Iron Man

by Tony Iommi

  Even so, we were all happy to be able to play together again. I think it went better than we expected. As a matter of fact, it went great!

  I went over to the A&M Studios in Hollywood to mix the live album with Bob Marlette. Then these guys from the record company came down and said: ‘Why don’t you write two new songs for the album?’

  ‘Eh . . . right. Now?’

  ‘Now!’

  ‘Oh. What, me and Bob?’

  Because we were the only ones there.

  ‘No, we’ll get Ozzy down as well.’

  To write a song in the middle of a mix is not a particularly good idea. You’ve got your head around how everything should sound, and then you don’t want to be thinking, what are we going to write, how do we start? And if you don’t have the band to start jamming, and you don’t even have Ozzy half the time, it’s bloody difficult. We just dropped the mix and started working on the new songs. I had no ideas lying around, so I had to come up with something there and then. It was a good thing I had a guitar there! And off we went.

  Blimey.

  Bob Marlette used programmed drums, just so that I could put the riff ideas down. That’s how we did it with ‘Psycho Man’: I played a riff and he put a drum to the riff, and then we’d build it up like that. Ozzy came down and disappeared and came down again and went and sat in the other room and got a sandwich and fell asleep and whatever else he did. Quite often he dozed off on the couch in the control room while we were putting the song together. One time he was spark out and then woke up to go to the toilet. He was gone for about twenty-five, thirty minutes. We thought, where the bloody hell is he? We need him now!

  We sent somebody out to look for him, but the guy came back and said: ‘I can’t find him. He might have gone home.’

  We phoned his home, but he wasn’t there.

  ‘Where the fuck is he?’

  Even Tony, the guy who works for him and never leaves his side, didn’t have a clue. Then we heard all this commotion in the hallway. It was another band, and they were going: ‘Oh man, Ozzy Osbourne is in our studio. He’s asleep on the couch!’

  We thought, oh, no!

  Ozzy had come out of the toilet, half asleep, and he didn’t remember what studio we were in. He’d gone into their studio, right in the middle of their recording session, and he’d fallen asleep on their couch. They were out in the studio, playing away, and they came back into the control room and found him snoring away. They were in awe of him, so they weren’t about to tell him to leave. We sent somebody in to get him, but in the meantime Ozzy had woken up, come back into our studio, and, hovering about, he’d knocked a full pint of water into the recording desk and the bloody thing blew up!

  But when Ozzy was awake at our own session he’d be all enthusiastic: ‘Oh yeah, I like this!’

  It was the first time I actually saw him write lyrics down and really get involved in it. We wrote the songs and recorded Ozzy’s and my bits in one day. It was too fast, we never had time to live with them, but the guy from Sony Records was standing outside, waiting to hear them. We got Geezer and Bill to come in later to put their parts down. And that was it. We had the two tracks, ‘Psycho Man’ and ‘Selling My Soul’, but I wasn’t pleased with them. It could’ve been so much better if we’d had more time to work on them.

  At the time it didn’t lead to plans for a new studio album. It was only later, right before Ozzy started The Osbournes, that we actually went into the studio to write a new album. We were there for three or four weeks and managed to put about six ideas down. It wasn’t a very full band effort. We had a go but it was a bit like pulling teeth. We’d jam for a bit and put stuff down, but then Ozzy would disappear or fall asleep on the couch again, or he’d go to make the fire and he’d come in and say: ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Okay.’

  And then he’d disappear again for two hours.

  ‘What happened to the tea?’

  It was like it used to be in the old days. He just didn’t have enough of an attention span to stand there and work a song over. But that’s Ozzy, that’s just how he is.

  Still, we could have done an album. We got the six songs and the idea of Rick Rubin producing the album was brought up. Geezer, Ozzy and myself went to see him at his house in LA. There was a bloke who came in to greet us, he sat us down and we waited. After about ten minutes Rick Rubin came in. I’d never met him and didn’t know what to expect, but he was definitely a character. He was wearing a kaftan and he was like an old hippie in some ways, like a Buddha. Very calm.

