Fairies Wear Boots

"Fairies Wear Boots"
Single by Black Sabbath
from the album Paranoid
A-side "After Forever"
Released 18 September 1970
Recorded 1970
Genre Heavy metal[1]
Length 6:14
Label Vertigo
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s) Rodger Bain
Black Sabbath singles chronology
"Paranoid"
(1970)		 "Fairies Wear Boots"
(1970)		 "Children of the Grave"
(1971)

"Paranoid"
(1970)		 "Fairies Wear Boots"
(1971)		 "Children of the Grave"
(1971)

"Fairies Wear Boots" is a song by the English heavy metal band Black Sabbath, from their 1970 album Paranoid. It was released in 1971 as the B-side to "After Forever".

Composition

In the 2010 documentary film Classic Albums: Black Sabbath's Paranoid, Geezer Butler states the music was inspired by the band's encounter with skinheads, who are the "fairies" in the song.[2]

However, in the 2004 release of Black Box: The Complete Original Black Sabbath (1970–1978), Tony Iommi states the title was inspired from an incident when Geezer and Ozzy were smoking cannabis and saw fairies in boots running around a park, [3] and not from an attack by skinheads. [4] In Ozzy Osbourne's autobiography I Am Ozzy he stated he doesn't know what the song is about, but everybody told him he wrote the lyrics.

The song contains an instrumental intro entitled "Jack the Stripper".[5]

Versions

An earlier version of "Fairies Wear Boots", taken from a session for the BBC's John Peel Sunday Show dated April 26, 1970, is on the bonus disc of the Ozzy Osbourne release The Ozzman Cometh.

The song also appears on the band's first compilation album, We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll.

Personnel

References

  1. ↑ Chris Nickson (3 August 2002). Ozzy Knows Best: The Amazing Story of Ozzy Osbourne, from Heavy Metal Madness to Father of the Year on MTV's "The Osbournes". St. Martin's Press. p. 102. ISBN 978-1-4299-5452-5.
  2. ↑ Classic Albums - Paranoid, by Isis Productions/Eagle Rock Entertainment
  3. ↑ Black Sabbath Black Box Original Black Sabbath
  4. ↑ Black Box: The Complete Original Black Sabbath (1970-1978)
  5. ↑ As noted on the labels of early North American Warner Bros. Records pressings of Paranoid, (catalog no. WS 1887), released January 1971.
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