by Tony Iommi
35
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath
We recorded Sabbath Bloody Sabbath in Willesden, north London, and produced it ourselves. The ‘direction Patrick Meehan’ credit was on the album sleeve again. We felt there was less ‘directing’ than ever, as Meehan was expanding his business more and more and we were probably not getting the attention we should have had. That began gradually and the first cracks in our relationship started to show. I really worked hard on that album. I tried a lot of different stuff. It was a matter of constantly being in the studio creating sounds. Back then you had to make them yourselves and it took a while. Now, with the computer, it’s bang, okay, next.
The riff of ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’ was the benchmark for that album. It was a heavy riff, then the song went into a light bit in the middle, and then back to the riff again: the light and shade I’m always looking for. Ozzy sang very well on it, actually on all of the songs on the album. Very high!
Geezer wrote lyrics for the song with lines like ‘the race is run, the book is read, the end begins to show, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, nothing more to do’. I don’t know what inspired him to write that, but it could be about him thinking it was all over when we got writer’s block. But after that song the rest followed without any great problems. The other guys came up with ideas as well. Ozzy had bought this Moog synthesiser. It was like the top of the range, but he didn’t really know how to work it. I don’t know who could understand it either, it seemed really complicated to me. But he got this one sound out of it and he came up with ‘Who Are You?’. It worked really well. I just put a piano bit in the middle of that one. And the initial riff for ‘A National Acrobat’ was written by Geezer, and then I added bits to it. Geezer can write some great stuff. It’s just getting it out of him. This was probably the first one he did that got on to an album.
Rick Wakeman played on ‘Sabbra Cadabra’. He wouldn’t accept any money for that, so we paid him in beer. We’d always have a bit of a laugh with him. On the end of that song Ozzy’s saying stuff like ‘stick it up her arse’ and all that, just as a joke. It was never meant to be on the album as this track was supposed to finish well before Ozzy started ranting and raving, but, because Rick was playing on it, we just kept it going. Then we thought, we’ll be crucified doing an album with all that on it, so we put phasing over it so you can’t tell what he’s saying. But all that foul language is on there, just jumbled up a bit.
Apart from the single ‘Paranoid’, we couldn’t gain any radio airplay. One of the few who gave us a chance was Alan Freeman, the BBC DJ whose nickname was ‘Fluff ’. He liked us and played ‘Laguna Sunrise’ as the theme tune for his programme, The Saturday Rock Show. So when I came up with another quiet instrumental I thought, well, I’ll call this song ‘Fluff ’, after him.
On ‘Spiral Architect’ we used strings again, arranged by Will Malone. Will has a nice, weird way of thinking. It was again a bunch of serious people coming in and playing those strings. I didn’t play bagpipes on this song, although I tried. I just thought for a minute I could play them, so I sent one of the crew out to buy me some bagpipes at this Scottish shop. I started blowing, without any result. This went on and on; it was a real waste of studio time. I went: ‘Take them back to the shop, tell them they’re not bloody working!’
He took them back, the bloke at the shop played them and said: ‘Nothing wrong with these.’
I thought, oh no. I then attached them to a vacuum cleaner, to see if we could blow the bag up so I could just play it. But of course the only noise you got was ‘Wuuuuuhhh’, from the vacuum cleaner. I tried for ages, but all I could get was something that sounded like a dying cat: ‘Wiiiihhuhhwiiiuh.’ So in the end I gave up on that. Of course we could have got a Scotsman to do it, but we always tried things like these ourselves. The first time me and Geezer wanted strings, we thought we could play them ourselves, multi-track the instruments and make this into an orchestra. We got a violin and a cello and it sounded awful: ‘Wooohhooo, yieieiehieieieieh.’ I could hear what I wanted in my head but it wasn’t coming out in our hands. We tried until we said: ‘Oh fuck it, we’ve got to get an orchestra in!’
It was the same with the sitar. I couldn’t play that either. I had all these great ideas, but they never materialised. I’ve still got that sitar somewhere. Got rid of the bagpipes, though.
