Fairies Wear Boots

"Fairies Wear Boots"
Song by Black Sabbath
Released	1970
Format	45 RPM
A-side	Fairies Wear Boots
Recorded	1970
Genre	Heavy metal, hard rock
Length	6:14
Label	Vertigo
Writer	Iommi, Osbourne, Butler, Ward
Chronology
"Rat Salad" (7) "Fairies Wear Boots"

"Fairies Wear Boots" is a Black Sabbath song from their 1970 album Paranoid.

In the liner notes to Black Box: The Complete Original Black Sabbath (1970-1978), Tony Iommi states that the song title comes from when "Geezer and Ozzy were smoking outside and witnessed fairies in the park, running around wearing boots. As far as Tony knows, it didn't come from an attack from skinheads." Afterwards, they wrote the lyrics to "Fairies Wear Boots". Geezer Butler states in the documentary film "Classic Albums: Black Sabbath's Paranoid" that the song was indeed inspired by an encounter with skinheads, who the band members then derogatorily referred to as "fairies" for the song. The song contains an instrumental at the beginning called "Jack the Stripper".

An earlier version of "Fairies Wear Boots", taken from a session for the BBC's John Peel Sunday Show dated April 26, 1970, is on the bonus disc of the Ozzy Osbourne release The Ozzman Cometh.^{[citation needed]}

Cover versions

• American all-female metal band Phantom Blue covered the song on their 1995 album Prime Cuts & Glazed Donuts.
• American thrash metal band Flotsam & Jetsam recorded the song in 2008 and included it on the remastered version of their fifth studio album, Drift.
• American glam rock band Toilet Böys include the song on their EP Sinners and Saints.
• Rose Hill Drive, an American power trio, covered "Fairies Wear Boots" at the 2007 Hyde Park Calling festival.
• American jam band Widespread Panic covered the song during their summer 2007 tour and opened the 10-31-2010 NOLAween show in tribute to Ozzy who was playing at the nearby Voodoo Experience.