  We played him the stuff and he liked about three of the tracks. And that was it: we never saw him again and we never followed it up. It fizzled out because Ozzy started with his television show The Osbournes. It’s a shame, because if everybody had been involved and really got off their arses, we could’ve come up with something good.

  I still have those six songs somewhere. We didn’t do anything with them, but that was as close as we ever got to recording a new album.

  77

  Cozy’s crash

  In April 1998 I was in LA at the Sunset Marquis hotel when I got a call from Ralph. He said: ‘I’m really sorry to tell you that Cozy has been killed in a car crash.’

  It was a real shock. I was just stunned.

  All the years I knew Cozy, he was a bit of a wild character. I’ve been with him in the car a few times and he was a very good driver, but he went so fast I was terrified. He used to drive around the track in his old Ferrari, because he liked speed. He also had a couple of big motorbikes and he really tore ass on those things. When we recorded Headless Cross with Cozy at Woodcray back in 1988, he’d come down on his bike and sometimes, when he’d had a right few drinks, I’d take his keys off him and hide them so that he couldn’t ride home. He’d go: ‘Where’s my keys?’

  ‘You’re not going to drive home like that!’

  ‘I’m all right, I’m all right.’

  The old ‘I’m all right’ thing. But he’d have to stay.

  They were fast Yamaha bikes and I thought, one of these days he’s going to come off one of them. I didn’t expect it in a car. And when I heard what happened, it was bloody awful.

  Cozy was seeing this girl. She was married but separated, or separating, and she had problems with her husband. Cozy was at home and he’d had a few drinks, as he tended to, and she called him all upset and said: ‘Can you come over quick?’

  Cozy lived about thirty or forty miles away from her. He flew down the motorway in his Saab, quite a quick car. While he was driving towards her she phoned him up. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  While they were on the phone, she heard him go: ‘Oh, shit!’

  And the next thing: bang!

  I think it was raining at the time. Cozy wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. He hit something and went straight through the windscreen. What a complete and utter waste of such a talented musician and good mate.

  78

  Bill, Vinny, and Bill and Vinny

  With the Reunion album in the can, we planned a fully fledged tour with the original line-up and in May 1998 we went into rehearsals for it. It had been twenty years since the four of us had worked like that. This time we tried to communicate properly by talking things through, instead of going in like bulls in a china shop. Instead of: ‘We’re doing this’, or even: ‘Let’s do this and let’s do that’, everybody was going: ‘What do you think, shall we do this?’

  We had a laugh and worked well together again. It was good because we were prepping to do something we knew. We just rehearsed through the songs. Ozzy would sing them and leave, and then we usually ran through them again on our own. On 19 May we were running through the show and, when we got to ‘Paranoid’, the final song, Bill said: ‘Cor, I feel really strange. Is it all right if I have a lie-down?’

  ‘Yeah, go and have a lie-down.’

  I took him upstairs and he got into bed and said: ‘Could you ask my assistant to come up?’r />
  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Just to give me a massage for a bit, because my arm’s gone a bit numb.’

  I never thought anything of it. Me and Geezer went out for a bit of fresh air and walked up the drive and then down the road. We saw this ambulance come flying past and we jokingly said: ‘Bill!’

  We always did; any time we saw something like that it was always: ‘Ah, Bill.’

  And, bloody hell, this time, sure enough, it was. Minutes later we saw the ambulance flying past again in the opposite direction, taking him to the hospital. We got back and Ozzy was going: ‘Bill has had a heart attack! Bill has had a heart attack!’

  ‘Christ, that was the ambulance then?’

  ‘Yeah, that was Bill!’

  They took him to the closest hospital about twenty miles away. He had to stay there for a while and obviously couldn’t play.

  We didn’t cancel the tour. We asked Vinny Appice to stand in for Bill while he was convalescing. We’d been working with Vinny on and off with Ronnie and Bill always liked him, so it just seemed the way to go. Vinny was fine with it; he came in and rehearsed with us, and then we did the tour of Europe with him.

