James Hetfield has been singing the praises of Tony Iommi, describing the Black Sabbath guitarist as “the riff lord”.

The Metallica frontman appeared on his own show, James Hetfield’s Riff Life, on Sirius XM’s Maximum Metallica and spoke about what the Sabbath guitarist means to him. “Tony Iommi is the riff lord, in my mind,” he declared. “He is the one that has inspired me the most out of any guitar player for my rhythm guitar playing and songwriting."

He continued, making reference to the track Children Of The Grave. “Obviously, Tony is the riff lord and everyone starts the song together on the one riff…. Basically, Tony plays off that riff, goes in to hit the big giant chords, which opens the song up.

"I really love the drum overdub that they did to help with that percussion of the riff and the real cool ghostly guitar sounds at the very, very end."

Metallica have long given due reference to their metal forebears. They inducted Sabbath into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2006 and have sung their praises in countless interviews over the years. And of course they appeared at last year’s Back To The Beginning event at Villa Park, Birmingham.

Talking of which, a concert film of Ozzy and Sabbath’s final show will be out next month. It’s been confirmed that Ozzy And Black Sabbath: Back To The Beginning will open worldwide on October 28.

The movie is produced by Mercury Studios and while it’s certain to feature the full sets of its main attraction, it’s not known yet what other excerpts from that day will be included. As you know, the one day event featured virtually every prominent name in the world of metal and hard rock, including Alice in Chains, Anthrax, Guns N’ Roses, Lamb of God, Mastodon, Pantera, Slayer and Metallica.

In a statement about the film, Sharon Osbourne has said: “Back to the Beginning came about because I asked Ozzy what would really make him happy. And he said the only thing that would make him happy was if he could perform again and say goodbye to his fans. That’s all he wanted to do. He wanted to say goodbye and thank you.”

Black Sabbath could have recorded one final album with the original lineup. But according to Tony Iommi, he passed on the opportunity.

That’s what the guitarist has said in a new interview with Classic Rock. The final Sabbath album, 13, did not involve Bill Ward after the drummer failed to reach an agreement regarding his contract. After its release in 2013, there had been talk about a follow-up, but nothing really happened.

Now Iommi has revealed that producer Andrew Watt – who had helmed Ozzy’s final solo albums Ordinary Man from 2020 and 2022’s Patient Number 9 – had approached him earlier this decade about getting the original line back for one more album.

"I'd met Andrew Watt when he was producing Ozzy," Iommi said. "He was very keen and a bit too excited. He also didn't know what it was like working with the original Sabbath, working with Bill. Also, we'd done 13, and I didn't like the idea of: 'Now here’s another album.'"

In other Iommi news, the guitarist has apparently signed up for William Shatner’s metal album, What The F is Heavy Metal? Well, according to Brian May he has.

May confirmed his friend’s appearance on Zoe Ball’s show on Greatest Hits Radio. Talking about Shatner, he said: “He's a very active man, and for him to step into... Well, it's not... I don't call it heavy metal; I call it rock, really. But it will probably be a heavy metal album because I think Tony Iommi's gonna play on it now as well. Tony's really my best mate, so it's easy for me to pick up the phone to him. And Tony's like me - he loves a challenge."

News about the 95 year old actor’s latest wheeze has filtered through gradually during 2026. We know that Rob Halford of Judas Priest, John Moyer of Disturbed and Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo have all put their names down for the project. May confirmed his involvement last week, and now it seems Iommi too. Shatner is set to preview some of the tracks at Chicago’s Riot Fest next week with a band that includes Phil Sossan (Ozzy Osbourne, Billy Idol) and Britt Lightning of Vixen.

“What a great guy,” May said of Shatner. “He's 95. And he's full of life and vitality and ambition and anger and all this stuff. He's like a kid. I really enjoyed meeting him... I mean, I've worked hard on it. He loves it, and I love the song 'cause you might think William Shatner... I mean, if you don't know Star Trek, it doesn't mean anything perhaps, but if you've lived like we did through all those editions of Star Trek, he's a hero, and he's, in later life, become a real luminary in the world. He does so much for children, so much for the outreach of science.”

Tony Iommi has revealed that he seriously considered cancelling Black Sabbath’s farewell show with Ozzy Osbourne because he feared that the singer was too weak to perform on stage.

In a new interview with Classic Rock magazine, guitarist Iommi also says that he didn’t want Osbourne to perform a set of his solo material before Sabbath’s performance ended the show.

The Back To The Beginning event at Villa Park in Birmingham on 5 July 2025 saw Osbourne singing solo and with Black Sabbath while seated on a throne. Just 17 days after the show, Osbourne died at the age of 76.

Back To The Beginning also featured sets by a host of bands who were influenced by Black Sabbath, including Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Tool and Slayer.

Iommi tells Classic Rock: “I said to Ozzy: ‘I don’t think we should do it.’ I said: ‘We should just let the other bands play our stuff, and us come out at the end and say thank you. But it was for a good charitable cause, and eventually we said okay.”

Iommi explains that the band’s signature song Black Sabbath was dropped from their set because drummer Bill Ward had struggled to play it during rehearsals.

“We needed to rehearse with Bill, because it had been twenty years and he couldn’t remember how to play some of his stuff,” Iommi says. “We wanted to do the song Black Sabbath on the night but it was too difficult for him.”

When the members of Black Sabbath reunited to prepare for the Back To The Beginning show, it had been three years since Iommi had last seen Osbourne, and as he recalls now: “I hadn’t seen Ozzy for a bit, and it was difficult seeing him like that.”

Seeing Osbourne in such a frail condition, Iommi thought it would be best for Osbourne to cancel the solo set he had planned before Sabbath’s performance.

He admits: “I was concerned he was going to blow himself out, and by the time we came on he’d be struggling.”

In the end, however, Osbourne managed both sets, climaxing with four Sabbath classics: War Pigs, N.I.B., Iron Man and Paranoid.

“The adrenaline carried Ozzy through,” Iommi says. “And I’m so glad we did it. But of course we didn’t expect him to go so soon.”

Elsewhere in the Classic Rock interview, Iommi talks about his new solo album From The Dark, his first studio release since Black Sabbath’s swan song 13 emerged in 2013.

One of the key track on From The Dark is Death Watch, which features a guitar solo from Queen legend Brian May. “I’d already done a solo, but I took mine off,” Iommi says.

Iommi and May have been friends for decades, but even after all these years May was stunned when Iommi revealed how many riffs he has stockpiled on a number of CDs: “Five hundred, six hundred riffs,” he says. “Brian couldn’t believe how many I had.”

Iommi also recalls how, in the early 2020s, a famous producer tried to persuade him to make another Black Sabbath album with the others three original members of the band – Osbourne, Ward and bassist Geezer Butler.

The producer was Andrew Watt, who has recently made albums for Paul McCartney and The Rolling Stones.

“I’d met Andrew Watt when he was producing Ozzy,” Iommi says. “He was very keen and a bit too excited. He also didn’t know what it was like working with the original Sabbath, working with Bill.”

Tony Iommi has been talking about his upcoming solo album and, inevitably, Black Sabbath and the aftermath of the Back To The Beginning show.

That gig brought the curtain down on the band in the most satisfying, and emotional, way possible. As we know, less than three weeks later Ozzy Osbourne left us. "He was really happy with it, that we could do it, you know," Iommi said of the show, talking to Loudwire Nights.

"In fact, I spoke to him the night before he passed. He said to me, 'I really feel tired and really worn out.' I said, 'Well, you're bound to really, it's been a lot of stress and pressure and stuff like that.' And the next thing, the next day, (he's) gone."

The guitarist also admitted that he still struggles to believe that Ozzy is actually gone, so often is he reminded of him. "It still feels like he's there.”

That said, Iommi revealed that there were certain aspects of Back To The Beginning that he struggled with: “It was difficult because seeing Ozzy sitting in a throne is not the way I see him.

"Always (when) we've been onstage, he's been running around and he'd run up to Geezer (Butler) and pull a face jokingly and come over to me and pull a face or the drummer or whatever. We always had a little laugh onstage and enjoy when he'd run about.”

“But at Back to the Beginning, of course, he's in a throne and I couldn't see him, which felt very unusual. I stood back by Bill (Ward). But it was a great moment, and I'm really glad we could get the opportunity to do it, because I mean, God, we didn't know he was going to go that quick. But he did... There's memories that will remain there, from rehearsals to the whole thing... I am glad that we could do that gig."

