Legendary Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi was a recent guest on Eddie’s Sirius/XM show Trunk Nation, where he discussed the band’s farewell tour.
When asked if he was pleased with how it ended, Iommi replied (via blabbermouth.net), “It was great to be able to go out and do a final tour. To be honest, I felt a bit bad [about] it, because it was basically my choice, my fault, because touring, for me, at that extent wasn’t a good thing physically. I mean, to get in at four o’clock in the morning from doing a gig, after you’ve done the gig, and fly back to the hotel — it was a lot late nights. You’re living a life like I used to when I was 20. Even though we were traveling [under] the best [conditions] — we had our own plane, we had fabulous hotels, and we’d base ourselves in New York or Los Angeles for 10 days, or somewhere else, and do it like that. Go out, fly out, do the gig, come back, but by the time you’ve done that, you got back into the hotel, it’s three or four c’clock by the time you get to bed. And for me, now, it was just difficult, and my doctor said to me to try and calm it down a bit. And it just seemed like the right thing to do at that time.”
He continued, “Especially after the Ronnie [James Dio] thing, I really loved that period [with Heaven & Hell, [being] back with Dio, we were really cracking on with that band, and it was a great band. And then we’d done the Sabbath [reunion] thing with Ozz [Ozzy Osbourne], which was great, to finish up. But I should think if Ronnie was alive, I’d probably be doing something with him now.”
When asked if he would be open to the possibility of playing a one-off gig with Sabbath at some point in the not-too-distant future, Iommi said, “I think that it would be good, if we could do that. The hard thing is, certainly with Sabbath, because it’s such a big thing, you can’t just do an occasional show, because of the crew, and you have the whole setup. It would have to be a year or an 18-month tour… I’m not opposed to doing anything; I just would do it in a different way.”
In February 2017, Black Sabbath finished The End tour in Birmingham, closing out the quartet’s groundbreaking 49-year career.
3 Responses
Great interview Eddie! I do hope the Tony Martin re-issue comes before the others to be honest. Somebody needs to find the “Born Again” masters. Eddie-maybe you could do a “detective” style episode on AXS? You go to Ian Gillian’s house and search his basement:)
Sharon Osbourne ruined that band’s legacy.
Doesn’t feel bad about giving the big F U to Bill Ward? So sad. So sad.