  We had rehearsed songs we hadn’t played for years. When we started off, we had a two and a half hour show. It killed me because it was a long set, but it was great. We were playing a lot of other songs besides the regular, routine ones.

  The tour started off in June in Hungary. Certainly in the beginning it went really well. The Milton Keynes Bowl, with bands like Foo Fighters, Pantera, Slayer and Soulfly, was one of the highlights. Bill came to that gig; it was nice of him to turn up. We got him on stage and the audience loved seeing him. He was standing there in his tracky pants and I couldn’t help it because they were all loose and, whoosh!, I pulled them down in front of all those people. Typical me and Bill. I used to do that all the time to him and, of course, this was an ideal opportunity. He just stood there, pulled them up and took no notice. He’s a real character like that.

  In October 1998 the Reunion album was finally released. Our label, Epic, organised a record-signing tour of eight cities in America for the four of us, including Bill Ward. They put us in the St Regis Hotel in New York. It was incredibly expensive: every room came with its own butler. We used that hotel as our base and we had a private jet to fly us out to Dallas or wherever it was we had to do the signings and radio interviews and anything else. We’d do the business and fly back to New York again.

  Meanwhile, we had so many people coming to the stores where we did our album signings that it got out of hand. Sometimes security was rough on the crowds. We ended up saying to our tour manager: ‘They can’t do this to the kids, pushing them around and being aggressive with them like that. They are fans, they should take it easy on them!’

  We did one in a mall and the whole place was packed. I’d never seen that, signings in the middle of a shopping mall. These appearances at record shops were really good, if not a little too successful.

  We also did the Late Show with David Letterman, our first TV appearance together in twenty-three years. I was bit worried, because I wondered what it would be like to do ‘Paranoid’ with a live audience in a talk show like that. I thought Letterman and his people would be a bit snooty about it, but they were really nice. David was in and out, really; we saw him on the night when he came to say hello and shook our hands. We talked to him but not a lot. We saw Paul Shaffer during the sound check and had a chat with him. He might have asked if he could play, but we just did it with the four of us. And that was it. We played, it went down great, and good night.

  We started off our American tour on New Year’s Eve in Phoenix, Arizona. That was the one Maria came over for. It was a big gig.

  We always had a big fireworks display afterwards, so we could leave without getting stuck in the traffic of people trying to get out at the same time. We always got off stage and then left immediately.

  Bill was back with us for this tour, but we took Vinny along as well. We didn’t want Bill to strain himself. As much as he said: ‘I’m all right’, we were concerned he might feel rough one night, and go: ‘I don’t feel well, I can’t play.’ Also, with Vinny there, if he got over-exhausted he could say: ‘I can’t play these two songs, I need a rest’, and Vinny could step in. I thought this would be good for Bill’s peace of mind as well, but I heard later that he was actually offended by the fact that we had Vinny up there. But none of us meant it in a bad way; we were just concerned about Bill. We never used Vinny anyway, because Bill played great and stayed healthy. As a matter of fact, I got flu and Ozzy caught a cold, but Bill was as fit as a fiddle.

  Bill couldn’t drink, Geezer wasn’t drinking and Ozzy wasn’t supposed to be drinking, so the only one drinking was me. We each had our own bus and a trailer as well, and there I had wine and champagne and whatever else. I wouldn’t flaunt it in front of everybody and it was actually awkward when Ozzy came in. He’d often visit me in my trailer, and I never wanted to drink around him, so for me it also turned out to be a rather dry tour.

  After the last gig of the American tour we felt it would be a shame to stop, so two months later it was announced that we’d go on, this time headlining the upcoming Ozzfest tour. From the end of May 1999 until the end of August we toured throughout the States with acts like Rob Zombie, Slayer and System Of A Down. On the second stage, among many others, was Maria’s band Drain STH, so we were on the road together.

