by Tony Iommi
When we turned down an invitation to play Walpurgis at Stonehenge, this sect put a curse on us. We took that very seriously. That’s when we started wearing our crosses. First Ozzy wore this kitchen sink tap around his neck. Soon it would develop into a real cross. At the time we often talked about our dreams and many times it turned out we dreamed about the same situations, which was really weird. Maybe it was the Walpurgis thing, but one night we all had this dream about wearing crosses to protect us from evil. And so we did.
Ozzy’s dad gave us these aluminium crosses that looked like they were made of silver. After the first four he made, he started mass production because we started selling them at gigs to make some money. Later Patrick Meehan gave us the gold crosses. He saw us with these aluminium things on bits of string, so I suppose he thought, I’ve got to get them something a bit better looking than that.
I never go on stage without wearing my cross. When I go on tour I always have two things that I really look after: the cross and my thimbles. The cross is big, in fact I’ve hit myself in the face with it a few times. You bend down to get into the car and, bang! That really hurts. Geezer lost his gold one at an Aston Villa football match. Bill still has his tucked away somewhere, but he actually still wears his original aluminium one. I lost my original one. I probably did what I usually do: put it away somewhere and forgot where. I can just see some new owner of one of my old houses suddenly discovering it: what’s this cross . . . and this gram of coke?
Of course, neither us nor our music was satanic. Geezer and his family were very religious, Irish Catholic – he still is – but at the same time he was interested in occultism. He read a lot of books by the English occultist, mystic and author Aleister Crowley. We both had an interest in what happened beyond and got involved in it quite a lot. So he’d get his ideas from that. This certainly played a major part in that first album. I think Geezer felt that the music was portraying such a heavy thing, that the lyrical content had to be about something that went with the music. Everywhere else, it was all flower power and everything nice and happy and people weren’t writing about real life: wars and famine and all the other things nobody wants to face. So we saw that and thought we should be doing it. But being accused of having made an occult or, worse yet, a satanic album, was simply ridiculous.
Still, we got a lot of flack. Certainly in America, because there the Church is such a big deal. We’d get to the gig and there’d be ministers and their congregations holding up banners: ‘Don’t come and see this band. They are satanists.’
Then there was a case there of a nurse who killed herself in her apartment, and what did they find? Paranoid on the turntable! So it was our fault. There was an inquest. Paranoid was mentioned and they found it wasn’t to blame. But it was a shock to hear about this case, because it wasn’t what we were about. We weren’t trying to kill people! Besides, if people are depressed and put an album on, they’re certainly not going to kill themselves because of the music.
Then there were the people from the dark side. One night, three witches came to the gig. Well, supposed witches. They saw we had proper crosses on and they cleared off. A bit later, back at the hotel one night, we went up to our floor and there was a whole crowd of people with black cloaks on and candles, sitting in the hallway outside our rooms. We thought, what’s going on here? They really take you too seriously. Bloody hell! We climbed over them and got into our rooms as they held on to their candles, murmuring. We phoned each other up and said: ‘What are we going to do? Let’s give it half a minute and we’ll all go outside.’
So we did. We all went into the hallway, blew out the candles and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to them. They were disgusted, got up and left. But it could have gone the other way. They could have stabbed us!
Later on, around Volume 4, we were playing at the Hollywood Bowl. After the sound check we got back to the dressing room. It was locked up and there was a big red cross on the door.
‘Fucking hell!’
We finally did get the door open and we never thought any more of it. We got on stage and after a while my amp started crackling. It was one of those days. I got really pissed off, turned around and I booted my stack. Luke the roadie was behind it and I pushed it and tried to kick the thing over and then I just walked off. I was like that in those days, I had no patience. As I stormed off, I didn’t even notice there was a guy on the side of the stage with a dagger. He was about to stab me. They eventually wrestled him to the floor and took him away. It turned out he had cut his hand and put that cross on the dressing-room door in blood. He was one of these religious freaks, really out there. They showed the dagger to me and I couldn’t believe it: it was huge. Those were the sort of people you had to deal with a lot, but this one was a bit extreme.
Also in America the head of the Hell’s Angels came to give us his blessing. He said: ‘You get any problem at all, with anything, call me and I’ll get it sorted out, whatever it is.’
What can you say to a man like that making an offer like that? ‘Fuck off!?’ Blam! So we just went: ‘Great! Thanks!’
Maybe we should have taken him up on his offer with the guy with the bloody dagger . . .
22
Ozzy’s shockers
Ozzy just had a weak bladder. One night we went to a club and we had a skinful of booze. Ozzy fell asleep on a couch and as they were closing the doorman said: ‘You’d better get him.’
I said: ‘I ain’t getting him. If you want him out, you’d better move him.’
He said: ‘I’ll fucking move him.’
He picked him up, put him over his shoulder and Ozzy pissed himself, all down this guy’s suit.
Eventually we could afford two to a room. Geezer and Bill shared one room and me and Ozzy shared another. That was better, but I’d be in bed, sound asleep, and Ozzy would wake up at all sorts of funny hours. He’d put the TV on full blast and then take a shower. I’d jump up wondering what the hell was happening, turn the TV off and get back into bed. He’d get out of the shower and turn it back on full blast again. I’d hear him bumping and banging and fiddling around and I’d think, I might as well get up myself now.
