The recent death of Ozzy Osbourne made me think back to Black Sabbath’s album Paranoid, which I bought as a rebellious pre-Christian junior high kid (I still have the album; I did not burn it). The more I think about it, I actually find very little uniquely Satanic in the album, other than the name of the group. By contrast, I find much more than would lead one away from God in another album that was popular at the same time in early 1971: Jesus Christ Superstar.
The title cut on the Paranoid album is simply a first-person cry for help by a person who is suffering from mental illness. Likewise, the top-40 single “Iron Man” is a sympathetic portrayal of a Frankenstein-type figure that everyone fears. Indeed, God gets a respectful nod in the song “War Pigs,” where the Day of Judgment comes: “No more War Pigs have the power, in that God has struck the hour.” On this occasion, “Satan, laughing, spreads his wings,” presumably because he thinks he’s got his quota of souls he can keep. Here is the only Biblical inaccuracy I can remember on the Paranoid album; instead of reigning over the damned, the Bible proclaims that Satan will be cast into the lake of fire and be tormented forever and ever. (If I have overlooked anything Satanic on this particular album, please refresh my memory.)
(I am surprised to discover that Ozzy was Jewish by descent. The plot thickens. Ozzy is wearing a large cross on the Paranoid album, as he did much of the time elsewhere. Was this actually a sign of rebellion? Did he intend to dishonor that symbol? Or was he just trying to provoke confusion?)
I never wished to follow Black Sabbath. But I played the album Jesus Christ Superstar repeatedly, desperate to find Christ. I was like the person dying of thirst who would drink from any mud puddle. Superstar was a lousy place to find the real Jesus. In Superstar, Jesus is “just a man” (nothing more), a confused figure whose popularity becomes a stampede that drives him to an untimely death that accomplishes nothing, while Judas is the actual hero, who tries to rescue Jesus from this fate. (See my post "Superstar's Judas: Larger Than Life.")
A more likely place to find Jesus was one year later in the album Godspell. My wife is turned off by the irresponsibility exhibited by the actors that is written into the play, but the Jesus in Godspell was at least attractive, and was Biblical in his teachings. And after he dies, his followers carry him and sing the words “Long live God,” strongly implying that he was God.
Two and a half years after Paranoid and Superstar, I actually found Jesus, when I discovered that salvation was an absolutely free gift, purchased by Jesus’ saving death on the cross.
