Fairies Wear Boots

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

"Fairies Wear Boots"
Song by Black Sabbath
from the album Paranoid
A-side"After Forever"
Released18 September 1970
Recorded1970
GenreHeavy metal[1]
Length6:14
LabelVertigo
Songwriter(s)
Producer(s)Rodger Bain

On original 1970 US copies of the Paranoid album, the song's intro was listed under the title "Jack the Stripper", formatted as "Jack the Stripper/Fairies Wear Boots".[2]

The song has been ranked the 11th best Black Sabbath song by author Christoph Rehe.[3]

Composition

The exact inspiration behind "Fairies Wear Boots" is unclear. In the 2010 documentary film Classic Albums: Black Sabbath's Paranoid, the band's bassist Geezer Butler states that Ozzy Osbourne composed the lyrics after a group of skinheads in London called him a "fairy" because of his long hair. However, Butler also stated Ozzy’s lyrics often went off in random tangents, and the second half of the song was about LSD.[4] Osbourne, in the same documentary, said he wrote the lyrics about LSD. And in 2004, in Osbourne's autobiography I Am Ozzy, he stated that he did not recall what the song was written about.

Versions

A live version of "Fairies Wear Boots", taken from a session for the BBC's John Peel Sunday Show dated April 26, 1970, is featured on the bonus disc of a 1997 Ozzy Osbourne compilation entitled The Ozzman Cometh. The song also appears on the Black Sabbath's first compilation album, We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll.

Osbourne released a live rendition of the song on his 1982 solo album Speak of the Devil.

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. As noted on the labels of early North American Warner Bros. Records pressings of Paranoid, (catalog no. WS 1887), released January 1971.
  3. Rehe, Christoph (2013). Rock - Das Gesamtwerk der größten Rock-Acts im Check: alle Alben, alle Songs. Ein eclipsed-Buch (in German). Sysyphus Sysyphus Verlags GmbH. ISBN 978-3868526462.
  4. Classic Albums - Paranoid, by Isis Productions/Eagle Rock Entertainment
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