The album ended with a little bit of applause. Our engineer put that on and we thought, oh, that’s funny, and it ended up on there. Sometimes these little things did, and sometimes they didn’t. Actually, on one of the earlier albums, when we were working with engineer Tom Allom, we spent an hour and a half marching up and down these stairs, singing: ‘Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go.’ We were coming all the way down these three flights of stairs and there was a microphone at the bottom, so the sound we made was getting louder and louder. And Tom kept going: ‘No, no, go back, do it again.’
We were dead at the end, but we kept doing it: ‘Hi ho, hi ho.’
The idea was to walk down and eventually slam the door and ‘duh-duh-duh-duh’ come into a track. It looked like a good idea until we tried it and it sounded awful. So we scrapped it.
The album cover had great paintings by Drew Struzan, with the good on one side and the evil on the other. On the inside it had a picture of the band in what should have looked like an ancient room, except there was a three-point power plug down there on the wall. That sort of blew it a bit, really.
Even today, I find that the music, compared to the previous records, has more class about it, more arrangements, more shine if you like, and it’s more adventurous. It was a leap forward. We used strings and God knows what else; we really expanded. That’s why, for me, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was the pinnacle. And then the next one would be Heaven and Hell, which created that same vibe for me again.
36
The California Jam
We rounded off 1973 with a couple of UK dates in December. After the Christmas break we did a few European gigs before flying to America for a lot of shows in February. We often got stuck with the same bands when we went to the States. We always seemed to have Edgar Winter, Johnny Winter, Brownsville Station or Black Oak Arkansas opening for us. It was like: ‘What, Black Oak Arkansas? Oh dear, not again!’
After America we went home to take some time off. Next up was the California Jam on 6 April 1974 at the Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, near Los Angeles. We were going to be rehearsing out there prior to the gig and we sent Spock and the rest of the crew over there first. But then this almighty row broke out between Deep Purple and ELP about who was going to close the show. They were trying to involve us in it as well. We thought, we better hang on, this whole thing is blowing up. Purple wanted to close it, and then ELP as well, so Patrick Meehan at some point said: ‘We’re not going out, it’s off.’
We agreed: ‘We don’t want to get involved in it, we’ll pull out.’
Then Spock phoned me at something like four in the morning: ‘You’ve got to come! Everybody wants to see you! It’s going to be an almighty ruckus if you don’t show!’
I phoned the other guys, going: ‘We got to get out there, get on a flight!’
They thought I was joking: ‘Oh, hahaha!’
‘Seriously. We’ve got to get out there. I’ve heard from Spock . . .’
We got on a flight at the last minute. We got out there and we just said: ‘Look, we don’t care. We’ll just go on, whenever.’
And that’s what we did. We went on and ELP closed the show. It was strange: one moment you’re home in bed and the next you’re flying to a gig. We hadn’t played for five or six weeks, we didn’t rehearse; it was a one-off, so it was a bit hairy.
We all get stage fright on certain occasions. It depends. The first gig of a tour usually makes you go: ‘Ooooh!’ The second gig is much more relaxed. And that’s the one where everything goes wrong. You also have the gigs where everybody you know comes to see you, like the Hammersmith Odeon in London, the Forum in Los
Angeles and Madison Square Garden in New York. All your friends and the press are there and you get worried: ‘Oh fuck, everybody’s coming down tonight. If anything goes wrong . . . I’ll be glad when this one’s over!’
It’s like when you’re recording a show. Nine times out of ten when you think about being recorded you make a mistake. It’s that edgy feeling you have. At regular shows you don’t care, you just get on and do it, and it becomes second nature. But the California Jam, what with the weird lead up to it and hundreds of thousands of people there, was nerve-wracking. And it was televised, which made it even more terrifying. But stagefright never lasts. We got on stage, played, and it was okay.
But the gig was good. It was just the shock of it all. But I think it worked.
