Iron Man

by Tony Iommi

  Apart from legal harassment, we were also having technical problems in the studio. We had a hard time recording ‘Thrill Of It All’ and eventually we got it down after no end of takes. Soon after we went to a bar across the road to play darts and Dave Harris, the tape guy, came over and said: ‘We’ve got a problem.’

  I said: ‘What?’

  He said: ‘One of the technicians has aligned the tapes up on the master tape.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘I’m not, honestly!’

  Their job was to put this series of reference tones, basically a bunch of beeps going from higher to lower pitch, on to a master tape so it’s all aligned and ready for you to use. You had to in those days: align the heads and everything, make sure it was all right. He would set it all up on the tape machine and go: ‘That’s fine, you can use it.’

  But he had mistakenly put the tones on to the master tape of ‘Thrill Of It All’. We listened to the recording of the song and suddenly it was: ‘Doo-doo-doo-doo.’

  He’d wiped enough off so we had to record the whole thing again. It was such an ordeal. We didn’t kill Dave but did actually give him a nod for his screw-up on the album sleeve: ‘Tape operator and saboteur – David Harris’.

  We produced Sabotage ourselves. The band disappeared most of the time so it was sort of left to me and the engineer. I got more and more involved with the production side of things, but it wasn’t like I would sit there and tell the other guys what to do, because they knew what to play, they put their parts to it. I just spent a lot more time in the studio because, when it came to doing the guitar bits or mixing, it would take longer and I’d be more into it than they were. I didn’t mind so much. I’d be there to the death.

  Sabotage has a couple of unusual tracks, like ‘Symptom Of The Universe’. That has been described as the first progressive metal song and I won’t disagree with that. It starts with an acoustic bit, then it goes into the up-tempo stuff to give it that dynamic, and it does have a lot of changes to it, including the jam at the end. That last bit was made up in the studio. We did the track and after that finished we just started jamming. I started playing this riff, the others joined in, we kept it going and we ended up keeping it. Then I overdubbed it with acoustic guitar. A few things we’ve recorded came from jams like that. We’d just keep going on the thing and so the end of the song sometimes became longer than the song itself. A lot of our songs tended to be long anyway. Like ‘Megalomania’: we carried on and on with that until we just faded it out. Some of those tracks were probably twice as long as you hear on the album, but we had to fade them out.

  I wrote ‘Supertzar’ at home with a Mellotron, to create choir sounds. I put heavy guitar to that and it really blended well. I thought, I’d love to try this in the studio, it would be great if we could use a real choir. So I booked the London Philharmonic Choir. They came down and were all set to go at like nine o’clock in the morning. Ozzy didn’t know anything about this. He walked in, saw all these people and he walked out again.

  ‘Fucking hell, it’s the wrong studio!’

  He came back and went: ‘What’s going on, who are all these people in here?’

  ‘We’re just trying this song.’

  ‘Uh . . . Oh.’

  This woman came along with a harp, because I had a harp at home and I could only play ‘ding, dong’. She said: ‘What do you want to hear?’

  ‘Well, sort of like “ding, dong”. That’s what I am playing.’

  She said: ‘Ah, something like this . . .’

  And her fingers flew over the strings.

  ‘Yeah! That’s it!’

  I felt like such an idiot. What was I doing, asking her to play ‘ding dong’? But to my knowledge it had never been done before: a heavy guitar riff with a choir and this harp. It was a challenge. I thought, there’s a fifty-piece choir here and this harp player, this better work out. But we did it and it sounded really different and really great.

  The Sabotage sleeve is probably our most embarrassing one. It had us posing in front of a mirror that reflected the wrong way round. We turned up at this photo session for it and Bill said: ‘I don’t know what to wear.’

  He turned to his wife: ‘Can I borrow those tights?’

  He put her tights on, but he had this checked underwear underneath that was shining through. Typical Bill. Ozzy didn’t do much better, dressing up in some sort of Japanese mourning gown. I’ve even heard it being described as ‘the homo in the kimono’. Such a naff thing; we’re all so different there. Fucking hell, we’ve had trouble living that down over the years!