Iommi’s solo album From The Dark is his first in over two decades. Most of the band he’s currently working with are local to Birmingham, although he did reveal that one of the guests on the record is a fellow guitar legend and old friend: Brian May. "We've known each other for 56, 58 years,” he reveals. “He's my best friend. And of course, Eddie Van Halen was. We always stayed in touch a lot. They were the only two I really did stay in touch with.”

“(Brian) came to my house and we always have a little fiddle about. I said, 'You're going to be playing on this track here.' He's great. I said to him, 'Play on some other tracks,' but he went, 'Oh no, it's your album.' That's the relationship we've had with each other for all these years. We've played a lot together. He is a great friend."

You can hear the full interview over at Loudwire Nights.

Tony Iommi has confirmed that Brian May will guest on his forthcoming solo album, From The Dark, with the Queen guitarist contributing a solo to one of its doomiest tracks.

The Black Sabbath guitarist and godfather of heavy metal announced his long-awaited solo album last week with a livestreamed event and a new single, World Alone. From The Dark drops on October 23 via BMG. and finds Iommi accompanied by Jorn Lande on vocals, Becky Baldwin on bass guitar, and Karl Brazil on drums.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Iommi reveals that May plays on a track called Death Wake, a track with a “weird riff” and solo hot from the Red Special – and May had the option of playing more on the album, but politely refused.

“I did say to him, ‘Do you want to play on something else?’ He said, ‘No, no. Your solos are good. I don’t need to play,’” But it was great that he did,” says Iommi.

Iommi says May is the only high-profile guest on the album. He wanted to keep the project “like a band”. He did, however, want Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler to play on it but he was unavailable. And time was marching on.

“I wanted him to play on this album, but he couldn’t do it,” says Iommi. “He’s doing his own album, I think. Or at the time, something happened there, so he couldn’t come to England. I wanted to get it done and finally get it out, really.”

Iommi says Baldwin, who is both A) a Geezer Butler superfan and B) from Sabbath’s hometown Birmingham, was the perfect choice. Her style is heavily informed by Butler’s playing. “I thought let’s give it a try. And she was good,” he says.

So, too, was May. Though he needed a bit of reassurance.

“It was great that he did,” says Iommi. “I just played him a couple of things, and [he] done it here at the studio in my house. Then of course he’d play something and go, ‘Oh, I don’t know about it.’ I go, ‘I like it.’”

May guested on Iommi’s 2000 self-titled album, playing alongside the Cult’s Ian Astbury on Flame On, and with Dave Grohl on Goodbye Lament.

But the pair go way, way back.

“In the very early ‘70s, he was in one studio, and I was in another. And we just hit it off,” Iommi tells Rolling Stone. “We’ve been friends for, God, nearly 60 years. We stay in touch all the time. He’s played onstage a couple of times with me, and then we’ve done a couple of album tracks we played on together. He’s a very, very close friend.”

Check out the video for World Alone above, and find out more at Iommi.

Black Sabbath fans, assemble, our lord and master of the riff Tony Iommi has just announced a new solo album. Titled From The Dark, it drops on October 23, but you can check out the first single, World Alone, now.

This is vintage Iommi. He has the Norwegian vocalist Jørn Lande on the mic, whom some will know from his eponymous hard rock project, or from fronting power metallers Pentakill. Others will remember him from when he stepped in to take Ronnie James Dio’s spot to fulfil Heaven & Hell’s 2010 touring commitments after the death of the legendary metal frontman. Here, Iommi gives him plenty to work with.

Thematically, the video follows The Believer through a retro-futuristic dystopia in which, like Jeff Bridges in Tron, he is thrown into a videogame, and has to save his own life and find salvation in the process.

Iommi has made mention that he has a solo album percolating in the background but he has had a full schedule. There have been his Black Sabbath commitments, with the Birmingham metal godfathers bringing down the curtain on their career at Back To The Beginning last year, the metal all-dayer to end all metal all-dayers. Just 17 days later, Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne died.

Iommi had been working on perfume lines, in ballet, too, when he teamed up with the Birmingham Royal Ballet to rework Sabbath’s early work in dance. Then there was the Gibson documentary and the reissue of his signature Gibson pickups. Finally, the album is ready.

“It’s an album we’ve really enjoyed making,” says Iommi. “We’re not trying to prove anything – it's a great album, it rocks!”

From The Dark was produced by Iommi with his long-standing tech, cowriter and engineering whiz Mike Exeter. Becky Baldwin of UK thrashers Fury and Mercyful Fate plays bass guitar. Karl Brazil, who played on Iommi’s 2024 single, Deified, returns on drums. Deified, however, does not. It remains a standalone single. Lande handles the album’s lyrics. Expect existentialism, “nautical metaphors” and downtuned riffola. World Alone is more uptempo but you can be rest assured there will be some low and slow doomy groovers.

Iommi is unveiling From The Dark in his hometown Birmingham, in a livestreaming event. Check it out above – and check out the video for the single above. Iommi will be releasing World Alone on foil-sleeved 7” vinyl, with an instrumental version on Side B. Gibson is adding it to the catalogue of songs you can learn on the Gibson App. From The Dark will be released in various formats, including deluxe gatefold vinyl.

See Iommi for more.

Sophie Lloyd has marked the first anniversary of Ozzy Osbourne’s death with a full-shred YouTube tribute to the late Prince of Darkness.

If you are familiar with the English virtuoso’s treatment of the popular canon of rock and pop, then you know the drill. This is Lloyd, backed by Marshall and Randall half-stacks, her Kiesel signature guitar in hand, reworking a classic as a guitar instrumental.

She has done Oasis, Pink Floyd, Bon Jovi, Iron Maiden and Metallica – she’s reimagined the Pokémon Theme Song, too. Now you can add Black Sabbath’s Paranoid to the list.

It’s been a minute since Lloyd has posted one of these Shred videos. There has been a lot filling up her calendar, not least her touring schedule as Machine Gun Kelly’s guitarist. Yesterday, one year after we lost Ozzy, was a fitting time to return.

“In loving memory of the Prince of Darkness, Ozzy Osbourne,” writes Lloyd. “Thank you for being such a huge inspiration to me from such a young age. Thank you for everything.”

Lloyd’s version is far removed from the eponymous single from Sabbath’s 1970 sophomore album, Paranoid. Her guitar assumes Ozzy’s role as vocalist. Her style is more pyrotechnic than Iommi’s. But as Lloyd explained to MusicRadar in 2022, her process always preserves the melody.

“It’s like having reference points to go back to,” said Lloyd. “I’ll venture out and then go back so the melody is still there. We did Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd, and I really stripped back my shredding and played a lot more melody stuff, and I’ve been playing more with harmonies as well, so that’s been quite fun. It’s something new I’m trying out a little bit because, you know, a lot of those things you don’t want to oversaturate with shred, even though it’s fun.”

Lloyd wasn’t the only player to post a solo guitar tribute on social media. Alex Skolnick of Testament performed a medley of Randy Rhoads’ classical piece Dee and Ozzy power ballad Goodbye To Romance for solo nylon-string guitar, performing it on his Cordoba Iberia GK Studio through a Henriksen Bud 6.

Lloyd is one of the most high-profile YouTube guitarists to have landed high-profile gigs after building a huge audience on the platform.

Her advice to any young player looking to grow their online following: find your own niche and go for it. Posting your first video is the hardest part.

“My first videos look like they were filmed on a potato and the audio quality is awful,” she said. “You’ve got to start somewhere, so I’d say, just go for it as much as you can and have fun with it. Try and develop something unique to you. Look for some sort of gap in the market and try and fill that.”

Lloyd released her debut album, Imposter Syndrome in 2023. You can join 1.27 million others and follow her on YouTube.

How Tony Iommi got his electric guitar tone in Black Sabbath is the stuff of legend. It is the origin stories of origin stories.

There was the brutal machining injury to his fretting hand, requiring the use of thimbles to play again. If Django Reinhardt was an inspiration, the determination to continue came from within. Iommi sized down his electric guitar strings, mixing them with super-light banjo strings to go easier on his fingers. He would arrive at his downtuning epiphany soon enough...

Initially, Iommi played a Fender Strat. He had tracked Wicked World with one before it crapped out and he switched to the SG. Happenstance, a quirk of fate, and lo, Iommi would go on to become one of the most famous SG players.

