Cover Stories: War Pigs

My first memory of really hearing War Pigs.  After a night of running around, ferrel but harmless, with our teenage boy-crew, I snuck noiselessly as the dawn (or so I thought) back to my house. Crept up the stairs, as dawn crept in the window and with else to do, laid in bed, put on my headphones, and put Paranoid, Black Sabbath's second album on the turntable.  

It wasn't the first time I heard it. I owned the album, along with Zeppelin 4, Deep Purple Made in Japan, Aerosmith Live Bootleg - all the stuff every boy kept in his room in 198___. 
​

War Pigs was the first track. 

The first power chord falls, like the hammer of judgment, heavy as death itself.

The air raid sirens commence, just as they were tested every Wednesday at noon in our neighborhood, to warn us that we had seven minutes to get in the basement before Russian Warheads rained fire and radiation from the skies. 

Ahen, after 7+ minutes the record speeds to end the "Luke's Wall" outro, I panicked, thinking my spirit was leaving through the top of my head. 

Oh, I forgot to mention - I'd taken about 3 and a half hits of 4 way windowpane a type of LSD popular at the time.

I'd read Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, and was intrigued. I wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. Regardless, we were kids, ferrel but harmless, had absolutely no interest in microdosing - let's just say that much. 

I'm the last guy to romanticize psychedelic mind expansion. There's a right way and a wrong way to do everything. All I'm saying is that objectively speaking, this was a memorable and perhaps even pivotal experience in the life of young Max. 

But after that, War Pigs once receeded to cultural wallpaper, mere Stoner Arena Rock. I never stopped loving Sabbath, but Ozzy left on his own Crazy Train, and the Clash, the Pistols, the Ramones and Blondie came along.

The river of life flows on. Bananas grow brown, the rich grow richer, and ask unlikely as it may seem, young losers from Seattle get jobs, fall in love, have children, move to Southern California.  

In 2014 I had the opportunity to work with the Flaming Lips - which is the story for another post. 
About that time, The Flaming Lips did a cover of War Pigs - an iTunes exclusive.

As a cover, it's remarkable in it's note-for-note loyalty, especially the drums. It's a sincere ode and reverence to the original. As social commentary, because it was dug up from my past and revinvented, something that had become cliché, transmuted to heartfelt social commentary, it had more poignancy.

​I found myself bawling my eyes out. 

Generals gathered in the masses,
just like witches at black masses. 
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerers of death's construction. 
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning. 
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh Lord, yeah. 

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why shold they go out and fight? 
They leave that to the poor. 
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait till their judgment day comes. 

Now in darkness world stops turning
Ashes where their bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has struck the hour. 
Day of judgment, God is calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing spreads his wings
Oh lord yeah. 

And just in case you think I'm losing my literally chops, here's a passage from the original Heavy Metal songwriter, a few centuries before Geezer Butler turned his fascination with Satan and the dark arts into social commentar.

Fom Milton's Paradise Lost, this is God talking about how mankind has brought his own woes upon himself - 

See with what heat these Dogs of Hell advance
To waste and havoc yonder World, which I
So fair and good created, and had still
Kept in that state, had not the folly of Man
Let in these wasteful Furies ... 
- Milton, Book 10, Paradise Lost

The only thing the Flaming Lips add to the original is a recurrent voice-like sound effect, asking "why? why? why?"  

Peace my friends.