Black Sabbath: “War Pigs” – the anti-war anthem in a historic live recording
Heavy riffs and fury at warmongers: Black Sabbath’s official channel presents “War Pigs” in a historic live recording – the opener of their 1970 classic “Paranoid”.
Photo: Warner Bros. Records / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
Single video: YouTube · Black Sabbath · youtube.com
On their official YouTube channel, Black Sabbath present “War Pigs” as a historic live recording – one of the songs with which the Birmingham band shaped heavy metal. The track joined the live set early: according to Tony Iommi it grew out of a jam session, and before it was released the band often changed the lyrics considerably on stage. An early version recorded for BBC Radio 1 on 26 April 1970 later appeared on Ozzy Osbourne’s compilation “The Ozzman Cometh”.
The song was written by all four members of the original line-up: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass) and Bill Ward (drums). It was originally called “Walpurgis”, after the witches’ sabbath. The record label felt that sounded too Satanic, so it became “War Pigs” – with the lyrics left unchanged. Butler described it as “totally against the Vietnam War”: a song about rich politicians starting wars for their own benefit. He himself, he said, was dreading being called up. The famous air-raid siren was added in the studio by producer Rodger Bain and engineer Tom Allom.
On 18 September 1970, “War Pigs” came out on Vertigo as the 7:57-long opener of the album “Paranoid”. It has since taken on a life of its own: Faith No More covered it on “The Real Thing” in 1989, and Judas Priest have used it as walk-on music since late 2011. At the farewell concert “Back to the Beginning” at Villa Park in Birmingham in July 2025, the original line-up played together one last time – “War Pigs” was one of four Sabbath songs. Less than three weeks later, on 22 July 2025, Ozzy Osbourne died at the age of 76.