Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi discusses his ongoing battle with cancer as Black Sabbath’s new album 13 will be released.
“When I’d finished the chemo and the radiotherapy, I went to see the doctor again for my regular blood tests,” he tells Guitar World. “I said, ‘So it’s gone now?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s not going to go. You’re not going to get rid of it. But we can treat it and work with it.’ I got all dismal, because I thought it was gone. He said there was a 30 percent chance of it going away, but I was probably going to have this for life. Now I get treatments to keep it from spreading.”
“So every six weeks I go in for an infusion of Rituximab, which is one of the four ingredients when they give you the chemo. It takes a few hours, and it makes you feel a bit crap inside and a bit sick. But a couple weeks after, I start perking up again. So that’s how we are working it with the shows. I go out, then come back and go into the hospital for more treatment, more blood tests and all the rest of the rubbish. And then we do it all over again.”
Read more in the July issue of Guitar World.
Black Sabbath’s 13 will be released on will be released on June 11th.
Black Sabbath North American Tour Dates:
Jul 25th Houston, TX Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
Jul 27th Austin, TX Frank Erwin Center
Jul 29th Tampa, FL Live Nation Amphitheatre
Jul 31st W. Palm Beach, FL Cruzan Amphitheatre
Aug 2nd Bristow, VA Jiffy Lube Live
Aug 4th Holmdel, NJ PNC Bank Arts Center
Aug 6th Detroit, MI DTE Energy Music Theatre
Aug 8th Uncasville, CT Mohegan Sun Arena
Aug 10th Philadelphia, PA Wells Fargo Center
Aug 12th Boston, MA Comcast Center
Aug 14th Toronto, ON Air Canada Centre
Aug 16th Tinley Park, IL First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre
Aug 18th Indianapolis, IN Klipsch Music Center
Aug 22nd Vancouver, BC Rogers Arena
Aug 24th Seattle, WA Gorge Amphitheatre
Aug 26th San Francisco, CA Shoreline Amphitheatre at Mountain View
Aug 28th Irvine, CA Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
Aug 30th Phoenix, AZ US Airways Center
Sep 1st Las Vegas, NV MGM Grand Garden Arena
Sep 3rd Los Angeles, CA Los Angeles Sports Arena
*Previously announced date.
^On sale Friday, May 3rd
+On sale Saturday, May 4th
~On sale, Friday May 10th
>On sale TBD
Stone Temple Pilots accuse former frontman Scott Weiland of misusing the band’s name to further his solo career and want a judge to strip the rocker of his ability to use the group’s name or songs.
A lawsuit filed on May 24th in Los Angeles accuses Weiland of being chronically late to concerts while the group was together and having his lawyer attempt to interfere with the airplay of the group’s new single Out of Time.
Weiland and Stone Temple Pilots parted ways in February, and the 45-year-old singer said at the time that he learned that he was no loner in the band from a statement released to the media.
The suit sheds light on the band’s breakup, accusing Weiland of interacting with band mates only through lawyers or managers and showing up late to the group’s 2012 shows. It cites Weiland’s addiction struggles and poor performances as detriments to the band’s earning potential.
“The band endured much strife and lost significant opportunities because of Weiland,” the suit states.
The lawsuit claims the band owns the rights to the name Stone Temple Pilots, and the band’s songs, copyrights and trademarks. Wieland has used many of the band’s hits in his solo shows, the lawsuit states. The band wants a judge to block him from even calling himself a former member of the band.
The band has been reconstituted with Chester Bennington of Linkin Park taking the frontman role.
The lawsuit claims that Weiland’s lawyer called the head of programming at KROQ, a Los Angeles modern rock station, and said if the station played Out of Time it would be infringing on Weiland’s rights.
“Enough is enough,” the band’s lawsuit states. “Without relief from the court, Weiland will continue violating STP’s rights, misappropriating STP assets and interfering with the band’s livelihood.”
The lawsuit states the band entered into agreements in 1996 and 2010 that state that no former members can use the Stone Temple Pilots name.
The band’s hits include Vasoline, Interstate Love Song and Plush, which won a Grammy in 1993 for best hard rock performance with vocal.
Weiland alluded to lawyers getting involved when the band’s statement about his departure was released.
The 42-year-old Grammy winner, who is launching a summer tour where most tickets are priced at $20, said he’s scalping about 1,000 tickets from each show to make up for the cheaper regular price.
“I’m in the scalping business, but you know what? We told everyone. A lot of artists have been doing this for years behind fans’ backs, taking all these backdoor deals,” he said. “We look at StubHub and other places and see what they’re selling them for and we just undercut them.”
