Soeaking with Liz Barnes of Planet Rock‘s My Planet Rocks, guitarist Tony Iommi was asked if “that’s really it” for Black Sabbath. He responded (as transcribed by blabbermouth.net): “You can never say never, can you? We’ve known in this band you can never say, ‘That’s never gonna happen again,’ because every time we said that, it has. We never thought we’d get back with Ozzy [Osbourne after] the early years. We never thought we’d get back with [Ronnie James] Dio again; we did. We never thought we’d have Ian Gillan in the band, but we did. So you just can’t say it’s never gonna happen…”
…”The problem is in a band of this size, you can’t just go and go a week of gigs; you’ve gotta do a world tour of 18 months,” he explained. “And when you do that, you have to take that on. When you first mention it, about going out on tour, ‘Yeah. Brilliant. 18-month tour. Fantastic.’ But when you get into a year of it, you get tired. But you have to take it on that long ’cause you’ve got all the crew to keep alive. Everybody’s got a job, so you can’t do one week and then have a month off and do another week, ’cause you won’t get the crew; they wanna have a job. So we’ve done it for that long — we’ve done a world tour and a world tour again. And then it was getting sort of tiring. Even though we had our own plane and we [stayed] in the best hotels — everything was perfect — but you still get tired. We’d have a base in New York when we play in that area, so we’d have the plane there fly in. So you get in at three o’clock in the morning and then try to get to bed and sleep. So it was a regular thing like this. We tried to make it as comfortable as possible. It couldn’t get any easier or [more] comfortable, but it still was tiring. And the late nights and stuff. So, when I was talking to my doctors, they said, ‘You shouldn’t really be doing it to that extent, flying,’ ’cause I’ve got blood cancer. It wasn’t good for me to be doing that much flying. I talked to the guys and I said, ‘It’s probably the time to call it a day now, sort of thing, for now’ of that extensive touring. So that’s really what we did. But the stipulation was we had to end up in Birmingham ’cause that’s where we started.”
According to Iommi, the band has never ruled out performing again. “We haven’t stopped it,” he said. “It’s just the major touring that has come to a stop; I wouldn’t wanna do 18-month tours again. But that doesn’t say we wouldn’t do any one-off stuff.”
In other Iommi news, he recently released his first new music in eight years, Scent Of Dark, that coordinates with a male fragrance of the same name.
Iommi collaborated with Momo of Xerjoff on the scent, which is described as smelling like a hark back to ‘60s and ‘70s-era rock, festivals and gatherings by way of amber and patchouli, and pays tribute to Iommi’s ’64 Monkey Gibson SG Special by incorporating “spicy and seductive scents.”
To listen to Scent Of Dark, please go here or to order Iommi’s signature scent, visit the official Xerjoff website.
14 Responses
I think I’ve let it be known a few times over the years that Sabbath are my favourite band of all time. I’ve also pointed out that Tony Iommi is my all time guitar hero and my main influence in picking up the guitar myself.
I don’t believe that you will ever see Sabbath again. Having seen a recent picture of Ozzy out and about, the man can barely stand up. It is truly saddening for me to see that; seeing how he’s run around the stage and frog-jumped for all those years in his younger days. When I hear ‘the management’ say that he’ll be touring again next year; I just want to say STOP IT WILL YOU! He’s already lived a thousand lives by trying to slowly drink and drug himself into oblivion – he’s world famous and worth an absolute fortune! The name Ozzy Osbourne is never going to be forgotten; please just let the man breathe and retire gracefully and understand that he has some serious health problems. He’s also now 73 for god sake!
As for Sabbath needing money, if you believe it, all the members have a combined worth of nearly half a billion. They are all more than sorted financially and don’t need it. If they did get back on stage I don’t believe it would do them any justice. Sure, Iommi will always sound like Iommi; Geezer will still sound thunderous on the bass sitting underneath the riff…but Ozzy, with his health? And Bill? How many heart attacks has he had now? The drums are a very physical instrument, especially in Hard Rock / Heavy Metal.
I think the point of this is that we’ve all, at some point, seen Sabbath at their best; whether it be the early years (I included the RJD years) or when they returned in the later years (The Birmingham NEC reunion was 1997 – 24 years ago and the Dio/Heaven and Hell 14 years ago already). Let’s all have our memories of what a great band they were.
This post from me is also, very likely to be, my last post of this year. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to wish everybody, the contributors, the team at EddieTrunk.com (Well my friend Dana really!) and of course Eddie himself a very Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays and a much happier and brighter 2022.
In the words of Lord Coverdale of Whitesnake)
“Be safe…Be happy…And don’t let anybody make you afraid
God bless yer!”
D.J.H,
Thank you so much (I wish I knew how to do a kiss emoji here) and I wish you the same, my friend. I will miss you over the holidays, but I hope to read your lovely comments in the coming New Year.
Again, have a wonderful. joyous and safe holiday and may your New Year be filled with much health, joy and prosperity.
XO
D 🙂
Well, I ain’t going anywhere, except crazy! 😉 But I still want to wish everyone here and there a very Merry Christmas, and a very happy New Year! Cheers!! 🙂
Just for you Dana, I’ll do a quick encore!
Thank you for your nice wishes – I’ll be back! (As Arnold would say!)
🙂 🙂 🙂
I recently retired from going to concerts. My final show was Black Label Society in Cleveland back on November 15th. It was a great show! I’m only 47 so you may wonder why am I retiring from going to shows. Well, there are several reasons. First, I don’t get excited about going to shows anymore. Second, they’re usually expensive. Third, parking. Fourth, I’m not a wild party person anymore and haven’t drank in years. Nowadays, when I go to a show, I try to focus on the band and the music closely. But that is hard to do with a lot of loud drunks around. Fifth, inconvenient dates/times which often times require taking either the day of, the day after or both to go to a concert. Sixth, many bands just don’t have “it” anymore or it’s no longer the same core band. Examples include Kiss, AC/DC. If there was one band that could bring me out of retirement for one show, it would be a one off Sabbath show with the original four. I’ve seen Ozzy solo twice, once with Joe Holmes at an Ozzfest in the late 90’s and once with Zakk in 2018. In 2018 Ozzy was having a hard time. Not sure how he could even pull off one two hour show with Sabbath now nonetheless an entire tour with his solo band. As others have mentioned, Wards health is questionable as well. But if they could pull it off, I’d go because I never got to see the almighty Black Sabbath.