Like most players, Iommi was an early adopter of Marshall amps. But a local amp builder by the name of Lyndon Laney made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. There began a lifelong collaboration and lifelong friendship until Laney’s passing in April 2026.

“I think I was using Marshall early on, and then Laney on the first album, but when we first wrote [Black Sabbath] songs I was using a Marshall 50-watt,” Iommi told MusicRadar in 2010. “I switched to Laney because they started up around the same time as us and they’re a Birmingham company. To be honest, they offered to give us all this gear when nobody else did. What do you say to that? ‘OK!’ So I used them.”

He had found the Gibson SG. He had found a way of playing that circumvented his injury. He now had the amp. What tied it all together was a piece of kit he was introduced to in 1968, the year before Black Sabbath formed, when he was cutting his teeth in Mythology. A drugs bust over some hashish in their practice space brought fines upon on Mythology. The band soon split.

We have to remember that this was a different time. When you went into a guitar store, there was no pedal cabinet. Okay, you might have been able to pick up a Maestro FZ-1 Fuzz-Tone, but most players faced the similar conundrum; if you wanted distortion, you got it the old-fashioned way, you turned your amp up.

But someone turned Iommi onto a unit that sat on top of your amplifier and worked some magic with it. Enter, the Dallas Rangemaster…

“When I lived in Cumberland, when we did the Mythology thing, there was a guy up there and I used to use his treble booster called a [Dallas] Rangemaster to give my sound a bit more oomph,” recalled Iommi. “A guy from another band up there said, ‘I can make that sound better for you’. So he took it off me and brought it back the next day.”

This was a febrile era for homespun guitar electronics. If something didn’t sound quite right, there was always someone who had a soldering iron, a handful of spare transistors and capacitors, and some ideas on how the circuit could be improved.

In this case, Iommi had the guitarist of Spooky Tooth, Luther Grosvenor, on hand to give him exactly what he needed. It worked gangbusters with his Laney tube amp, and better still, no one had one like it.

“I don’t know what he did to it, but it was really good,” said Iommi. “I used that treble booster on all the early Sabbath albums and put it into the Laney because it boosted the input and gave it the overdrive I was looking for, which amps in the early days didn’t have.”

Other gizmos would enter the picture. In 1970, when he tracked the solo to Paranoid under the watchful eye of producer Rodger Bain, Iommi applied a ring modulator to the solo. Iommi would become a fan of the Tychobrahe Parapedal wah pedal. His touring rig grew, and for the post-reunion Sabbath shows it is monstrous, controlled by a custom Pete Cornish routing and control unit. But this this modded Range Master was the secret sauce to Iommi’s sound.

Not everyone appreciated it. Iommi’s good friend Brian May of Queen also used the Rangemaster, having watched Rory Gallagher use one. He understood its appeal and urged Iommi to stick with it even if other people in the band and crew would complain about its eccentricities. It wasn’t unknown for the Rangemaster to have a Spinal Tap air base moment onstage.

“I used to rely on Brian a lot because I’d constantly have problems with people saying there was too much interference coming through my booster,” said Iommi, speaking to Guitar World in 2024. “I’d have to explain, ‘I know, but that’s part of my sound!’ In them days, you’d pick up bloody taxis and everything. There was no isolation. Brian would back me up and say, ‘That’s the sound – don’t change it.’

“Sometimes you’d get some boffin come along telling me, ‘I can get rid of that for you,’ and I’d say, ‘Oh, can you?’ But it would always change the sound and I didn’t want my sound to change. The only person who understood how I felt in those days was Brian, because he had the same problem. We both had a bit of noise but were ultimately getting the sound we wanted.”

Iommi used that same modded Rangemaster right up into the Heaven And Hell era, when Iommi started experimenting with Marshalls in his rig, with the late John ‘Dawk’ Stillwell working on his amps.

Stillwell famously designed Joey DeMaio of Manowar’s bass guitar, and had worked with Ronnie James Dio in his Elf days before doing jobs for Rainbow and Deep Purple.

Stillwell knew his stuff but made a grave mistake with Iommi’s rig.

“I used that treble booster up until 1979 when I had a guy come in to build me some Marshalls,” said Iommi, in his 2010 MusicRadar interview. “They gave me a whole stack of Marshalls and this guy came in and rebuilt them. In the meantime, while he was building these things, he threw my treble booster away. I didn’t know until it came to the time when I was looking for it and he said, ‘Oh that? I threw it away. It was crap.’”

Iommi was devasted.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I’ve never seen it from that day on and my amps didn’t sound right without it.”

There are no shortage of treble booster clones. In 2001, Analog Man’s Mike Piera sent Iommi the company’s first Beano Boost. Iommi’s signature Laney amps have their own boost section.

But the Rangemaster behind Iommi’s Black Sabbath tone has long been consigned to landfill, and only one man knows the real secret of what went in that Dallas Rangemaster all those years ago…

Swedish indie band The Cardigans have been quiet for some time – they last released an album back in 2005. But they’re playing some comeback gigs this summer and singer Nina Persson has been talking to the Guardian about one curious aspect of their career: their penchant for Black Sabbath covers.

They did two, in fact. Sabbath Bloody Sabbath on their 1995 breakthrough album Life, and Iron Man on the follow-up, First Band On The Moon. Why asked why they chose to cover Sabbath, Persson explained: “We were big fans – for a heavy band there’s a real pop sentiment in the songwriting – and I think it’s interesting when a cover is a stretch away from your natural sound. As a woman, I thought singing a song done by very manly men gave it a wonderfully creepy aspect.”

“Ozzy (Osbourne) came to see us in Los Angeles and said it was the creepiest thing he’d ever heard, which coming from him is the biggest compliment.”

And they weren’t the end of The Cardigans’ dabblings in the world of hard rock. They covered another Ozzy song – his Blizzard Of Ozz single Mr Crowley - and Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back In Town as B-sides in the mid-1990s.

Persson also talked about her experience with dealing with cervical cancer in the Noughties.” Until I was around 30, I’d hardly ever had a cold, so it was really weird at that age to face something with a possibly deathly outcome. My cancer was operable – I didn’t have to deal with chemo and stuff or get very very ill.”

“I think the consolation prize for any kind of suffering is that you can appreciate things – art, for example – in a different way. You realise these things can happen to anyone. I’ve had 15 or 20 years of thinking ‘I’ve beaten cancer’ but now I’m over 50 I’m thinking: it can totally happen to me again.

The singer said back in 2023 that the Cardigans wouldn’t add to their catalogue, but Persson did mention it may be a possibility once more. “We have logistics issues – families, day jobs – but do toy with the idea of making new music, whether as the Cardigans or in a different form. We’re all capable of making great music, and lately it’s been inspiring to see people like Suede from the 90s making new material. It’s not cringey middle-aged dudes looking hard in leather jackets,” she insisted. “It’s really good stuff.”

For Pantera singer Phil Anselmo, touring as the opening act for Black Sabbath in 1999 was a dream come true.

The Texan band were the main support as Sabbath performed in US arenas with their original line-up of Ozzy Osbourne on vocals, Tony Iommi on guitar, Geezer Butler on bass and Bill Ward on drums.

In an interview with Kerrang!, Anselmo loudly proclaimed: “I’m the biggest Sabbath fan on this tour!”

Five years earlier, Pantera had demonstrated their love for Black Sabbath on their seventh studio album Far Beyond Driven, which featured a cover version of Planet Caravan, a track from Sabbath’s 1970 masterpiece Paranoid.

As Anselmo told Kerrang!, Paranoid was the album that blew his mind when he was a school kid.

“I was 14 years old when I heard the Paranoid album at a buddy of mine’s house, and I didn’t know what happened to me,” Anselmo recalled. “Then weed gets into the mix, and if you smoke weed you end up enjoying Black Sabbath more than anything.”

His obsession with the band peaked when he found a copy of their 1975 cult classic Sabotage.

He revealed: “When I heard the Sabotage album it was over, man! It’s all I listened to. I couldn’t not listen to that record! I had to hear it every day, every waking moment.

“I was at school supposedly trying to get a fucking education and all I could think about was that album. Black Sabbath are the gods, man!”

He named his two favourite songs from Sabotage as Supertzar and The Thrill Of It All.

He cited Sabbath’s self-titled debut album as the perfect illustration of Ozzy Osbourne’s prowess as a vocalist.

“You listen to that first fucking Sabbath album, man! His voice is so hoarsely beautiful, and he nails everything so hard, I can’t even believe it. I’m stoned an amazed and gasping for air!”