  On Sabotage the sound was a bit harder than Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and my guitar sound was harder as well. That was brought on by all the aggravation we felt over all the business with managements, lawyers and writs. Sabotage did all right, but it didn’t sell as well as the previous albums. It’s the way it goes with everybody: you can’t go up and up and up, things go up and down. Other people come in and other music takes over. The taste of people moves, it changes. And yet we still plod on, doing what we’re doing. Even so, we’ve been pretty lucky with our fans because they’ve been very loyal. We did go through a period, certainly in the Paranoid days, of attracting a lot of screaming teenagers, which wasn’t our sort of audience at all. But they go for anything in the Top 10. We didn’t want to be involved in that because it wasn’t us. We weren’t about the pretty boy image; it was purely the music for us. That’s one of the reasons all our albums keep selling really well after all these years. I can’t believe the way it goes, it’s just phenomenal. It must be that new kids are coming around to buying it.

  39

  Bruiser in a boozer

  My old friend Albert Chapman was the manager, doorman and whatnot of a club in Birmingham. I said: ‘Do you fancy coming and doing a bit of work with us in Australia?’

  He went: ‘Oh, I’d love that!’

  This was in November 1974. After travelling with us to the other side of the world he stayed on, doing the 1975 Sabotage tour, which took us to America for the summer. On a couple of dates we had Kiss supporting us. Their show was really interesting to watch. I couldn’t believe what was going on, all these costumes, the make-up, fire breathing, fireworks shooting out of the end of guitars and God knows what else. I had never seen anything like it.

  At first we didn’t get on with Kiss. We even changed the first letter in the sign with their logo from a K to a P. We didn’t even know who the guys in Kiss were then, because we’d never seen them without their make-up. They’d be at the airport the same time as us, waiting for a flight, a group of guys, long hair, spots all over them probably because of all the make-up, and we’d go: ‘Yeah, I bet that’s them!’

  As time went on, we came to know them and got on with them quite well. Years ago I did an American TV show called Rock School with Gene Simmons. They recorded it over here in England and the idea of it was to teach kids how to play. Gene’s done a series of them. He’s all right. Every time I see him now I just take him with a pinch of salt. He’s telling me how much money he’s earned and how to earn this and how to do that. But that’s the way he is. It’s just him.

  After this very extensive American tour we did ten dates throughout the UK, some of them with Bandy Legs from Birmingham opening for us. I had met their guitar player, Geoff Nicholls, through Albert Chapman, who managed them. They later changed their name to Quartz. Albert signed them to Don Arden’s label, Jet Records, and he asked me if I would be interested in producing them. I liked some of their songs and I ended up doing it. When you’re involved in your own stuff, you have a routine with what you’re doing. When it comes to somebody else, you’ve got to put a different hat on. All in all it was a good experience for me.

  Geoff Nicholls was their main songwriter. He reminded me of myself, how he liked to get things done and work hard at it. He was creative, he loved playing guitar and keyboards and he sang as well. After Quartz fell apart, Geoff would work with Black Sabbat
h for quite a long time, playing keyboards and so on.

  As a matter of fact, the Sabotage tour was the first time we took a keyboard player with us. We had always been a four-piece and the other guys wanted to keep it that way, which was understandable. Ozzy simply said: ‘We don’t need keyboards.’

