safari song iron man

Top 50 by Year

Lists Explorer

100 Most Featured Movie Songs

100 Most Featured TV Songs

Iron Man Soundtrack [ 2008 ]

List of songs.

Back in Black

Opening scene

Iron Man (2008 Version)

John O'Brien & Rick Boston

A band performs this song as Rhondy calls for Tony Stark to recevie his Apogee award. (0:06) Tony Stark is seen gambling.

DJ Boborobo

Tony Stark's Award presentation video.

Institutionalized

Suicidal Tendencies

Tony is working on his Hot Rod.

Slept On Tony

Ghostface Killah

Tony and Rhodey get drunk on the airplane.

Concerto In Do Maggiore Per Pianoforte Ed Orchesta: Larghetto

Ramin Djawadi

Tony arrives home and finds Stane playing the piano.

Groovetronic

Terry Devine-King

Plays on the TV screen where a reporter talks about Tony Stark.

Chucho Merchan

At the charity event, Tony meets Agent Coulson.

Emanuel kallins and Steve Skinner

Second song at the charity ball, reporter Christine Everhart informs Stark that his company's weapons, including the Jericho, were recently delivered to the Ten Rings and are being used to attack Yinsen's home village.

Black Sabbath

End credits song #1

Driving with the Top Down (From "Iron Man")

The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra

Add scene description

Trailer Songs

Hey Man Nice Shot

Films with Similar Music

The School of Rock

2003 • 50 songs

2010 • 57 songs

Empire Records

1995 • 52 songs

Suicide Squad

2016 • 54 songs

4 years ago

What is the song that plays when he escapes the cave? i cant seem to find it anywhere, its one of the only songs with lyrics.

back in black

5 years ago

what´s the title of iron man intro scene song in the humvee

did he have to die ? R.I.P Tony

David Arnold

Music Supervisors

External Links

Contributors

WhatSong is the worlds largest collection of movie & tv show soundtracks and playlists.

© 2023 WhatSong Soundtracks. All rights reserved

Quick links

Home » Movie Soundtracks

Soundtrack: Iron Man

(c) Marvel Films

Note: Below is a complete playlist of all 9 songs that can be heard in the movie “Iron Man”. Some of these commercial songs are not included on the official soundtrack album, but are used in the movie.

All 9 songs featured in “Iron Man”:

The original score of “Iron Man” includes 19 songs by the film composer “Ramin Djawadi”.

What’s the movie about? The action film “Iron Man” is about the multimillionaire Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), who works in the arms industry. One day he is kidnapped. For his escape he builds a high-tech and versatile iron armor. He manages to escape with his battle suit. Stark continues to work at home on perfecting the combat suit. His business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) wants the company for himself and wants to declare Stark insane. He also likes Stark’s combat suit.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

The Real Meaning Behind Black Sabbath's Iron Man

The name "Iron Man" is perhaps immediately associated with the Marvel Comics and movies character. Iron Man got his own movie in 2008, kicking off the series that makes up the vast Marvel cinematic universe.

Iron Man made his first comic book appearance in 1963, and it's a common misconception that the 1970 Black Sabbath song "Iron Man," released as a single from their second album, "Paranoid," is based on the comic. Both song and comic book tell the science fiction-tinged tale of a metallic man interacting with the universe. However, in a 2019 interview with Louder Sound , Sabbath bassist and "Iron Man" lyricist Geezer Butler set the record straight, telling the interviewer, "My parents never let me read American comics when I was growing up. I knew about Batman and Superman, but that's about it ... So whenever someone's said to me over the years: 'Oh, didn't you write this about the superhero?', I'd just say: 'Sorry, never heard of him.'" 

The idea for the song actually came from the band's frontman Ozzy Osbourne, who per Butler was suggesting ideas for future Black Sabbath songs. "I can't exactly recall what Ozzy said, but it was something like: 'Why don't we do a song called Iron Man, or maybe Iron Bloke.' That got me thinking about a lump of metal, and then putting it all into a science-fiction context. It all flowed from there."

Iron Man is now everyone's song

Butler (shown above) was reading a lot of science fiction books at the time and was further inspired by then-current events such as the space race and increasing attention paid to pollution and other environmental concerns. He went on to tell Louder Sound  about how he came to write the song's dark, futuristic lyrics: "I was fascinated by what might happen to a man who's suddenly transformed into a metal being. He still has a human brain, and wants to do the right thing, but eventually his own frustrations at the way humanity treats him drives this creature to taking extreme action. It's almost a cry for help."

Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward said of the song's legacy, "In America, if you go to most sports events you'll hear it at some point. It's now a part of the culture of the country. People recognize it as soon as it starts up. It's very musical, but also so theatrical. I think its popularity now is such that, in a way, it no longer belongs to Ozzy, Geezer, Tony [Iommi] and me, it's now everyone's song." 

Iron Man (the movie) nearly didn't feature Iron Man (the song)

The song also received a boost when it was used in the 2008 movie "Iron Man," but its inclusion in the Marvel blockbuster very nearly didn't happen. As reported by Screen Rant , the book " The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe " tells the story of how the movie's associate producer, Jeremy Latcham, had to convince Marvel executives to shell out the money for the rights to the song. As Latcham recalled the conversation, "I said, 'Here's what I know — you guys pay me to tell you what I think is cool. I'm telling you that this piece [of music] is cool. I'm telling you that if you take the 'Iron Man' song out of this piece, it is not cool. It's a binary thing.'" Marvel finally agreed to pay Black Sabbath for the use of the song just one week before the studio used it in the "Iron Man" movie teaser that premiered at 2007's Comic-Con, instantly forging the connection between the Marvel character and movies and the song. 

In 2012's "The Avengers," Robert Downey Jr. appeared once again as Tony Stark/Iron Man and paid tribute to the song and the character's relationship by wearing Black Sabbath t-shirts in several scenes. In an interview with  Metro , Downey said of his character, "I also like the fact that he can pull off wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt for the better part of the film," and admitted he had walked off the set with one of the shirts and kept it. 

The story behind the song: Iron Man by Black Sabbath

With its complex sci-fi storyline and equally weighty sonics, Iron Man went on to become so much more than just another Black Sabbath track – but don’t go thinking it’s about the superhero

There’s a well-thumbed story that the meaning of Black Sabbath 's Iron Man was inspired by the Marvel Comics character of the same name. But it’s not true. Although Marvel had established that superhero in 1963, Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler , who wrote the lyrics for the iconic song, had never even heard of him in 1970. 

“My parents never let me read American comics when I was growing up,” he says. “I knew about Batman and Superman, but that’s about it. For me it was all about the Beano and the Dandy . So whenever someone’s said to me over the years: ‘Oh, didn’t you write this about the superhero?’, I’d just say: ‘Sorry, never heard of him.’” 

The idea for Iron Man (which first appeared on the second Black Sabbath album, Paranoid , released in 1970), actually started with Ozzy Osbourne .

“I can’t exactly recall what Ozzy said, but it was something like: ‘Why don’t we do a song called Iron Man , or maybe Iron Bloke’. That got me thinking about a lump of metal, and then putting it all into a science-fiction context. It all flowed from there.”

The meaning of the storyline – a self-fulfilment prophecy, mixed up with time travel – is actually quite complex. It’s about a man who goes into the future and witnesses the apocalypse. Going back to his own time, he encounters a rogue magnetic field, which turns him into a mute, steel creature. Unable to talk, he still tries to warn people about the impending end of the world, but is only mocked for his troubles. Angry and bitter, he eventually causes the devastation he’d warned everyone about. Ultimately the would-be hero becomes the villain.

“I was heavily into science fiction at the time,” Butler recalls of almost 50 years ago. “Remember, this was the era of the space race,” he says. “A lot of the stuff I was writing about was inspired by those sorts of stories. I was fascinated by what might happen to a man who’s suddenly transformed into a metal being. He still has a human brain, and wants to do the right thing, but eventually his own frustrations at the way humanity treats him drives this creature to taking extreme action. It’s almost a cry for help.

“What I always attempted to do with my science-fiction plots was to make these relevant to the modern world at the time,” Butler continues. “So I brought war and politics in. It was also an era when the whole issue of pollution was starting to get attention, and this affected my thinking quite a bit.”

Classic Rock Newsletter

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!

Former Sabbath drummer Bill Ward reckons that, musically, the song was nothing like anything else the band had done up to that point: “For me, this is a special song for the band. It was just so different. As soon as you hear that ominous start, you know something’s building. For me, the drumming was a real challenge to get right in the studio. But it’s also a drummer’s dream to play.