Anselmo also hailed a number of Norwegian black metal bands as saviours of heavy music in the ’90s.

“I think that no matter what the fuck ever happens, underground heavy metal is always there,” he said. “It’s reached tremendous proportions due to the Norwegian bands – Emperor, Mayhem, Immortal and the kings, Darkthrone.

“They had a vision and stayed true. And I think that Pantera have really stayed true to ourselves, our fans – and there’s nothing else you can call this music but heavy metal, so we’ve been true to heavy metal!”

Sharon Osbourne has revealed her plan to relaunch Ozzfest, the long-running travelling heavy metal festival led by her late husband Ozzy.

In a new interview with Billboard, Osbourne explains: “I’ve been talking to Live Nation about bringing [Ozzfest] back recently. It was something Ozzy was very passionate about: giving young talent a stage in front of a lot of people.

“We really started metal festivals in this country. It was [replicated but] never done with the spirit of what ours was, because ours was a place for new talent. It was like summer camp for kids.”

In its heyday, Ozzfest bills featured heavyweight acts including Slipknot, Pantera, Marilyn Manson, Tool, Incubus, Linking Park, Papa Roach, Limp Bizkit, Megadeth, Motörhead and many more.

Ozzy headlined with his solo band and with the reunited Black Sabbath.

“All of the creative direction for visuals at Ozzfest was mine,” Sharon Osbourne tells Billboard. “I can’t sing a note — I’m tone-deaf — but I can be creative, and I like to create things.”

She also says that the new Ozzfest could be up and running in 20227 and would go beyond metal: “I’d like to mix up the genres,” she explains.

In addition, Osbourne reveals she is also working with Live Nation on a tour in which Black Sabbath’s music will be performed by classic orchestras.

What do you get the guitarist who has everything? Let’s just assume they have already got their own Gibson (and Epiphone) signature guitars. They already have their own custom-wound electric guitar pickups (Gibson again).

What if they have actually heaved heavy metal into existence, and have pretty much seen it all?

This festive season, Brian May had this exactly problem when thinking of a suitable Christmas gift for his best pal, Tony Iommi; and he found the perfect gift. He got the Black Sabbath guitarist and godfather of heavy metal a master-built left-handed version of the Red Special, the electric guitar May built with his father when he was starting out and has used almost exclusively ever since – only this Red Special comes with some choice customisations, as per Iommi’s preferences.

Overseeing the build was Andrew Guyton, of Guyton Guitars, who has first-hand experience with the O.G. Red Special, having been tasked with refurbishing it. Guytone has been making officially authorised replicas of it since 2003, and he infused this Queen guitar with some classic Sabbath DNA.

“It’s built with the exact vintage construction of Brian May’s original Red Special, but shaped to match Tony’s iconic Jaydee Old Boy neck,” explains Guyton.

Like May, Iommi is a big fan of the Dallas Rangemaster treble booster. It was a huge part in finding his sound. Guytone has taken all of this into account. “[It] features a built-in treble booster and authentic vintage-style pots and pickups to replicate the classic tone,” he adds.

All that is missing is a Vox AC30 – and maybe a Maestro Echoplex – and you have Brian May’s tone, all in one guitar, but with the feel of one of the most legendary metal guitars of all time, the Jaydee Old Boy.

The Old Boy built by John Diggins in the late 1970s and was first used by Iommi to record overdubs on Black Sabbath’s 1980 studio album, Heaven & Hell. Soon after, it became his number one electric.

A second-gen SG-style electric, it reflected Iommi’s changing tastes, from the big stuff (the pickups, the 24-fret neck) to the small but significant details, such as the strap button being moved from the top horn to the neck heel, a feature that now all Gibson SGs share.

Old Boy’s distressed finish could be said to be ahead of the curve. But that was just an accident.

Diggins had made this guitar on his kitchen table. The finish didn’t cure properly. Oh, and someone left it in a car in a baking hot day.

“It wasn’t forced. It wasn’t made to look like that,” said Iommi, in the official Tony Iommi website. “It had nice paintwork when I first had it, and it just fell away. One of the stupid things was leaving it in the boot of a car in the States, and the heat made all the paintwork start bubbling – that’s what started the relic look.”

Chances are Iommi won’t be leaving his new Red Special in the boot of the car. This one is a keeper. “Huge thanks to my best friend Brian May and master builder Andrew Guyton for this incredible left-handed Red Special replica,” wrote Iommi. “Andrew personally delivered it last week — a true gift from Brian, two years in the making. Christmas came early!”

Festive, heartwarming, we love it. And maybe these two legends should put these guitars to work in the studio some time soon.

Nuno Bettencourt reveals he quiet quit his set with Jake E Lee at Black Sabbath tribute show Back To The Beginning in order to let the former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist take the limelight.

Speaking to Guitar World, Bettencourt said they were playing Shot In The Dark, or at least he was scheduled to be playing on it, when the Extreme guitarist decided that, all things considered, Lee had it covered. This was a moment the spotlight could belonged to him

“ I didn’t tell anybody I was doing it – but I just walked off the stage,” says Bettencourt. “I wanted Jake to have his moment without another guitar player stealing his thunder.”

Whether it was Lee, Randy Rhoads, Zakk Wylde, Gus G or whoever, the Ozzy Osbourne gig was always a single-player game. Coming from a band like Extreme, in which Bettencourt’s electric guitar has the run of the place, he understood that implicitly.

“We all came from one-guitar bands. We didn’t want rhythm guitarists,” says Bettencourt. “I wanted Jake to have his one moment up there by himself, so I just left. And Jake nailed it.”

If Back To The Beginning was the all-star all-dayer to end them all, then Lee’s performance was one of redemption – it was the ultimate comeback. It was only in October 2024, when Lee was shot three times while out walking his dog, Coco, in Las Vegas. He is lucky to be alive. He also hadn’t been in contact with Ozzy for a number of years but when Back To The Beginning’s musical director Tom Morello called the answer was always going to be yes.

That said, it wasn’t easy. Not only was Lee recovering from being shot, he is dealing with arthritis. Like former Deep Purple guitarist Steve Morse, Lee has had to reimagine his playing in recent years. His self-confidence has taken a knock.

Bettencourt says that Morello contacted him saying that Lee was not sure he wanted to play the solo to The Ultimate Sin – would he do the honours instead? But there was no way Bettencourt was going to agree to that.

“We all know that, as legendary as Jake is, he’s struggling a little bit, as we all do as we get older and don’t know what’s going to happen to our hands and bodies,” he says. “I told Tom, ‘Give me his phone number right now.’ I texted Jake and told him, ‘You are fucking Jake E. Lee. There’s no way in hell I’m taking that solo. You’re going to play that solo. And not only that, I’ll double it with you, and we’ll do it together. Whatever happens, it’s going to be fucking incredible,’ and that’s what we did.”

Bettencourt and Lee got on like a house on fire. Game recognises game. But Bettencourt did have a bone to pick with Lee. He was “so fucking humble” for a player who took on the hardest job in rock-and-metal, following Randy Rhoads.

“I told him, ‘You’re fucking Jake E. Lee!’ Not only did he replace Randy, but he took Ozzy to another place,” says Bettencourt.

You can read Bettencourt’s interview in the latest issue of Guitar World – subscribe and save.

Ashdown and Reverb.com have teamed up for the ultimate limited edition second hand bass amp sale, with 15 of Geezer Butler’s Head Of Doom heads from the rehearsals for Black Sabbath’s final show being sold exclusively via the online gear retail giant.

Butler has signed each of the control panels in silver marker pen, with each amp shipping with a certificate of authenticity from Ashdown’s managing director Dan Gooday.

“This is your chance to own the sound that defined heavy metal,” says Reverb. “Don’t wait, once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

They Reverb marketing bumf couldn’t say it any plainer; this is a unique opportunity to own a piece of heavy metal history, and, y’know, an amp that should make your intro to N.I.B. really come alive.

Butler used these amps in the run-up to July's Back To The Beginning show at Villa Park, when Black Sabbath bowed out with a four-song set, War Pigs, N.I.B., Iron Man and Paranoid bringing down the curtain on the career of a band that invented heavy metal from the ground up, closing what was arguably the biggest metal all-day of all time.

This was Villa Park at capacity, with the show streamed online to more than five million people. Metallica, Slayer, Guns N’ Roses, Tool, Pantera, Gojira, Alice In Chains, plus various supergroups assembled by the musical director for the day, Tom Morello, rolled in. Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne played a solo set. It was all going on.