  I just thought that having somebody there to back up the solos would bring more flavour to the songs. Also we were using more and more keyboards and orchestras on our records, and with a keyboard player we could reproduce some of it on stage. So we hired Gerald ‘Jezz’ Woodroffe. He was from Birmingham, where his family owned a well-known shop called Woodroffe’s Music Shop. And, God, did he get some stick! Our crew played him up something terrible. You never knew where he was going to end up; sometimes he was on the side of the stage, sometimes he disappeared from view completely. He had a big nose so he sort of looked like a parrot. We had all these smoke machines and the crew put one of the tubes of a smoke machine facing him. They covered it up so he couldn’t see it and then, when we were playing, we saw this toy parrot flying across on a wire, with its wings flapping. It stopped right in front of Gerald, still flapping. We were in stitches. Then we got to ‘Black Sabbath’, ‘da-daa-da’, and all this smoke blew in his face. The poor bugger took it on the chin, but he wasn’t happy about it. He’s a great musician, but he kept getting all these wind-ups. Funnily enough, to this day it’s happened with every bloody keyboard player we’ve had.

  After the UK it was off to Europe. We hit Düsseldorf on 2 November, Albert’s birthday and my wedding anniversary, so we decided to celebrate. We went down to the Why Not Club. Geezer and Ozzy joined us and so did Dave Tangye and Luke from our crew. Roger Chapman, who used to sing with Family and supported us with his band, Chapman Whitney Streetwalkers, and Nicko McBrain, now of Iron Maiden fame, who was his drummer at the time, were in a different part of the club.

  Our lot were sitting there drinking, having a good time and minding our own business. Then some bouncers from the club started circling our table.

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘Wonder what’s going on . . .’

  It turned out they’d come to watch what we were doing, because there was some trouble caused by some of the Streetwalkers and their lot, and to them we probably all looked the same: ‘Oh, they’re all in that group.’

  Ozzy went to the toilet and Dave Tangye went with him. Somebody said something, or grabbed him, and Tangye dived in to stop it and it turned into an almighty fight. Me and Albert rushed out to see what was going on. We ran downstairs and the bloke at the bottom of the stairs shot Albert in the mouth. The guy put a gun by his face and bang! Albert had a lot of teeth missing from boxing anyway, so there wasn’t too much damage to be done. He was all right. The bullet had gone clean through his cheek. I’ll never forget the bloke who did that. He was wearing a suit and black gloves. Albert then hit him so hard, the guy got covered in blood. It was a bad fight.

  I ended up hitting this one bloke and between punches I noticed he was the chef from the restaurant. I don’t know how he got involved but it was a free-for-all. Like in one of those old westerns, someone would turn around and bang! There were fucking people going over the banisters and falling off the balcony, it was unbelievable. It just went from nothing to this.

  The fight moved outside, into the street. We called this one bloke that Albert was fighting Bumble, because he had a striped shirt on. He was one of the security people over there. He just wouldn’t go down. He’d go down and then get up again, down, up again, down, up, and Albert beat the shit out of him. Then this other bloke stepped in and Albert beat the shit out of him as well. Just horrendous it was.

  Meanwhile, this bloke who had shot Albert went to hit Ozzy on the head with a metal bar. I put my hand in the way and it hit my fingers.

  ‘Aargh!’

  Fucking hell, that hurt. And then I started hitting him. It was mad. I thought, we’ve got to get out of this. These cars pulled up and I screamed: ‘Quick get in the car!’

  I grabbed Albert, jumped in the back and shouted: ‘Hilton hotel!’

  The two guys in front turned around and I was looking down the barrel of a gun. It was the police.

  Ah, fucking hell.

  They put me and Albert in jail. We got out in time for the gig the next night and the audience must have wondered about the state of us. Black eyes and everything. It was a terrible fight, and we got the blame!

  So that was my wedding anniversary and Albert’s birthday.

  We had a fantastic time!

  After Europe, Ozzy hurt himself in a motorcycle accident, so we had to postpone a couple of UK gigs. When he healed we went back to America. We started off in Madison Square Garden, with Aerosmith supporting us. All sorts of strange stuff happened that night. The worst of it was somebody jumping off a balcony. We were told about it after the show. Apparently the guy broke his neck.

  Over the years many things like that happened. We’ve had people climbing up the side of the sound system and falling off, hurting themselves. In America, in the very early days, we had gigs where people got squashed against the railings in front; they’d go underneath and get trampled on. You’d see them being pulled on stage and then carried off over the stage, dead. We heard of kids driving home from the gig and getting killed. And then they had all this Black Sabbath stuff with them . . .