“Technically, we had real problems getting it right in the studio,” Ward recalls. “The trouble was that the microphones available to us in 1970 just weren’t up to the task of capturing the power and depth of the sound. I played very loud back then, and wanted a powerful bass drum sound; that’s what the song needed. Yet all I could get was a dull thud. For Rodger [Bain, producer] and Tom [Allom, engineer], trying to make Iron Man work was so tough. In the end they did an excellent job under the circumstances. Today it would be so easy for a band to get the proper sound on a song like this, because the technology exists.”

Over the years, Iron Man has become not only one of the cornerstones of the Sabbath catalogue, but also credited as one of the most important songs in the history of metal. For Geezer Butler, it is perhaps the track that bests sums up the band.

“I really do feel that when you listen to Iron Man , what you’re getting is the essence of what made Black Sabbath such a special band,” he offers. “It’s fairly simple, yet also has a lot of depth. I’m very proud of what we achieved here.”

Bill Ward believes that the song’s stature has grown over the years, to the point where it has now gone beyond being just a great Sabbath song.

“In America, if you go to most sports events you’ll hear it at some point. It’s now a part of the culture of the country. People recognise it as soon as it starts up. It’s very musical, but also so theatrical. I think its popularity now is such that, in a way, it no longer belongs to Ozzy, Geezer, Tony [Iommi] and me, it’s now everyone’s song.”

In 2008, Iron Man received another boost when it was included in the movie of the same name, based on the Marvel Comics creation. That delighted Butler.

“It was a recognition of just how much the song means,” he says with pride. “When you have such a major film using it, then it does introduce it to a new generation, kids who perhaps aren’t aware of who Black Sabbath are but who might be tempted to go and check us out.

“I suppose, because of the film, there’s also gonna be those who see a tie-up between what I wrote 40 years ago and the comic-book character. So, here we go again.”

Sabbath released Iron Man as a single in 1971. Although it reached No.52 in America (nine places higher than Paranoid), in the UK it make no impact at all.

“I think it worked best at the time in the context of the album,” Ward says. “We never thought of ourselves as a singles band anyway. But, over the years, Iron Man has grown and grown. I don’t think we believed at the time that it would turn out to be so special. But that’s the beauty of what happens: it’s the fans who decided this was a great song.”

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for  Record Mirror  magazine in the late 70s and  Metal Fury  in the early 80s before joining  Kerrang!  at its launch in 1981. His first book,  Encyclopedia Metallica , published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the  Anthrax  song  Metal Thrashing Mad  in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021 . 

“Let’s play a little Soundgarden…”: hear a recording of Pearl Jam’s first ever UK show

“I have to prove that I’m capable of doing it, and I wasn’t just being done a favour by Deep Purple”: the two forgotten David Coverdale solo albums that sowed the seeds for Whitesnake

“I got phone calls from my friends saying, ‘What the f*ck is up with that sh*t?!’” Listen to the Slayer cover of Born To Be Wild that Slayer really don’t like

Most Popular

The Meaning Behind “Iron Man” by Black Sabbath

by Jim Beviglia August 23, 2023, 11:19 am

It features one of the most indelible opening riffs in heavy metal history, and the memorable riffs just keep coming throughout the song. The opening line of I am Iron Man , sung in a voice that sounds as if it was in the midst of gargling with hedge clippers, has also etched an indelible place in music history.

Videos by American Songwriter

For nearly six minutes, Ozzy Osbourne bellows with deranged intensity about vengeance and destruction, while bandmates Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward raise the tempo from a sludgy stomp to a breathless chase scene, one where all innocent bystanders seemed destined to be caught and mangled. But just what the heck is going on in Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man?” How did this iconic heavy metal track come to be? And was it Tony Stark himself who inspired the thing? Let’s answer all those questions, by first examining the four men who created this anthem of annihilation.

The Return of the Sabbath

Black Sabbath rose in 1968 from the ashes of other British groups that never quite gelled. At one point, they were called the Polka Tulk Blues Band (can you imagine If that had stuck?) and they went through a few other names before they chose one that suited the tenor of the music they were making. Thanks to Iommi’s incredibly heavy style of guitar playing (in part caused by the tips of two fingers on his fret hand being severed in a factory accident), the sinister bend in Osbourne’s voice, and Butler’s wish to write lyrics 180 degrees away from the flower power vibes popular at the time, their originals sounded like horror movies in miniature.

Such a formula seemed like a recipe for cult status at best. When their self-titled debut, recorded in just two days in the studio, was released in 1970, critics were generally appalled, but the album sold incredibly well. Having struck a chord with a fan base who grooved to the band’s instrumental virtuosity and fury as well as their less-than-sunny take on the world, the Black Sabbath were hustled back into the studio to record a follow-up to their debut.

