This is how Black Sabbath’s second album would have looked if they’d stuck to their original intentions…
When you see the ‘correct’ title of “War Pigs” it makes so much more sense of Marcus Keef’s front cover concept. The pink-clad-warrior idea was obviously intended to reflect the album’s original title and is probably why “War Pigs” was also the first track on the album.
Recorded in June 1970 and released in September just a few months after their debut in February of that year, USA was still deeply ingrained in the Vietnam conflict and anti-war demonstrations were rife in America. Sabbath were due to tour for the first time in support of the debut and new album releases and the new album’s title was deemed to be too inflammatory. The album title was changed to “Paranoid” to coincide with the first single release.
The album went to No.1 in the UK albums chart, and No. 12 in the US, so thankfully the title change appeared not to affect sales in any way, although instead of being identified as anti-war protesters in the US, Sabbath instead were labelled satanists and devil worshippers due to some lyrical content on the first album. Don’t know which is worse!? But it doesn’t appear to have harmed their career…
In this interview Ozzy recalls that the album was due to be called “War Pigs” but after the success of the single “Paranoid”, the change became the obvious step to garner maximum sales of the album. He mentions this at 7 minutes in this interview. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4d8k9-8ZFY&NR=1&feature=endscreen