After the California Jam we toured the UK in May and June, taking a break from the road until November, when we rounded off our Sabbath Bloody Sabbath tour with about eight shows in Australia. AC/DC were supporting us. I didn’t really meet them then, but we certainly got acquainted a couple of years later when they opened for us during our European tour in the spring of 1977. We got on all right with Bon Scott, but there just seemed to be a little bit of friction between the two bands as that tour went on. There was something going down quite heavy between Geezer and Malcolm Young. They were in the bar, got paralytic, got into an argument and somebody pulled a knife. I think it was Malcolm who drew that knife. I don’t think it was Geezer, but it could have been.
We were in Sydney to start the tour and the promoter took us to this really flash restaurant. They closed it especially for us, so we were the only ones there. We were eating this exquisite food using all this nice silverware and everything, and then somebody flicked a pea at somebody else.
He then flicked one back.
Then it was something else, a potato . . .
At the end it was just ridiculous. The dinner was flying everywhere. Everybody was ordering: ‘Can I have another salad, please, with loads of oil and vinegar?’
Kggg, on somebody’s head.
Bill, of course, him being the one who always gets it, was absolutely covered: cake, olive oil, sauce and chocolate all over his face and all down his clothes. He was an absolute mess. We all looked pretty bad. Ozzy had yellow trousers on, we got hold of them and, kggg, ripped the legs all the way up past the hip. The owner of the restaurant was absolutely in bits. One of our guys went over to him and said: ‘They’re going to take care of it.’
He gave him a bundle of money. The owner was suddenly all right then, going: ‘Ah, carry on, carry on!’
We then got the waiters involved even more: ‘Go on, give me a big cream cake under the table!’
And then: ‘Whoa!’ Kggg!
We walked back to the hotel afterwards. We looked awful. Such a picture. With all the drink and everything as well, I actually thought they wouldn’t let us back into the hotel. We walked into reception and the doors opened and there was a ball going on. We walked in on a whole crowd of people in suits and bow ties and ballroom dresses and their mouths dropped. Of course security came rushing in and we were going: ‘It’s all right, we’re guests!’
I bet that promoter hasn’t invited many people out since. He certainly didn’t invite us again.
37
Where did all the money go?
We said to each other: ‘Does anybody know what’s going on? Has anybody seen any accounts?’
None of us knew how much money we had, because it was always a case of anything you wanted, you got. We’d phone Meehan up and any money we wanted: ‘I’ll arrange it.’
Sometimes Meehan sent a cheque and the bloke at the bank would go: ‘It’s bounced.’
‘Aye?’
And I’d phone him up.
‘Oh, I’ll put it in again. Go and put it in again now, it’s all right.’
He was very careful. He always had a wad of cash in his pocket, never used a credit card, I think because that way he wouldn’t have any kind of record of what was being spent. That’s the way he worked. We thought, why can’t we just have a lump sum put into our bank so we know how much we have and work with that? We met these people in the office one day and Meehan said: ‘These are your accountants. They are going to look after all your stuff. You talk to them. Don’t talk to me, talk to them.’
And then all our money went to the accountants. We never had it coming to us direct. We’d have these meetings with them and they’d say: ‘You can’t just get everything you make and put it in the bank. We want to take some of your money and put it in a Jersey account, because of the tax.’
We just said: ‘Oh, well . . .’ We didn’t know anything about that side of it and it all seemed above board. When somebody from a big accountancy firm tells you what they’re going to do with your money, you go along with it. We found out later that they also worked for Meehan.
And then, when we found out that our management contracts with Meehan weren’t signed by him, they were only signed by us, that was even worse. He really caught us with that one, a trick from the early days.
We were so gullible about everything. All we wanted was to play and tour everywhere and go to America and all that. That’s why in the beginning we never questioned Meehan’s way of doing things. And, of course, most of the time we were on tour, so we didn’t require much. It’s only when we came out for another break that we went: ‘I want to buy a new house’ or whatever it might be. Or he’d go: ‘I’ll send another ten grand down’ and everything would be roses.