When we did get our very own rooms, I thought, this is great! But nothing changed: I’d be in bed at God knows what time, and there’d be a bang on the door. I’d answer it and it would be Ozzy, going: ‘You haven’t got a light, have you?’
‘Do you know what time it is? And you bloody woke me up for a light!’
Ozzy and hotels . . . We were on tour, travelling for hours and hours through a lot of desert land. We came to this shop in the middle of nowhere, so we all piled out of the bus to have a look. There was a big sign saying: ‘Fireworks’. Ozzy went in and bought all the fireworks they had. I said: ‘What are you going to do with them?’
‘Oh, I’m probably going to let them off later.’
When he said ‘later’ I didn’t know he meant as late as he did, and I didn’t know where. It turned out to be in the hotel at four o’clock in the morning. We were in our rooms and I heard these whizzing sounds of rockets flying past. I looked through the peephole of my door and I saw that the hallway was full of smoke. Then it started coming under my door, so I went out. By this time the bloody sprinklers had come on in the hallway and all the rooms. The guests came out in their pyjamas, screaming, not knowing what the hell was going on. It was such a mess.
Meanwhile, Ozzy, absolutely out of his skull, was still in the hallway letting his fireworks off. Of course the police came and took him away. They said to us: ‘You better come down and bail him out!’
We said: ‘You keep him tonight. We’ll bail him out tomorrow. We’ve got to get some bloody rest!’
It was a newly refurbished hotel, but Ozzy’s fireworks had burned the carpets and damaged the walls. They made him pay for it big time, so he learned his lesson there.
Or maybe he didn’t.
And he’s still the same now, always mooning everybody. Even when we were inducted into the UK M
usic Hall of Fame and we played ‘Paranoid’, Ozzy mooned the crowd. Well, the crowd – there weren’t that many people there, but he didn’t think they were enthusiastic enough so he decided to pull his pants down again. You’re playing to people in your business, so what do you expect? They’re not going to jump up and shout and scream; they just sit there politely. And The Kinks were in the front. You don’t expect them to leap up!
It didn’t piss me off, though, it didn’t bother us. We’re used to seeing that.
I’ve seen Ozzy’s arse more times than I’ve seen my own!
23
An Antipodean murder mystery
In January 1971 we flew to Adelaide to headline the Myponga Open Air Festival. We were lured into doing this by the promoter, who said: ‘Why don’t you come and stay for a week’s holiday? All expenses paid!’
Really great for us. We got there and he turned out to be a very generous host. He said to us: ‘While you’re here: whatever you want.’
We wanted! Caviar and champagne, it was over the top. There were four limousines at our disposal and on top of that he gave each of us a brand new car. He said: ‘For you to use in case you want to drive anywhere yourselves and have a look around.’
The wrong thing to do. We decided to go down to the beach to have a race along the water’s edge. One of the cars got stuck. I tried to tow it out and I got stuck.
‘Ah, fuck!’
Then the tide came in. As the water got closer, we started to panic. We got these oars off this bloke’s boat and we were trying to get them under the wheels. ‘Kchch!’ Broke both his oars. No matter what we did, the cars couldn’t be moved. We watched helplessly as, finally, the water covered both cars. I phoned the promoter up and told him what had happened. He took it in his stride and sent a truck to tow them out. Of course the cars were completely knackered.
In the run-up to the festival I did some radio interviews and at one of them I said: ‘Oh, we’re very lonely, we could do with some women here.’
Live, on air. And what happened? Loads of girls turned up at the hotel. Me and Patrick Meehan ended up with this one girl in our room and then . . . she passed out.
Meehan went: ‘She’s dead!’
Oh, fucking hell! I thought, Christ, she’s dead. She’s dead!
I could see the headlines: ‘Girl found dead in hotel room with two guys’. I just thought, they’ll think it’s us!
Meehan went: ‘We got to get rid of her! We got to get rid of her!’
His idea was to throw her off the balcony and say that she had fallen off it. We were really high up. The thought of it now is absolutely frightening, but in my panic I went along with it. We got her to the balcony, we were trying to pick her up and then . . . she came round.
‘Bloody hell, she’s alive!’
She was probably high on drugs, but, we could quite easily have just tossed her off of there and I would have become a twenty-two-year-old murderer.
‘But your honour, she was dead already!’
I bet that girl doesn’t even know what happened. I’ll probably be arrested now. She will read this book and come out of the woodwork: ‘Yes, there he is!’
‘It was Meehan! It was Meehan!’
Such a shame, really. It was a big festival, everything there went great and the promoter looked after us like you wouldn’t believe. We later heard he went bust.
I wonder why . . .
24
Flying fish
In February 1971 we started our second tour of America. It was great, also thanks to our friends from Mountain. They were a good band, they treated us well and they had plenty of drugs. I really liked their guitar player, Leslie West. Still do. I once said to him: ‘I really like the sound you’re getting, I love the guitar.’