The estimates as to how much was raised for charity vary. Sharon Osbourne scotched rumours that circa $190mn was raised but a number of millions was raised for local children’s hospitals, Parkinson’s research and other causes.

As for the Head Of Doom itself, this is a built-to-order, UK made Custom Shop build, priced ordinarily at £1,499. It has a 9-band EQ, a Sub-Harmonic Generator, and (this is too cool) a Doom control.

Butler's tech, Terry Welty was closely involved in the design, and upon its unveiling in 2018, Gooday said it was a proud day in his career.

“What a moment for me personally. Having grown up playing Sabbath with a band in school and learning all the bass lines with my mate Phil, who could play any guitar lick back after hearing it once," he said. "Geezer’s sound and tone was part of my bass upbringing and has stayed with me until this very day."

There are 600-watts under the hood. The pre-amp is driven by a 12AX7 for that old analogue grit. And those VU meters on the front panel always makes Ashdown amps look the part, too.

You will need something to play it through. Ashdown has the thing, and will be taking orders for the 2x15” and 2x12” ‘Cabinets of Doom’, the COD-212-8 and COD-215-8.

These are rated at 300 watts RMS at 8 Ohms and look the exactly the same as Butler’s originals because they are built the same, made to order in the UK, and featuring the custom medal grille that comes screen-printed with Butler’s artwork.

And if all of this is a little steep for your budget, remember, Ashdown does the Hand Of Doom pedal.

For more details, head over to Reverb.

• Note: this article originally stated these Hand Of Doom amps were the same as those used at Villa Park during Black Sabbath's set. But Reverb has since clarified that they were used for the rehearsals.

There are not one, but two Ozzy Osbourne documentaries heading towards your screens in the first week of October.

First up, there’s Paramount+’s Ozzy Osbourne: No Escape From Now. Directed by BAFTA winner Tania Alexander, it was filmed over the past six years and shows Ozzy’s fight to return to the live stage for one last show, even as he battles Parkinson’s and other injuries.

Family members, collaborators and friends all contribute, and the doc’s talking heads include many of those who played at the Back To The Beginning show in July, including Tom Morello, Billy Corgan, Duff McKagan, James Hetfield, Chad Smith, Robert Trujillo and, of course, Tony Iommi and Zakk Wylde.

A trailer has been put online, which includes a killer opening line from a visibly frail Ozzy: “I used to take pills for fun. Now I take them to stay alive”.

The doc was never meant as a posthumous tribute, though as Paramount Plus say in a press statement, that is how it has ended up: “Following his death on July 22, 2025, the documentary now stands as a testament to Ozzy’s courage, wit, determination and talent — qualities that ensure he remains a hero to millions around the world.”

Meanwhile the BBC have confirmed a new broadcast date for their doc, Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home. This was meant to have been screened in mid August but was postponed with the BBC saying that it was "respecting the family's wishes to wait a bit longer before airing this very special film".

It is now set to go out on BBC1 and iplayer on Thursday 2 October at 9pm. The updated synposis for the doc describes it as "candid and moving portrait of one of Birmingham's favourite sons, and the remarkable relationship with Sharon".

It shows how Osbournes faced "a monumental battle, both on a professional and personal level" to defy his health problems to move home and to stage the final gig.

"But Ozzy has never been a man to take no for an answer, and with Sharon's support he sets about achieving his goals with the determination, blistering honesty and razor-sharp sense of humour that have endeared him to millions for over 50 years.

"He will stop at nothing to make his body work as well as it used to, with the film capturing remarkable levels of resolve."

The Paramount Plus doc No Escape From Now is set to drop a few days later, on Tuesday 7 October.

What is it?

As Black Sabbath say goodbye, Tony Iommi's guitar story continues – and the return of his signature humbucker is great news for those of us looking for some added Ironman in our diets, without stumping up for a full-blown signature guitar.

Tony Iommi’s return as a Gibson signature artist actually came about as a result of these pickups, after the request came in for Gibson to make him some more bespoke humbuckers. Things moved on from there and restarted officially with production models based on Iommi's first "Monkey" SG Special starting in 2020.

Those models stayed authentic to the original with P-90s. But the Black Sabbath legend has previous form when it comes to signature humbucker pickups with Gibson – his was the first signature humbucker set launched back in 1997, based on a design he was using in his UK-made Jaydee guitars. Ten years later Iommi put his name to another first with the first Epiphone signature model, an ebony version of the G-400 – and its Sabbath crucifix inlays weren’t the only notable addition.

“I insisted they put my signature pickups on it,” Iommi told me in 2011. “Which were expensive really to go on that, but I didn’t want them to just put my name on the guitar and that was it. I wanted it to be at least something that I’d use. And that was my deal all along with Gibson.”

The guitarist has carried that commitment on for his return to the Gibson fold, and now players have the chance to upgrade their own SGs (other guitar models are available) with his current choice. But Iommi’s tone has undeniably changed over the years, so where do his humbucker sit as an option for other players as well as those compelled by the power of the tritone?

Specs

• Launch price: $229/£199
• Type: Alnico 2 / ceramic humbucker pickup
• Features: Four conductor wiring as standard, wax potted,
• Contact: Gibson

Build

The thoughtful folks at Gibson UK have saved me getting my trusty ol' soldering iron out by sending an Epiphone SG with the Iommi pickups preinstalled. I specifically asked for this model from the “Inspired By Gibson” Standard range rather than a full-fat Gibson SG Standard because ickups are the obvious upgrade choice for more affordable guitars. Though I’ve been mightily impressed with the stock Probuckers I’ve encountered from the Epiphone range.

With no visible polepieces like most Gibson ‘buckers, the look is more sleek and minimalist for the chrome covers – but the construction here is different too.

Under the cover is a combination of Alnico II and ceramic magnets with blades rather than pole pieces designed to offer a more consistent sound for the magnetic field when Iommi is bending strings. Something that plays a huge role in Sabbath songs such as Iron Man and Into The Void.

The other key requirements for Iommi were sustain and clarity in the high-gain scenarios he thrives in. There were also distinct needs that have been consistent through his career; “We had to make sure it worked with my light gauge strings and low tunings, but still pack a punch,” notes the man himself. “The result has got some serious output.”

With this in mind the humbucker is waxed potted and epoxied to prevent a feedback fest at high gain and volumes, and the 15.7k pickup (our reading) features four-conductor wiring for series, parallel, and split coil options if the player desires. Notably, there is no Iommi humbucker ‘set’ available to buy – the pickups I have here are the same, designed for bridge or neck positions just like Iommi has.

Sounds

Alongside the Epiphone SG Standard I have some added context with an Epiphone SG Modern and my own 2005 Faded Special (with a stock 490T humbucker in the bridge and a Seymour Duncan ‘59 I installed in the neck). I need to get around to installing a JB in the bridge, but maybe this pickup might present serious competition for the slot?

Iommi’s origins lie in the bite and punch of the P-90 from his original “Monkey” 1964/’65 SG Special, and there’s an unmistakable growl to the midrange of the bridge here that feels linked to Sabbath’s trailblazing early ‘70s era. But compared to my own SG Special and the Modern Gibson has loaned us for ProBucker comparison, the highs sound a little rolled off from the Iommi pickup and it makes for a distinct sound that is much more obviously reminiscent of Iommi’s own lead tone than even I was expecting. It’s also quite appealing for a lower gain crunch blues tone through a UA Lion '68 Plexi modelling amp pedal.

Moving back to the SG Modern's ProBuckers and the difference is stark; the Iommi is so much more focussed and articulate compared. The low end is tighter for palm muting and it’s a real upgrade to the Modern for power chord-based playing because the highs aren’t creating unwelcome transient distraction and the clarity for low note bends is undeniable.

In the neck this pickup is a notable change; neither flutey or flabby, and it’s actually an excellent clean sound to my ears. The loaner Modern sounds thinner and more jangly through a Fender Deluxe Reverb compared. There’s a mellow character from the Iommi that’s quite distinct with the mid focus, unlike the usual humbucker experience for me. Perhaps there's something in opting for a neck pickup that isn't designed for that role alone.

Verdict

With the price here on the premium side for a pair – and it should be noted the construction process of these pickups is probably unique for Gibson – only Iommi diehards will probably do the double. But even as a fan, and someone who has drifted from traditional ‘buckers towards the brighter clarity of Firebird and Wide Range options for my guitar mids, I was genuinely delighted with just how distinct and impressive Iommi’s signature humbucker is.

