics – and it's much like listening to a 5 year-old's take on the world. The word "stuff" basically replaces any noun that Geezer couldn't suck out of his brain's limited vocabulary. "We didn't like war and stuff", he says. Sounds like something Britney Spears would say, huh? Even Madonna sounds smarter when she tries to preach to her sleepy fans. Geezer: "We saw that there was many awful things going on in the world but no-one was saying anything about it." No-one? This must mean that hippies and the student riots are just a figment in all our collective imaginations. If Geezer thinks he had preceded the hippies (in the 70s), or that they never even existed, or that they were right-wing radicals, then he should review history books. (Alas, we don't know whether he can read.) Sabbath appeared AFTER the hippies.

Another doofus who makes an utter fool of himself in the media – yet again – is Henry Rollins, a Socialist punk whose tattooed legs never saw the inside of the Iron Curtain in his entire life. Nor had he ever read one book about USSR's gulags. Henry Rollins tells us rather stupidly "what an awful war (the Vietnam conflict) was", and how "these young men came home awfully twisted". Been watching many Tinseltown propaganda flicks, have we, Henry? Of course, steroid-pumping Henry had never even served in the military, much less participated in ANY war, and yet he considers himself the proper authority to point out the imagined differences between various wars. So WW2 was a pleasant war, was it? WW1: fun too? I bet the Napoleonic Wars were splendid for all involved.

It's just like those left-wing knuckleheads to glorify a war only when it's fought against the Right (hence their glorification of the Spanish Civil War, a so-called "noble conflict"). A war against the Extreme Left is supposedly always an "unpleasant" and unjust war. Henry, in his infinite punky non-wisdom, even suggests that the Vietnam War was the first war that resulted in many traumatized men. Every war has that effect on people, or is Henry perhaps suggesting that the psychology of men has drastically changed over a mere few years? It's only recently that people discovered these all PTSDs etc. 60+ years ago when young men were returning from WW2 they were merely told to "snap out of it" and get on with life. Henry even implies that drug-use "ran rampant with these guys", blissfully ignoring the hippie anti-culture and its open worship of mind-altering substances. Oh, Henry, you're such a brainwashed schmuck.

Another lackluster know-it-all featured is Deena Weinsteen, a Marxist professor of Sociology (they still call it a "science"!) who had already been over-featured by gullible/confused Sam Dunn in his wide-eyed "Metal Evolution" series. Trust her not to disappoint, she once again offers a gem: "Critics hated Sabbath because (critics) were mostly upper-middle class people, and being liberal they wanted lyrics of hope, not doom". Duh, Deena, when have liberals ever trashed music because it had left-wing lyrics? But this is what we have come to expect from the Deenas and other Sociologists of this world: theories awash with nonsense and wild guesswork. Anything to "prove" their left-wing point.

Surprising, give this tough competition in the malarkey department, it's Iommi who dishes out the dumbest statement: "We covered the side that nobody else was. It was all love and peace, all that hippie stuff, flower-power and what-not, and we were covering the Vietnam War, and all that stuff that no-one was mentioning". Just like Geezer, Iommi seems to be totally oblivious to the existence of the 60s/70s hippie culture. It's a phenomenon of legendary cluelessness that I cannot explain. I hope for Tony's sake that he was on something, because I'd rather believe that he is still a full-blown junkie than that he could be this daft.

Considering that a BBC Marxist produced this, and that Sabbath were a bunch of clueless working-class knobs who sided with hippies (whose existence, ironically, they weren't even aware of), it's a real wonder that "War Pigs" was given a generous time-slot, showing half the song with various archive footage of the White House, the Vietnam conflict, and bored, mostly affluent pot-smoking students marching around to the beat of their Marxist professors' drums.

What makes this small-screen joke doubly funny is the fact that these BBC Marxists are using the naive lyrics of a buffoon such as Ozzy to make their point. They couldn't have chosen a more flawed poster-boy if they had tried. The lyrics on "Paranoid" – and most metal albums – if anything should be something to be embarrassed about, not fawned over.

When all is said and done, popular music is to be listened, not excessively mused over, because the tiny minds behind this music are usually uneducated, cocaine-sniffing dopes who've never seen a book between the lot of them (unless promoted by Oprah).