"Paranoid" was the first Black Sabbath single release, coming six months after their debut album was released. Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler said (from Guitar World magazine, March 2004): A lot of the "Paranoid" album was written around the time of our first album, Black Sabbath. We recorded the whole thing in about 2 or 3 days, live in the studio. The song "Paranoid" was written as an afterthought. We basically needed a 3 minute filler for the album, and Tony came up with the riff. I quickly did the lyrics, and Ozzy was reading them as he was singing. Paranoid was also used as the name of the album, and somewhat unusually, the word paranoid is never mentioned in the lyrics. Originally the band had wanted to call the album War Pigs after the song of the same name, but the record company persuaded them to use Paranoid instead because it was less offensive.