The real cherry on the cake was when I tuned down to drop D; even with guage 10 set of strings the sense of snarl and definition with the expected thickness was really satisfying as I rolled through some Sabbath, old Silverchair and Helmet riffs. A lot of fun! Then bringing in the bite rather than chime of the middle strings for some discordance with the low end is a real weapon to wield, while extended chords in higher gain levels don’t seem to suffer from a clash of frequencies because the highs are rolled back so judiciously.

The return of the Iommi Signature Humbucker is a welcome one. It's unlike any humbucker I've tried before, probably because the blueprint has evolved from a hum-cancelling take on a P-90 into the demands of higher gain levels as Iommi's rig has changed over the years. But the voicing is so well considered that cleans aren't overcooked with compression and those drive-drenched E string bends really do sound great. Should we have expected anything less from Iommi and Gibson?

MusicRadar rating: This humbucker is a must-try if you’re looking for an upgrade and play heavier music, or indeed just want to try something a bit different in the humbucker stable. Because just like Iommi was capable of exploring far more with Sabbath than juggernaut riffs, this is more than just a heavy metal pickup.

Hands-on videos

Sweetwater

You have to hand it to Roger Waters – he consistently finds new ways to annoy people.

Usually, those people are his ex-bandmates in Pink Floyd. Now it’s Jack Osbourne, who has – quite understandably – taken umbrage at some rather insensitive comments about his late father.

Waters was being interviewed on the Independent Ink podcast, when, in the midst of talking about capitalism, global politics and his usual bugbears, he suddenly veered onto the subject of the recently departed Black Sabbath frontman.

"Ozzy Osbourne, who just died, bless him in his whatever state that he was in his whole life. We'll never know. Although he was all over the TV for hundreds of years with his idiocy and nonsense. The music, I have no idea. I couldn't give a fuck."

Waters continued: "I don't care about Black Sabbath, I never did. Have no interest in biting the heads of chickens or whatever they do. I couldn't care less, you know."

Jack Osbourne has since responded on Twitter/X and, well... he doesn’t exactly mince his words.

"Hey Roger Waters, f*** you,” he began. “How pathetic and out of touch you've become. The only way you seem to get attention these days is by vomiting out bullshit in the press. My father always thought you were a c**t. Thanks for proving him right."

Oh dear.

For his part, Ozzy was always quite complimentary about Floyd. Speaking to Classic Rock about his favourite bands in 2022, Osbourne said: “The Floyd made good albums; I don’t think they ever made a bad one”.

As we know, Waters rarely has a good word to say about anyone or anything and his aversion to Black Sabbath and their music goes way back.

Reviewing their single Evil Woman for Melody Maker in 1970, he said: “Well, well, well… I’m speechless – well, almost. You keep thinking it’s going to start. You think that for the first minute, but then, if you are really perceptive, you realise it isn’t going to start, and that’s all there is.”

Bear in mind that in 1970 Waters and Floyd were established names in UK counter-culture and Sabbath merely an up-and-coming band. The review clearly stung. Indeed Tony Iommi remembered it when interviewed in 2017: “I used to read the slaggings we’d get and I’d just think ‘Why?’. There was one moment that really hurt, and that didn’t actually come from the press.

"It came from Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters. He gave it (Evil Woman) such a terrible review. I thought, ‘Blimey!’ Hearing that from a fellow musician seemed really harsh.”

Gibson has unveiled a new signature electric guitar pickup for the Godfather of Heavy Metal, Tony Iommi – or rather it has unveiled an old one, reissuing the Black Sabbath icon’s much loved signature humbucker after a number of years out of production.

Developed in the late ‘90s by JT Riboloff, Gibson’s then head of R&D Department, it was a piece of history – Gibson’s first ever signature pickup, and featured in Iommi’s signature guitars with Gibson.

Is this the ultimate aftermarket mod for anyone looking to give their electric guitar (preferably, an SG) a power-up for premier cru riff-work. Paraphrasing Tony Iommi here but it’s one to file under “You know it makes sense”.

“I’m really excited that Gibson’s bringing back my signature humbucker, they were getting pretty hard to find!” says Iommi. “This pickup came about after a lot of time spent in Nashville, just experimenting with different setups to get that perfect tone and sustain from my favourite guitars.”

He’s not exaggerating. At the launch event at the Gibson Garage London, Iommi said Riboloff had them locked in at the Nashville factory for the night. All the other staff had gone home. “Couldn’t we go and get something to eat, just to get out of here?” wondered Iommi. No, sorry. Riboloff was cooking.

But what he was cooking up was something special, a bespoke wind, inspired by Iommi's John Birch custom pickups, but reaching for something better – or at least incremental improvement, the leitmotif of Iommi's career – featuring Alnico 2 and Ceramic magnets, voiced for sustain and clarity in high-volume, high-gain scenarios. Like everything in Iommi’s rig, it was tailored to his specifications.

“We had to make sure it worked with my light gauge strings and low tunings, but still pack a punch, and the result has got some serious output,” says Iommi. “They’re on my signature guitars too, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how they turned out.”

Gibson CEO and president Cesar Gueikian is a fan of them. He has had them on his guitars for 15 years and counting.

“I was blown away with the distinct Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath sound I was able to get out of them,” he says. “They have such a great, clean look with the unique pickup cover, and we are excited to bring the Rifflord’s signature humbucker back as we continue to pay tribute to Tony.”

And Gibson is paying tribute to Iommi throughout August, with a documentary series featuring the likes of Scott Ian, Zakk Wylde, Steve Vai and Iommi’s good friend Brian May to debut on its GibsonTV YouTube channel.

“It’s great to have the first signature pickup from Gibson back, and there really isn’t a more fitting artist than Tony Iommi,” says Lee Bartram, head of commercial and marketing EMEA, Gibson. “Tony is synonymous with the Gibson SG, but now the volume, presence, and overall power he produces through his playing can be experienced in other models too, whether at home, in the studio, or on stage.

“Thanks to Tony for his continued support and trust; these pickups are the result of our constant collaboration, and we look forward to what’s next for our partnership.”

As for the specs, they are wax-potted. Back in the day, Iommi used to horrify Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward as he would wax-pot the pickups himself.

On one occasion, they were staying in a caravan in Cumbria, Iommi experimenting with wax-potting to try and reduce the noise from his Gibson SG, Laney tube amp, and Dallas Rangemaster setup. The smell was overpowering.

Well, here, Gibson has done all that work for you. Average DCR readings for these are 16k. They come in chrome housings as standard, with four-conductor wiring.

Available now, priced £199/$229, the Tony Iommi Signature Humbucker is available now. See Gibson for more details.

Glenn Hughes didn’t plan on joining Black Sabbath. It just sort of happened. And it turned into one of the biggest mistakes of his career.

In 1985, Hughes was approached by an old friend – Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi.

Iommi was working on a solo album, and told Hughes of his plan to feature an ensemble cast of famous vocalists across the album.

Among the big names lined up were Judas Priest’s Rob Halford and former Sabbath star Ronnie James Dio.

But in the end, Hughes was the only singer featured on the album that Iommi named Seventh Star.

In addition, what started out as a solo project eventually turned into a Black Sabbath album – albeit with the words ‘featuring Tony Iommi’ after the band’s name.

And for Hughes this strange episode ended abruptly and in disastrous fashion.

As Hughes now tells MusicRadar: “I love Tony dearly, and working with him was interesting. But it was a difficult time for all of us.”

He adds, alluding to his drug addiction during that time: “I look back on it now, and I’m not the man today that I was back in the mid-’80s.”

It was in the early ’70s that Hughes befriended Iommi.

Hughes was from Cannock in the Midlands, less than 30 miles from Black Sabbath’s hometown of Birmingham.

“I’d known Tony from the very beginning,” he says. “Since [Sabbath’s 1970 album] Paranoid. He was like family to me, and we grew up together in the UK.”

Hughes first made a name for himself as bassist and lead vocalist of power trio Trapeze.

He then joined Deep Purple, with whom he recorded three albums – Burn, Stormbringer and Come Taste The Band.

But his career path was erratic due to his problems with drugs.

In 1977 he made a soul-influenced solo album, Play Me Out, and in 1982 he starred on a cult classic hard rock record with guitarist Pat Thrall under the banner Hughes/Thrall.