Kid Rock’s $20 Best Night Ever Tour begins June 28th in Bristow, Va., and the Detroit native, who released his debut album in 1990, said he likely scalped secretly on past tours.
“I’m sure we have,” he said. “I can’t say for sure, but I’m not going to say that we haven’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if we did.”
Kid Rock’s discount ticket pricing is leading a change in tours where scalpers play a major role as the marketplace for secondary sources for tickets continues to grow, especially in a summer when key acts like The Rolling Stones, Beyonce, Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z are on the road.
Ticketmaster’s North American President Jared Smith said Kid Rock’s deal, which he completed with Ticketmaster partner Live Nation, is a first of more to come, though they might not be as risky as Kid Rock’s plan, which also includes $4 draft beers and $20 T-shirts.
“I absolutely believe that we’re starting to see the real acceleration of some really healthy things in pricing that are going to create new opportunities for fans to come and experience it in a really special way,” Smith said.
A small way that artists have been able to control scalping is through paperless tickets, which only allows the buyers of the tickets to use them at shows and are not allowed to resell them. Smith said paperless tickets, which launched five years ago, accounts for “about 1 percent” of the tickets at Ticketmaster.
“It hasn’t grown necessarily as a percentage of the total tickets that we sell, but we certainly see more artists employing it,” Smith said. “When it really first started, it was kind of looked at as a tool to use across the entire seats in the arena, but it’s really become a tool for the best seats in the house. Increasingly we see artists using it very, very targeted for like the top 500 seats in the house or the top 1,000 seats.”
Bruce Springsteen, Keith Urban, New Kids on the Block, Radiohead, Rascal Flatts, Selena Gomez, Muse, Miley Cryus, Iron Maiden, Atoms for Peace and Eric Church are among the acts using paperless tickets.
StubHub, the largest reseller of tickets, said business is booming thanks to the top acts on the road as well as summer festivals. But the company, which has a partnership with AEG, knows the idea of paperless tickets hurts their business.
“That limits a person’s right to resell or transfer or to just give away their ticket. We do not support that because we believe in a fan’s right to do whatever they want with their tickets,” said Alison Salcedo, the head of U.S. Communications for StubHub. Fan Freedom, an organization that supports the rights of ticket holders, echoed StubHub’s thoughts on paperless tickets.
“I don’t see any reason why nontransferable tickets need to be the solution,” said Joe Potter, the CEO of Fan Freedom, which is financially supported by StubHub. “Scalpers get tickets through pre-sale and fan club memberships.”
Ticketmaster isn’t against the idea of reselling tickets, in fact they resell concert tickets online.
“More often or not tickets are underpriced, that’s why you see so much resell activity,” Smith said. “What we try to do is make sure it’s done very transparently.”
Ticket holders are allowed to sell tickets at any price on sites like StubHub and ticketsnow.com, that’s why Kid Rock isn’t selling tickets for the first two rows at his shows. He’s randomly pulling fans from the nose bleed sections to enjoy his concert from the venue’s best view. And the first 20 rows at his shows are seats offered through paperless ticketing.
“We really don’t know what we’re going to make yet. We were doing estimates on it and they’re already going through a lot of these numbers, and it looks like it’s going to be a good summer,” he said of what his potential tour earnings.
Kid Rock, whose tour openers include ZZ Top, Uncle Kracker and Kool and the Gang, is playing the same venues he’s performed at in the past, but he said he’s filling up more seats and selling tickets faster. Even scalpers have approached the performer to cut deals.
“I’ve had people in the scalping business come at me already and try to make side deals like, ‘I can make you thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash if you’ll just flip a few of these tickets our way for certain shows,'” he recalled.
Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi pulled the plug on negotiations with Bill Ward because he feared he was running out of time to make the band’s reunion album.
The guitarist was diagnosed with cancer soon after the band announced plans to make their first record with Ozzy Osbourne since 1978.
With memories of Ronnie James Dio’s death in his mind, he decided he couldn’t continue negotiations with drummer Ward, who said he hadn’t been offered a contract he regarded as “signable.”
Iommi tells Guitar World, “Once I heard ‘cancerous lymphoma,’ I thought, ‘That’s it. I’ve had it.’ We waited a long time for Bill and we wanted to sort it out. But at the end of the day, especially after I was diagnosed, I thought, ‘Fucking hell, that’s it – we’ve got to get a move on. I might pop off next year!’
“So I emailed him and said, ‘Bill, we can’t wait any longer. We’ve got to get on with it.’ And that was it.”
Iommi recently credited Osbourne with persuading him to see a specialist, leading to the discovery of his cancer in time for successful treatment. The guitarist says, “I asked the doctor, ‘Is it okay if I work?’ He said, ‘Yes – you’ve just got to be careful.’ So I’d go in the studio and play for a bit. Then I’d get tired and I’d have to sit down. The guys would tell me not to push it.”