The old adage about sophomore slumps in music claims that you have a lifetime to write your debut and less than a year to write your second album. That time frame certainly applied to Black Sabbath, who had exhausted the songs they used in their live shows on the debut. As a result, they were forced to write much of their second album Paranoid , which was recorded over three days in June 1970 and released in the UK three months later, on the fly in the studio.

Luckily, they were at the peak of their creative powers. Iommi seemed to pull riffs from the air that would become the basis for heavy metal evergreens like “Paranoid,” “War Pigs,” and, of course, “Iron Man.” The band would then take off into improvisational jams until the song structure was hammered mercilessly into shape. Butler hastily wrote probing lyrics that played off the ominous feel of the music.

Paranoid did even better than its predecessor, reaching No. 1 on the UK album charts. At the time, that success was largely driven by the title track, which was a Top 10 single. But over the years, “Iron Man” has grown in popularity to the point where it’s the song that most casual fans know of the band. 

What’s the Meaning of “Iron Man?”

How the song was first initiated differs depending on which interview you hear or whose memoir you read. Iommi has said that the elongated, bent, two-note riff, in conjunction with Ward’s thumping bass drum, was meant to evoke someone sneaking up behind another person and that Osbourne, upon hearing this, envisioned an “iron bloke” walking around. By contrast, Butler has stated that Osbourne imagined writing a song about such a character first and that the song was composed from that jumping-off point. 

In any case, one thing is for sure: The song has nothing to do with the Marvel Comics character that has since risen to new levels of popularity thanks to Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal in a slew of movies. At the time the song was written, Iron Man was somewhat of a secondary character known mostly by comic book aficionados and not a universal pop culture icon. Lyricist Geezer Butler grew up in a very religious family and wasn’t allowed to buy comic books. Hence, the song title is just a coincidence and the song itself has nothing to do with Tony Stark or his alter ego.

Instead, Butler imagined a sci-fi story about a time traveler who comes back from the future to help society, but who is instead feared and mocked because of how he’s been transformed into an iron creature during his journey. Maybe the reason that the song confuses folks is that Butler sort of buried the lead. It’s not until the song’s third verse that the backstory is mentioned:

He was turned to steel In the great magnetic field When he travelled time For the future of mankind.

The song also contains subtle digs at an overriding lack of empathy in society: We’ll just pass him here/Why should we even care? and Nobody wants him/They just turn their heads . Perhaps that’s why, by the end of the song, it’s understandable if you’re rooting for the Iron Man as he wreaks terrible havoc:

Heavy boots of lead Fills his victims full of dread Running as fast as they can Iron Man lives again.

Due to the force of the music, it’s understandable if some of these meanings get a bit lost. As a purely sonic construct, “Iron Man” is a powerhouse, as intense and pummeling as the title character acts within the song. But its lasting impact on heavy metal and music also rests on the deeper ideas lurking underneath the surface.

And let’s face it: Ozzy’s mutated voice warning, “I am Iron Man” never stops being cool.

Photo by Jorgen Angel/Redferns

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Only members can comment. Become a member . Already a member? Log In .

5 Other Songs by Oliver Anthony That Capture Rural Life

© 2024 American Songwriter

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Black Sabbath Iron Man

Audio with external links item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

6,568 Views

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

In collections.

Uploaded by Luanpenetra on May 24, 2019

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Iron Man 68th in 1970

Added by Bastien

• Highlights 6
• Versions 62
• Adaptations 3
• Web Covers 1

First release by Black Sabbath (September 18, 1970)

Adaptations

An adaptation is a musical work, which uses elements (music or lyrics) from another musical work.

• I Am Santa Claus written by Bob Rivers , Joe Bryant , Spike O'Neill , Terry Gangstad English 1993
• Rautamies written by Hannu Paloniemi Finnish March 3, 2003
• Iron Man written by Soreng Santi Thai March 2010

Iron Man written by Geezer Butler , Tony Iommi , Ozzy Osbourne , Bill Ward English

Iron Man written by Geezer Butler , Tony Iommi , Ozzy Osbourne , Bill Ward instrumental

I Am Santa Claus written by Joe Bryant , Bob Rivers , Spike O'Neill , Terry Gangstad English

Rautamies written by Hannu Paloniemi Finnish

Iron Man written by Soreng Santi Thai

Jestem Ajron Men written by Paweł Kukiz Polish (not verified yet)