We started seeing things change a lot at the office. When we got involved with Patrick Meehan at first, it was just him. Then he got more money and bought companies like NEMS, the old Beatles thing, Brian Epstein’s label. He also got on board with David Hemmings, the actor famous for the movie Blow-Up, with a company called Hemdale. So then Meehan was also making movies. One day he said to me: ‘I’m auditioning today. I’ve got all these women coming around.’
I came downstairs and saw this whole queue of gorgeous women outside the office.
And he got into a building company, housing and all that stuff. Of course, when we bought houses, we bought them through this company. Meehan was involved with so much stuff I could never tell what it all was. He even bought a racehorse called Black Sabbath and a racing car as well. We were seeing him flying around in private jets and he’d always have the latest Rolls-Royce. And so would we if we wanted them, so we didn’t argue.
We were told that ‘All the money was put in the London & County Bank’, which went bust at the end of the day.
And apparently our money disappeared with it.
We really started to think when we saw what we thought was a bunch of pretty unsavoury characters getting involved with Meehan at NEMS. These people were nice enough with us, but it made us very nervous. I think David Frost, the very well-known TV personality, was a client and Dave Hemmings also.
Eventually, when we went on tour in Europe, one of them came with us. Willy his name was. Maybe he was there to make sure nothing happened to us, or maybe he was seeing what we were up to, spying for the mob or whoever they were. It was a bit frightening, certainly when one fan tried to approach us and Willy pulled his gun out. It was really heavy.
We hadn’t a clue about what was going on.
The fact that Meehan was gambling like there was no tomorrow didn’t help either. When we had Yes with us on our American tour, we played Las Vegas. It was a very involved situation. We thought, fucking hell, what’s going to happen? How are we going to fight this one?
We were unhappy with the situation, so we had to do something about it. We finally decided to leave Meehan. Somewhat surprisingly, he seemed all right about it at first. I think he’d got what he could out of us and was happy to let us go. So many things went on that we were just not aware of and I think that’s why we felt we were screwed over. We sued Meehan but when it came to it, for whatever reason which I never really understood, we didn’t have a leg to sue on. He sued us in turn and he won. It seem
s to me that from the moment we became successful we’ve been in court. Jim Simpson sued us after we left him and that case dragged on for ever. The Simpson case only got settled around the time we split up with Meehan and Simpson was awarded something like £35,000 that we had to pay him. He also sued Meehan, who had to give him a similar amount.
So much for the old management, but what about a new one? It was hard to trust anybody. We did have managements approaching us, but how do you know they are straight? In those days there were no music lawyers you could turn to for advice, people who knew about the business and who could look at the contracts. A lot of the things that were signed back then had loopholes galore. We decided that the only way to do it was to run it ourselves and have Mark Forster, who already worked for us, do the day-to-day stuff. We just got another accountant and all that rubbish and started again. We had band meetings, but it soon got to be too much for us. We said to each other: ‘Look, we’re not business people, how are we going to do this? We don’t know how this all runs and works. We’re musicians and what are we trying to do?’
We met with lawyers and accountants. That got boring because we weren’t into that stuff at all. Within five minutes Ozzy would be asleep or he’d stand up and walk around and then go out and come back in and go: ‘We’re going to get something to eat or what?’
‘Well, we’ll end this meeting then?’
‘Oh, uh . . .’
‘Sit down.’
‘All right.’
He’d sit down for a bit and you’d see him fidgeting and then he’d ask a few questions: ‘Is that it then? We’re finished?’
Mr Impatient. It was very hard. But we had no option. It was the only thing we could do.
38
Everything’s being Sabotaged!
At the beginning of 1975 we got together to write and rehearse for what was to become Sabotage. The making of that album took a long time because we were in the studio one day and in court or meeting with lawyers the next. A writ is a summons to appear in court and we were being handed writs even while we were working in the studio. It was so distracting. It felt like we were being sabotaged all the way along the line and getting punched from all sides. We were constantly in some problem or another with management or somebody. It made the band into a tighter unit, because it was us against them. We were trying to do music and it was hard to create it in that situation, unless we wrote a song about it, which sort of relieved that situation. That’s why one track is called ‘The Writ’ and the album is called Sabotage.