Hughes says now that when Iommi reached out to him in 1985 there was never a discussion about him joining Black Sabbath.

He recalls: “After Purple finished, I was kind of done making that sort of grandiose rock music. And I say this with respect and reverence – I was never a Black Sabbath-type singer.

“I’m not a metal artist at all. And when you listen to the songs on Seventh Star, they aren’t Sabbath, you know?”

He says of Iommi’s offer: “Tony called me in 1985 to see if I was available to sing on a couple of songs – on a solo album with him. He told me that Ronnie James Dio and Rob Halford were gonna sing on a couple of songs each, and I was gonna sing on a couple of songs.

“So I went down to Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, and the first song we recorded was No Stranger To Love.

"Tony and I wrote the song that night, and we recorded it that night. Then Tony said, ‘Whoah, that was great! Can you come back tomorrow?’ And so I came back the next night, and we did In For The Kill.

“From that moment on, I think Tony realised: ‘Glenn is writing a song with me every day. I think we can just continue.’ So, he asked me if I’d like to be the only singer on the album, and I said, ‘Of course! No problem.’”

Seventh Star became a Black Sabbath album after Iommi was leaned on by the band’s record label Warner Brothers and manager Don Arden, father of Sharon Osbourne.

Hughes recalls: “Don Arden said, ‘Well, Warner Brothers thinks we should, for more ticket sales, call it ‘Sabbath featuring Tony’. Tony was not happy about that. And I, of course, had no say in the matter. So we had to go with what Warner Brothers and Don Arden wanted, really.”

Seventh Star was released in January 1986 and sold poorly.

Hughes admits: “Honestly, I haven’t heard the album in decades, but people talk about it. Some of the riffs are quite heavy, but lyrically and melodically, I’m not a metal singer. It really wasn’t my cup of tea, as they say.”

Alongside Iommi and Hughes, the album featured bassist Dave ‘The Beast’ Spitz, keyboard player Geoff Nicholls and future Kiss drummer Eric Singer. This line-up began a US tour but after just a few dates Hughes was fired and replaced by American vocalist Ray Gillen.

“That was difficult,” Hughes says now. “I had a problem, and got into a fight with the production manager the day before the tour started.

“He hit me right in the face, and broke a bone in my nose, and consequently I had dried blood caked around my vocal cords, so I couldn’t sing after three shows. It was impossible.

“Now, looking back, that’s kind of a horrifying thing for anyone to do. Regardless of if he hit me, or who said this, or who did what, it was a difficult moment for anybody to be hit in the face, and then asked to sing a song. So, it was a very tragic moment for me and Tony. But I can’t change the way things were."

It was one of the lowest points in his career, but Hughes says has no regrets about it now.

“All those things that happened to me in the mid ‘80s, they made me the man I am today,” he says. “I’m still here doing what I do. And with reverence and respect, I love Tony very much – and I love Black Sabbath. I have deep respect and love for all of that.”

The BBC documentary Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home, which should have gone out on air this evening (18 August) has been postponed to a later date. No reason has been given as yet.

In its place is an episode of Fake Or Fortune. The BBC has merely said that the film has “moved in the schedules” and that details will be shared “in due course”

All very mysterious. It may be that there has had to be some re-editing in the aftermath of Ozzy’s passing three weeks ago. Maybe the directors are having to insert some new interviews. Who knows?

Prior to this, the BBC had dropped a few titits about what to expect when it finally does go out.

The Black Sabbath singer will be shown "heroically" battling to get fit enough to perform on stage again, as the family deal with the consequences of his ill-health, the BBC had said.

There will be "love, laughter and tears", as his family come to terms with Ozzy’s condition and it’s Kelly Osbourne, who encapsulates the situation when she remarks that it shows that "Iron Man wasn't really made of iron."

Coming Home was filmed over the course of the last three years. Originally it was set to be a series titled Home To Roost, but over time has evolved into one-off doc, with the perfect denouement of the Back To The Beginning show.

Clare Sillery, the BBC head of documentary commissioning, said the team was "honoured" to film the Osbournes during this period of their lives.

She said the film showed the singer’s "enduring spirit... We hope it brings comfort and joy to Ozzy's fans and viewers as they remember and celebrate his extraordinary life.”

Ben Wicks and Colin Barr, the project’s executive producers said they thought it was an "inspiring and poignant" account of Ozzy fulfilling his dream to perform in front of his fans one last time.

They added: "Ozzy was loved by millions around the world not just for his music, but for his sense of mischief and his honesty, all of which we saw plenty of in the final years of his life. But one thing shone through even more brightly to us and that was Ozzy's intense love for his exceptional family who were by his side through it all."

Lars Ulrich has been giving his thoughts about the passing of Ozzy Osbourne and the icon’s last gig at the Back To The Beginning show.

The Metallica drummer appeared on Howard Stern’s Sirius XM show this week and was asked how Ozzy seemed in the run-up to the gig. "He was very eloquent and very sharp in his answer,” Ulrich explained.

“We were just sitting doing small talk, but it was so warm and he was very present, coherent. It was just his body that was not in good shape, but his mind … he was eloquent and talking and in the moment."

Ulrich, was one of the few who had seen Black Sabbath soundcheck and knew then that the reunited band would do a great job. "All the rest of us were just losing our f***ing minds and then they started playing War Pigs with the lights on and the show and air raid sirens and then we were obviously, as fans - and I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn here or being disrespectful - as fans I think there was a sense from all the other musicians and friends of Black Sabbath who were there.

"We were hoping for the best. We wanted it to be the best. We wanted it to be a grand slam, but we didn’t know, because ultimately none of us knew what kind of shape they were in ...

"Then Ozzy came in singing and sounded great, hit all the notes and the lyrics and the timings and everybody was like: 'This is gonna be fine, they’re gonna f***ing kill it'."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BTBQj5foVM

Meanwhile Sharon Osbourne has said that Ozzy was deeply moved by the outpouring of love at the Back To The Beginning gig. In fact, just days before he died, he apparently admitted as much to her.

“He turned around and he said to me that night, ‘I had no idea that so many people liked me’. Ozzy’s always been in his own bubble.”

Sharon was speaking to the online platform Pollstar and said of the Villa Park gig: “It was a huge success, because it was a phenomenal event. It was the first time, I think, that anybody’s gone into retirement and done it, where the show is streamed and it goes to charity. So it’s the first time anybody has said goodnight like that, it’s the perfect way, when you’ve had such a long career, to end it.”

She also revealed that she has been working on a BBC documentary about the gig and Ozzy’s final chapter. Entitled Ozzy Osbourne: Coming Home, it was filmed over the last three years of his life and will be screened on BBC1 on August 18.

Zakk Wylde, Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist and close friend for decades, has spoken for the first time since the Sabbath frontman’s sudden passing last week.

In a new interview with Guitar World, Wylde, who first played with Ozzy on his 1988 album No Rest For The Wicked and stayed with him on and off right until the very end, at Villa Park earlier this month, revealed that, like so many people, that night was the last time he saw him.

“Everybody and their mother were in the backstage dressing room and I just wanted to give him a break,” he told the magazine. “I figured we’d see him later on – the next day or whatever. But no. The last text I got from Oz was saying, ‘Zakky, sorry, it was like a madhouse back there. I didn’t see you.’ He goes, ‘Thanks for everything.’ It was just us talking, saying, ‘I love you, buddy.’ That was it.”

“Oz was just the best,” the guitarist said, reflecting on their relationship. “I have my father, who was a World War II veteran; and then Ozzy, who was almost like an older brother. There was almost a 20-year age gap between us. With our relationship, there was the fun drinking – but if I ever needed advice, I could talk to him.”

“There were issues on how to drink and how not to drink; you know, the important factors in life!”

Asked why he thought Ozzy chose him as a guitarist, Wylde suggested that personal chemistry was the most important factor: “Forget the guitar playing; the way I made ham sandwiches was amazing… my ham sandwiches with Coleman’s are on par with Randy (Rhoads) and Jake’s (Lee’s) greatness on guitar!”

“But with anything, if it works, and it’s easy, that’s how it should be with bands. And relationships in general. Your wife, your friends, anyone – if they don’t bring you peace, why are you with these people? Who needs to be sticking their hand in a boiling pot of water?”

Like most of his friends, whilst Wylde knew Ozzy was ill he had no idea he would leave us so soon. But he reflects: “I’m blessed and grateful, man. Anything other than that would be selfish.”