  It’s horrible, but it has happened a few times.

  That same Madison Square Garden show, I got hit on the head by a full can of beer and all this blood poured down my face. I still kept playing away, we finished the song, I went off stage and somebody said: ‘Look, the guy who works for Muhammad Ali is here, who does all the repairs.’

  Being a huge boxing fan, I thought, what’s good enough for Muhammad Ali is good enough for me: ‘Yeah, I’ll have that!’

  He stitched it and put all this sealer stuff on it and he did it in no time at all. I came back on stage and carried on. But I had a hell of a headache.

  Some people go a bit mad; they throw all sorts of stuff. They don’t think about hurting you, they just get a bit stupid. After it happened Ozzy shouted: ‘Fucking idiots!’ but he was allowed to. It was his birthday that day. A cake was wheeled on to the stage to celebrate this, and a girl jumped out of it.

  As Madison Square Garden shows go, this one certainly took the cake.

  40

  Me on Ecstasy

  When we wrote the songs for what was to become Technical Ecstasy, Gerald Woodroffe was a great help to me because I now had somebody I could try out ideas with. The band didn’t get up until something like 2 p.m., so I often went into our rehearsal room earlier to run over some ideas with Gerald. It was good to have somebody along who could play the chords as I was playing the solos.

  Again a pub was not far away, so quite often everybody would go down there, including me. We still managed to write Technical Ecstasy in six weeks and get it all rehearsed and ready to go. Off we went to the Criteria Studios in Miami. We’d heard that The Bee Gees, Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles used it. In fact, The Eagles were recording Hotel California while we were there. They sometimes had to stop because of us, because we were too loud and it was leaking through into their studio: ‘Wrrooaarr!’

  But it was a great place. Again, I was in the studio full time, being very much involved in the production. I was in there night and day, to the point that Ozzy even said: ‘It’s a Tony album.’

  We stayed in West Palm Beach and everybody else was always on the beach. I know it sounds like I’m blowing my own trumpet, but that’s what happened. They wanted to leave it to me, they trusted me to do it and so I was left to do it.

  We also had some bloody laughs there, especially when we played jokes on Bill. He would never allow the maids in to clean his room. One day we got a big load of this really horrible, smelly Gorgonzola cheese, and while somebody kept him talking I sneaked into his room and piled it up under his bed. Many days later I came in again and the smell was atrocious. I went:
‘Phew, Bill, what’s that smell?’

  ‘I don’t know what it is, it must be my clothes.’

  Bill is a dirty bugger; he’d pile his filthy clothes up in a corner.

  ‘When are you going to clean them?’

  ‘I will, yeah.’

  He never sussed out the cheese under the bed. It smelled absolutely vile. He actually started smelling like cheese himself. When the maids eventually went into his room, they must have died.

  One night in the studio, we dressed Bill up as Hitler. He’d had a few drinks, so it was easy. We got some gaffer tape, really strong tape that sticks to most things, and we put it on his head, making his hairstyle like Hitler’s. We made him a skinny moustache as well. We gave him this uniform and whatnot, and he was enjoying it all until we tried to take this stuff off him. We couldn’t get it off his head, because pulling the tape off would mean ripping his hair out. So we basically cut all his hair off. By this time he was well sloshed and he didn’t even realise what we’d done until the next day. He wasn’t very pleased. He looked even scruffier than he usually did.

  Andy Gibb was recording in the studio next to us. He had a doll out at the time, all immaculate with the blond hair and the nice clothes. We decided to buy one of them and transform it into a Bill Ward doll. One of the guys who worked for us was a real artist, and he messed up the hair, put a beard on it and ruined the clothes. It really looked like Bill. We set it up on the recording desk. One day Andy Gibb came in to have a listen to what we’d been doing. He saw this doll and went: ‘Who’s that?’