You gotta believe me
Black Sabbath - 'Fairies Wear Boots' (Paranoid - 1970)
'Fairies Wear Boots' by Black Sabbath is one of the Birmingham band's most regarded tracks by fans and critics. It could also be the one most frequently equipping fans with the wrong end of the stick. In the early 1970s, when Led Zeppelin were not just sliding references to J.R.R. Tolkien into songs like 'Misty Mountain Hop' and 'Ramble On', but actually performing whole songs that were alluding to passages in The Lord of The Rings, it would be easy to assume that 'Fairies Wear Boots' could be about what type of go-go boots Tinkerbell wore.
Instead, the types of boots here are Dr Martens, often affectionately known as Doc Martens, which had become a symbol deeply intertwined with various music subcultures across the UK, transcending their original role as workwear. Originating in the late 1940s as a durable boot designed for workers, their adoption by different music scenes began in the 1960s and evolved dramatically over the following decades. In the 1960s, the burgeoning mod scene was one of the first subcultures to embrace the shoe/boot. The mods, known for their sharp, clean fashion sense that included tailored suits and scooters adorned with mirrors and lights, paradoxically paired these sleek ensembles with the rugged, utilitarian boots.
For 'Fairies Wear Boots', however, the subculture that features is skinheads. For the uninitiated, there was a schism amongst the mods in the late sixties with a resulting divergence. As the scene became more mainstream and popular, hordes of less affluent and more working-class kids joined the movement, and there was a kick-back against what was seen as the pretentiousness of the so-called peacock mods (or smooth mods) with the result of a branch of hard mods with shorter hair and fewer suits that represented the working class mods and by the first wave of the early 1970s, clothing became more practical than flamboyant. This is where Black Sabbath come in.
Released on their seminal 1970 album Paranoid, the song showcases the band's ability to blend heavy, doom-laden guitar tones with themes that venture beyond the typical boundaries of rock music of the time. It touches upon encounters with the supernatural or, as some interpretations suggest, drug-induced hallucinations.
The song has a lot in common with much of Sabbath's innovative early work that did so much to lay the foundations for heavy metal, lyrically though it is a juxtaposition of both whimsical and dark humour as Ozzy Osbourne sings about a real-life experience the members of the band had. According to the band members, particularly bassist Geezer Butler, who penned most of the lyrics, the song originated from an encounter with a group of skinheads.
The lyrics were influenced by an event following a 1970 Black Sabbath concert. After the performance, the band was assaulted by a group of skinheads, resulting in injuries to guitarist Tony Iommi and leading to the cancellation of their subsequent show. Butler said in a 2015 interview with Guitar World that;
There used to be fighting all the time. I used to be a football fan—well, I still am—and I’d go down to watch the Villa. I had long hair at the time. Then this one day, the skinheads, or hooligans, turned on the people with long hair, even though we were fans too. So after that, I couldn’t go down there. This other time we did this gig in the seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, and we had a fight with all these skinheads. I think that’s where the lyrics for ‘Fairies Wear Boots’ came from.
There are other conflicting reports about whether the band is calling the Skinheads fairies because it is funny or because the band has already been called fairies because of their long hair.
Before all that, there are 90 seconds of instrumental, which, in the US version of Paranoid, is referred to as 'Jack the Stripper'. Once the lyrics kick in, the song subtly changes gear, blending the realities of street fights and the fantastical image of fairies wearing boots and dancing with dwarves1. As the song finishes, we move away from the skinheads, and the lyrics become more interested in convincing someone that these fantastical scenes did happen ("You gotta believe me!"), which lends itself to Tony Iommi's comment that;
We smoked a lot of dope, so that might be why some of the lyrics are a bit unusual.
Ozzy Osbourne's narrative in the song shifts unexpectedly, reflecting his lyrical style of diverging onto completely different tangents. He may be influenced by the band's psychedelic experiences or simply lamenting with a doctor he goes to see for some post-brouhaha medication.
Musically, 'Fairies Wear Boots' features some of the band's most dynamic and aggressive arrangements. Iommi's guitar solo in the middle of the track is particularly noteworthy, showcasing his skill in crafting melodic solos laden with a sense of doom and foreboding. This ability to infuse heavy metal guitar work with emotive, narrative-driven solos helped to set Black Sabbath apart from their contemporaries, set them up for the long road across their career, and influenced countless guitarists in the genre.
The song begins with a gritty, gnarly guitar riff by Iommi, which sets a potent and slightly ominous tone. This is quickly joined by the driving bass of Butler and the vigorous drumming style of Bill Ward, creating a dense, immersive sound that became a hallmark of Black Sabbath's style. Ozzy Osbourne's distinctive vocals weave through this heavy instrumentation, telling a surreal and engaging story.
The placement of "Fairies Wear Boots" towards the end of the album acts as a climactic conclusion to an album filled with war, paranoia, and alienation themes. It complements the album's darker themes by injecting a bizarre yet light-hearted story, showcasing the band's versatility and flair for blending the heavy with the whimsical. The final 45 seconds or so sees the guitar step up a notch and phase in and out on a dualling pair of strings at the highest pitch before we fade out before it does.
Potentially, this draws from Polari, a slang developed by the UK's LGBTQ community to evade persecution and legislation of the time. In Polari, 'dwarf' referred to a short man with significant genitalia, adding a provocative layer to the lyrics. This term also appears in Soft Cell's explicit 1981 song 'Sex Dwarf'.