Iron Man (song)
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The Black Sabbath album containing Iron Man |
"
Iron Man" is one of
Black Sabbath's best-known songs. It was first released on their
1970 album
Paranoid. It was later included on
We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll in
1976.
The song is often learned by
guitar beginners due to its simple yet famous
riff:
In the song, a man goes into the future to see what it is like. When he arrives, he sees the end of the world. He decides to go back to his own world to warn everyone, but on his journey back he enters a magnetic field and somehow his body turns to steel, and therefore people don't listen to him or trust him. He is overcome with rage, and brings about the very end of the world that he'd seen. (This is one classic example of a
Predestination Paradox.)
It has been covered by
Swedish death metal band Mental Break,
Japanese
heavy metal band
Electric Eel Shock, the
punk rock band
NOFX, and pop band
The Cardigans on
First Band on the Moon.
Rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot made a
rap version on his
1988 album
Swass. Rapper
Busta Rhymes did a
remix of the song with
Ozzy Osbourne called
This Means War for his
1998 album
Extinction Level Event (Final World Front). Osbourne also recorded the song with the group
Therapy? for a
Black Sabbath tribute album "Nativity in Black: Tribute to Black Sabbath", the same version which also in his
Prince of Darkness box set. There also exists a version played on jazz instruments by the trio
The Bad Plus. In 2006, when Sabbath was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame American metal band
Metallica played this song along with "
Hole in the Sky" in tribute.
This song features one of the most popular riffs of all time. It is frequently used in television and movies, including
Beavis and Butt-head,
School of Rock,
Futurama,
The Simpsons,
King of the Hill,
Lords of Dogtown and
Detroit Rock City.
In the 2000s "Iron Man" became a staple of American high school marching band music at football games (King of the Hill
demonstrated this in flashback sequences showing Bill in his football stardom days).
Bob Rivers used the Iron Man riff for his parody, "I Am Santa Claus"; Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne appeared in a video for the parody, watching a performance of the song on a television set until he destroys the set in disgust. Alice in Chains also parodied the song in a short non-listed track (usually known as "Iron Gland") in their album "Dirt".
This song appears in the PlayStation 2 game Guitar Hero.
A remixed version of the song also plays during the main menu screen of the Xbox game Forza Motorsport.
In the arcade version of the game Ninja Gaiden, also known as Shadow Warriors, the second level boss theme is highly reminiscent of this song.
There is also a doom metal band that goes by the name Iron Man, a former Black Sabbath tribute band.
The song "Powdered Milk Man' by The Aquabats parodies the song's intro, where "I am Powdered Milk Man" is said instead of "I am Iron Man".
When Ozzy Osbourne recorded a heavy metal cover of the disco-era song "Stayin' Alive" for his 2005 boxed set Prince of Darkness'', he added the lyric "I am Disco Man" to the opening of the song, presented with the same distortion effect used on the lyric "I am Iron Man" from the opening of "Iron Man".
Metallica and Ozzy Osbourne recorded a "Mettallica-ed" version.
In
2000 (30 years after the song was first released), it won the
Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance.
Iron Man also won spot #310 in
The Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Songs Ever Written.
Iron Man was awarded the #1 spot on VH1's
40 Greatest Metal Songs in 2006.
*
Iron Man Lyrics*
Video of Guitarist Demonstrating How to Play Iron Man