  On one of our days off we were staying at the Four Seasons in Palm Beach and Rob Zombie was there as well. Me and Maria were looking out of the window and we saw Rob coming out with his wife. It was roasting out there, but like always Rob was in all his leather gear. He walked up, got on a sunbed and was lying there, sunbathing the Zombie way. Everybody else was wearing shorts and Rob was dressed to the max in leather trousers, leather top, leather hat and leather boots. Maria and me were in stitches. Rob is a lovely guy, but talk about keeping up the image!

  We ended the year with two shows at the NEC in Birmingham. I remember thinking, this could well be our final date ever. I felt a bit sad, not knowing if we were going to do it again. We recorded a live video there, called The Last Supper.

  That seemed like a perfect name for it, but we weren’t done quite yet.

  79

  Belching after a Weenie Roast

  In February 2000 we got our first Grammy, for Best Metal Performance for ‘Iron Man’ from 1998’s Reunion album. I thought, bloody hell, all those years of making music and we get nothing, and when we finally do get a Grammy it’s for the live thing! A year or two later we got a nomination for another one, for ‘The Wizard’. I don’t really remember why that was nominated, but, then again, I never knew why the first one was either.

  Apart from getting a Grammy, 2000 was rather uneventful. In June we had a one-off show at the KROQ Weeny Roast Festival at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California. Sharon got in touch with us and said it would be a great gig to do. We would be surprise guests, performing after Ozzy’s show.

  It was definitely a surprise. Ozzy had played his set, and then the revolving stage was supposed to turn and we’d be there and we’d start playing. Throughout the whole day I thought, this is really silly, it’s going to be such a quick changeover. How are we going to pull that off?

  The stage turned around and I started the riff for ‘War Pigs’, the big note, but nothing happened. As the stage turned all my cables were ripped out of my amps and all the power went. My guitar tech nearly had a heart attack, going: ‘Ooh, what do we do, what do we do!’

  It was so embarrassing standing there like a couple of dicks. The audience, who didn’t expect us to be playing anyway, was probably thinking, who’s that lot there then? After what seemed like an eternity, they wheeled on these two speaker cabinets and Zakk Wylde’s Marshall amp, just so we could play. We were only going to do twenty minutes anyway and we spent half that time pissing around. We came off that show and we had another one like that to do in New York
. I said to Sharon: ‘There’s no way I’m going to do that.’

  She went: ‘Well, no, whatever you want...’

  I was so embarrassed I couldn’t talk to anybody for days after that. I just hid at the Sunset Marquis hotel and kept out of the way.

  Back home in England I found some comic relief with Bev Bevan and Jasper Carrott. We’d been friends for years and we talked about doing this band thing as a bit of a laugh. They had done a couple of things and they asked me if I’d join. I said: ‘Yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun.’

  Jasper came up with the name Belch. It’s the B from Black Sabbath, the E and the L from ELO and the C from Carrott. Jasper is a comedian and in Belch he was the singer.

  Phil Tree was our bass player and Phil Ackrill played rhythm guitar. Phil Tree now plays with Bev Bevan in The Move. It was great fun, I really enjoyed that. Belch was a pop band: we played anything from ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ to Tina Turner or Dire Straits to ‘All Right Now’. We rehearsed at Jasper’s house. The idea was just to play at one of our friend’s parties, but what was supposed to be a lark turned into paying gigs. I didn’t think we were good enough to be paid, but it started to become serious. We did one gig in Doncaster, a hundred miles from Birmingham, and it was just like the old days. We were all going in Jasper’s estate car and we broke down on the motorway. None of us was used to that any more, because we always had people working for us to sort this stuff out. So we were looking at each other, going: ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Christ! We’ve still got a long way to go!’

  Jasper phoned this bloke who worked for him and he arranged for a car to come and pick us up, take us up to the gig and then bring us back afterwards. We finally got to this gig and there was wine, champagne, the works; it was a real big, flash do. We played a little set and then guzzled bottles of champagne.

  On the way home we had to stop every twenty minutes because we were all throwing up as we’d drunk so much so quickly. Eventually we all got back to Jasper’s drive and everybody fell out of the car going: ‘Bleeehhrghgh!’