Song of the Day 6/22: Black Sabbath, “War Pigs”

Let’s state right up front that the only thing Donald Trump knows about war is how to avoid serving in one, so he has no idea what form the blowback from dropping bombs on Iran might take. He’s already every other kind of pig, so he might as well add “war pig” to his CV.

Musically, “War Pigs” developed from a jam session. Geezer Butler, Black Sabbath’s lyricist, says its subject isn’t just war but evil. He told the heavy metal site Noisecreep,

“The song was written as ‘Walpurgis,’ which sounds a little like ‘War Pigs.’ But Walpurgis is sort of like Christmas for Satanists. And to me, war was the big Satan. It wasn’t about politics or government or anything. It was evil. So I was saying “generals gathered in the masses/just like witches at black masses” to make an analogy. But when we brought it to the record company, they thought ‘Walpurgis’ sounded too Satanic. And that’s when we turned it into ‘War Pigs.’ But we didn’t change the lyrics, because they were already finished.”

When another interviewer asked Butler about the first two lines of the song, where he rhymes masses with, um, masses, he admitted, “I just couldn’t think of anything else to rhyme with it. And a lot of the old Victorian poets used to do stuff like that, rhyming the same word together. It didn’t really bother me. It wasn’t a lesson in poetry or anything.”

The track appeared on the band’s second LP, 1970’s “Paranoid,” one of heavy metal’s seminal records, and became one of its signature songs.

Black Sabbath is set to reunite all four original members for the band’s final show – and this time they mean it! – in their hometown of Birmingham on July 5. The Back to the Beginning concert, organized by Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, features a long list of musicians influenced by the band. Ozzy Osbourne’s health problems make it impossible for him to make more than a short appearance, so people like Billy Corgan and Sammy Hagar will be on hand to help out.