He looked and found me a Gibson that was the same as his. He came over to England and gave it to me. But it was stolen. You have a break for a while and your guitars go into storage somewhere. I had about four guitars go from storage once, and that was one of them. Leslie’s guitar going: that broke my heart.
It was on this tour that we first stayed at the Los Angeles Hyatt, better known as the ‘Riot’, where we met our first groupies. We didn’t really know about that. In Europe the women weren’t as forward as in America. As soon as we walked into reception at the Hyatt these girls came up to us, saying: ‘How are you? Are you from England?’
Before we knew it, everybody had a girl. We couldn’t believe it. ‘Blimey! Is this what America is like?’
And then, later, you’d see them again, with somebody else. We were like: ‘So, that’s what they call a groupie!’
In Seattle we stayed at the infamous Edgewater hotel, where you could fish out of the window. The hotel was built on stilts and leaned over the water. You could get a fishing line at reception, so that you could fish out of the window. And that’s what we used to do. I don’t know why really. Ozzy was fishing out of the window once and caught a shark, which he put in the bath while we did the gig. Of course it died, because the thing was as long as the bath and sharks have to move to breathe. Ozzy then proceeded to cut it up. Blood and shit were everywhere. He tried to . . . I don’t know what he was doing.
Bill was below my room and he had his window open. I caught this shark, it dangled on my line and I swung it into Bill’s room. He was very surprised. Not pleasantly, but very surprised! To have a bloody shark come flying through your window: ‘Ahhhh!’
He threw it out of the window back into the sea, but the room smelled of fish from then on. Actually, all the rooms smelled of fish. You couldn’t wash the floor down or anything, it was all carpeted. I don’t know what they expected their guests to do with the fish they caught.
Another time we tied the line to one of the standard lamps there. We left, came back later and the standard lamp was gone. Gone out the window! So we picked up the bill for that one.
During the last tour we did with Sabbath, when we were in Seattle me and Bill went down to the Edgewater again, just for old time’s sake. They showed us around: there was a Zeppelin room and they were doing a Sabbath room as well.
In the early days there were only certain hotels that allowed bands in, because of the reputation that everybody had. But now we stay all the time at the Ritz-Carltons and Four Seasons, the top hotels. And at sixty-plus years old we don’t throw televisions out of windows any more.
Can’t pick ’em up now.
25
Number 3, Master of Reality
Paranoid went to No. 1 in the UK album charts and, although it hadn’t even been released in America yet, we did feel pressure when we had to come up with our next album, Master of Reality. Because once you’ve had a No. 1 album, where do you go? If you don’t go to No. 1 again, you’re not doing as good, so you’ve got to come up with songs that are going to make the next album at least equally as popular.
Management had us out on the road all the time, with weird schedules. Sometimes we did two shows a day, in different cities. We hardly had any breaks at all. Because of this, and because we didn’t have any songs lying around from previous studio sessions, we went into a rehearsal room and started writing them. I’d come up with riffs and once we got started we came up with songs quite easily. Sometimes it was a bit of a struggle to get enough for an album, because you needed some time to think about them and live with them. And we didn’t have that time. Especially after Paranoid. If we didn’t have enough songs for an album, we’d have to write an extra song in the studio. We’d add little guitar bits to songs as well, to extend them a bit. I also liked to come up with some instrumental guitar tracks, like ‘Embryo’, which serves as an intro to ‘Children Of The Grave’ on the Master of Reality album. It’s a little classical thing to give it all a little space and create some light and shade. If you listen to an album or even a song from start to finish and it’s all pounding away, you don’t notice the heaviness of it because there is no light in between it. And that’s why, sometimes in the middle of songs as well
, I put a light part in, to make the riff sound heavy when it comes back in. ‘Orchid’ served a similar purpose, leading into ‘Lord Of This World’. It was just me on acoustic guitar, a nice little bit of calm before the storm to make the dynamics pop out. At first everybody thought, hmm, that’s a bit odd. But we liked doing stuff outside the box. We wouldn’t think, you can’t do that, you can’t do acoustic stuff, you can’t use orchestras, so we did much more than heavy stuff.
When we recorded Master of Reality in February and March 1971, I got quite involved in it and really started coming up with ideas. We did some stuff that we had never done before. On ‘Children Of The Grave’, ‘Lord Of This World’ and ‘Into The Void’ we tuned down three semitones. It was part of an experiment: tuning down together for a bigger, heavier sound. Back then all the other bands had rhythm guitarists or keyboards, but we made do with guitar, bass guitar and drums, so we tried to make them sound as fat as possible. Tuning down just seemed to give more depth to it. I think I was the first one to do that.
We just weren’t afraid to do something unexpected. Like ‘Solitude’, maybe the first love song we ever recorded. Ozzy had a delay on his voice, and he sang that quite nice. He has a really good voice for ballads. I’m playing the flute on that song as well. I tried all sorts of things in the course of doing albums, even though I couldn’t play them, and after being with Jethro Tull for that short stint, I thought I might try the flute. I did it only to a very amateurish extent, I must admit. But I’ve still got that flute.