Osbourne commented, “He was a soldier and marched on – he still had more riffs coming out of him than anyone. We all rallied around him, but it’s not like we’d be saying, ‘Are you okay, are you okay?’”
Bassist Geezer Butler added, “It brought up how we’re all mortal beings and we aren’t here for ever. Tony and I were on the Heaven and Hell tour with Ronnie – and six months later Ronnie was dead. When Tony got the cancer, obviously that was in his mind.
“So it was like, let’s get the album done at all costs, as long as Tony’s up to it. It didn’t affect his playing at all – in fact, I think it really encouraged him and kept his mind off the cancer, which is the best thing you can possibly do.”
Black Sabbath’s 13 will be released on will be released on June 11th.
Black Sabbath North American Tour Dates
Jul 25th Houston, TX Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
Jul 27th Austin, TX Frank Erwin Center
Jul 29th Tampa, FL Live Nation Amphitheatre
Jul 31st W. Palm Beach, FL Cruzan Amphitheatre
Aug 2nd Bristow, VA Jiffy Lube Live
Aug 4th Holmdel, NJ PNC Bank Arts Center
Aug 6th Detroit, MI DTE Energy Music Theatre
Aug 8th Uncasville, CT Mohegan Sun Arena
Aug 10th Philadelphia, PA Wells Fargo Center
Aug 12th Boston, MA Comcast Center
Aug 14th Toronto, ON Air Canada Centre
Aug 16th Tinley Park, IL First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre
Aug 18th Indianapolis, IN Klipsch Music Center
Aug 22nd Vancouver, BC Rogers Arena
Aug 24th Seattle, WA Gorge Amphitheatre
Aug 26th San Francisco, CA Shoreline Amphitheatre at Mountain View
Aug 28th Irvine, CA Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre
Aug 30th Phoenix, AZ US Airways Center
Sep 1st Las Vegas, NV MGM Grand Garden Arena
Sep 3rd Los Angeles, CA Los Angeles Sports Arena
*Previously announced date.
^On sale Friday, May 3rd
+On sale Saturday, May 4th
~On sale, Friday May 10th
>On sale TBD
The official trailer for Metallica’s 3D concert film, Metallica Through the Never, can be viewed below.
Directed by Hungarian director Nimród Antal, the film was said to blends concert footage from three shows filmed in Vancouver last August with a narrative arc featuring the actor Dane DeHaan playing a fictional member of the band’s road crew.
Metallica Through the Never will be released exclusively in IMAX on September 27th before opening in theaters everywhere on October 4th.
He was particular affected by his guest appearance during Metallica’s 30th anniversary shows during late 2011 in San Francisco. “That was really a catalyst for all this,” Newsted acknowledges. “I hadn’t really been among the people for a long time. I’ve never gone to see a Metallica show or anything since I left the band (in 2001). So when I did that show, people were so happy to see me, I was overwhelmed. I didn’t realize people cared that much anymore. I was catapulted back into it by their interest — I guess that’s what it comes down to. It’s an amazing feeling, an overwhelmingly positive vibe from everybody.”
The Newsted band — which includes guitarists Mike Mushok of Staind and Jessie Farnsworth, and drummer Jesus Mendez, Jr.-released the four-song Metal EP in January. Newsted says he’s “nervously excited” about being the frontman and namesake for the group, but he also feels it will mitigate any confusion over what fans can expect from the music. “I figured if I was going to go back out and use the money I earned in Metallica to make the band happen and be all the way in it, I don’t want there to be any mistakes or confusion over what’s coming,” he explains. “I want to make sure everybody knows what this is. I don’t have time for anybody to have to figure out what this band is about. With my name on it, there’s no confusion; this is metal, heavy metal music. People know what they’re going to get.”
Newsted says the 13-song album, which he hopes to finish during August and have out in early September, will follow suit. “The EP was always intended to be the primer, a sampler of what was to come on the LP,” he says. “It’s all metal all the time. It’s not all fast, but it is all heavy.”
Meanwhile, the band has a busy spate of touring lined up, including a few of its own club dates, festivals in Europe and a run on Megadeth’s Gigantour starting July 3rd in Gilford, N.H. “It’s mostly Newsted music, but we pepper it up with a couple of things,” Newsted says. “I throw in some old Metallica stuff, a couple pieces here and there that I sang or had some voice in — Creeping Death, Whiplash, Blackened and so forth. I try to throw a few things in depending on how people are reacting.” Once the album is out, he’s anticipating a “regular cycle” of touring to promote it.