“And on top of it, to go out with what’s the biggest-grossing charity event of all? That’s unbelievable. He helped a whole lot of people instead of making a profit. My God, what an incredible master. What an incredible life.”

There have been many, many tributes from the great and good to Ozzy Osbourne in the 48 hours since the metal icon’s death was announced on Tuesday. Now drummer Zak Starkey has offered his own, and it includes a somewhat eye-opening disclosure.

The (probably) ex Who and Oasis drummer has revealed that he was once approached by Sharon Osbourne to join Black Sabbath. This was at a time when Bill Ward was not part of the line-up and, needing a drummer to play Lollapalooza, they emailed Starkey, who yesterday screen-shotted the 2013 message.

It reads: “Zak, Black Sabbath is headlining Download on June 10 and then Lollapalooza in August. The guys need a drummer for their album, which will be recorded in September with Rick Rubin producing. We would probably need you for 2-3 weeks for the album. Also, they need a drummer to play at Lollapalooza which is on August 3 in Chicago.”

Osbourne then added, jokingly: “Also, Ozzy wants to have sex with you while he is singing ‘Iron Man’. Big Kiss, Sharon”.

Starkey would turn down the offer – he had prior commitments at the time with The Who and the role went instead to ex-Rage Against The Machine and Audioslave sticksman Brad Wilk, who played on the band’s final studio album, 13. But Starkey claims to have rued that decision, captioning the email: “Regrets I’ve had a few – this is one – (not the sex part!)”

“Ozzy will always be one of the greatest, natural, brilliant singers of all time,” he wrote. “I send much love and strength to his family at this sad sad time. If u aren’t familiar with the Never Say Die record – get into it – it’s so far out.”

Meanwhile, it’s been confirmed that a concert film of the Back To The Beginning gig will hit cinemas next year. It’s already in production and, according to makers Mercury Studios, will be “a love letter to Ozzy and the pioneering sound of Black Sabbath.” More details will doubtless be revealed nearer the time.

Ozzy Osbourne knew how to pick a guitar player. It was one of his many gifts. He had the uncanny knack of sniffing out talent. Whenever his career was in need of uplift, shocked back to life with electric guitar, he somehow found the right man for the job.

It would be no exaggeration to say that Randy Rhoads saved him. In 1979, Ozzy was on the skids, out of Black Sabbath, out of luck. Enter this diminutive, book-smart maverick from Santa Monica. Everything changed.

Ozzy launched his solo career with the hottest player in hard rock and metal since Eddie Van Halen. Rhoads’ death in 1982, aged 25, in a plane crash in Florida, was devastating.

Those who stepped up in the aftermath, such as Bernie Tormé, who had just left Gillan, then Brad Gillis of Night Ranger, did their bit. Theirs may have been a cameo turn in the Ozzy Osbourne story but they kept the wheels moving, and before Gillis’ time with the Prince of Darkness was over, he at least got to record the live album Speak Of The Devil.

When it came to replace Rhoads on a studio album, Jake E Lee stepped up. He was reportedly a toss-up between Lee and George Lynch of Dokken, with Ozzy preferring the latter.

That makes an interesting alternate history; Lynch would have been ideal for the Ozzy gig. But Lee proved he had the stuff. His work on Bark Of The Moon was total box-office ‘80s metal, a Friday night thrill fest. Ron Nevison’s production on its follow-up, The Ultimate Sin, might have disappointed Ozzy but Lee’s playing was unimpeachable.

It didn’t save him. Ozzy’s wife and manager, Sharon, fired Lee. And by 1987, auditions were open again, and this time Ozzy would find his longest-serving six-string lieutenant, Zakk Wylde.

Hiring Wylde, then just a coltish 19-year-old, set the wheels in motion for Ozzy’s hitherto most successful solo album, No More Tears, and a collaboration that lasted until Black Sabbath and Ozzy’s final bow at Villa Park, Birmingham, for the Back To The Beginning all-dayer.

Wylde made his debut on 1988’s No Rest For The Wicked. Speaking to MusicRadar in 2021 for No More Tears' 30th anniversary, Wylde recalled how he drew upon Randy Rhoads’ influence for how he approached his solos.

“It was a very composed solo, like a lot of my Ozzy stuff. That’s what came out of the Randy Rhoads school of soloing, where everything had a beginning, a middle and an end,” said Wylde. “The solos were composed to be part of the song, as opposed to just improv and shredding over the whole thing. It’s the chord progressions that accommodate the solos… and I still do that today. I’ll sit there with my practice amp listening to a homework CD or playlist of backing tracks, coming out with different ideas until I find something I’m happy with.”

Wylde scarcely had time to think. But for its follow-up, he had settled upon a style. He was going to forego the neoclassical stuff that was all very much of the day. Play arpeggios and you would sound like Yngwie, he reasoned. Similarly, two-handed tapping, natural harmonics, all that stuff could see you written off as just another EVH clone – and there were many.

“At the time, three note per-string diatonic scales were super popular and everybody was playing in the vein,” said Wylde. “I was looking at the list and figured the only thing left would be pentatonic scales. So it was like taking all the crayons out of the box, leaving myself just four to play with and seeing what I could draw with that. It forces you to come up with something, when you are working with less.”

It worked. Wylde’s hydrocarbon tone – fuelled by the one/two punch of his Les Paul’s active EMG81/85 humbucker pairing, a JCM800 with a Boss SD-1 overdrive pedal in front – was just the thing to set those pentatonics alight. And he hit those strings hard. Wylde was off to the races.

But one of the break-out hits from No More Tears was not the product of careful consideration. Far from it. When I Don’t Want To Change The World came together, Wylde says it was all a big joke.

Ozzy was not in the building. The band were making their own entertainment.

“I remember when the man riff came about. We were at Joe’s Garage in Burbank, just rehearsing and writing material for the record,” recalled Wylde. “Ozzy hadn’t gotten there yet. I remember jamming that riff as a joke because we’d fill in the pauses, just talking into the mic.”

What follows is a reminder to all that you should keep a tape running in the rehearsal room. You never know what might happen, a riff that could make the cut. But back then, Wylde was just goofing off, vamping on the mic.

‘The whole premise was how we could never get a date, so I’d sing something like, ‘Hi, my name’s Zakk and I don’t have a job and live with my parents!’ before going back into the riff,” he explained. “The joke was you don’t have a home, a car or a job and you probably won’t be getting laid anytime soon. We were doing that riff and cracking up laughing the whole time.”

The laughing stopped when the boss opened the door. Ozzy heard something in it. The rest is history.

“Ozzy walked in and said, ‘What’s that riff?’ and I said, ‘Ozzy, we’re just goofing around!’ So he told us to remember it and we’ll use it for something,” said Wylde. “Later we ended up winning a Grammy with that song.”

It’s true. I Don’t Want To Change The World came out of a joke riff and a goof-off and really did take home the Grammy for Best Metal Performance – only not the recording we hear on No More Tears. It was the Live & Loud version, recorded at a 1992 Orlando, Florida Ozzy show, that took home the award. You never know where your joke riffs might take you.

Tony Iommi has spoken for the first time since news of Ozzy Osbourne’s death broke on Tuesday. In a lengthy interview with ITV, the guitarist talked, movingly, about his shock at his bandmate’s seemingly sudden passing and about what happened immediately after the Back To The Beginning gig on 5 July.

"It was a shock for us," Iommi told the broadcaster. "I mean, when I heard yesterday, it couldn’t sink in. I thought, ‘It can’t be.’ I only had a text from him the day before. It just seemed unreal, surreal. And it really didn’t sink in. And in the night, I started thinking about it: ‘God, am I dreaming all this?’ But as I said before, he’s not looked well through the rehearsals.

"I think he really just held out to do that show. I really feel – and me and Geezer were talking about it last night – that we think he held out to do it, and just after that, he’s done it and said goodbye to the fans. And that was the end of it, really.”

The show – which saw Ozzy perform five songs with his own band and then four with Sabbath – will never be forgotten. Certainly, it’s unlikely such an incredible bill of rock and metal artists will be assembled in the same place ever again. According to Iommi, the band themselves were quietly pleased after their performance.

"Well, he went to his dressing room and I went to mine and Geez went to his and so on," says Iommi. "And then he came over. He came around before he was leaving on a wheelchair that brought him in to say goodbye and have a little chat for a bit. And he seemed all right. He enjoyed it. And he said, ‘Oh, it went all right, didn’t it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it did.’

"But as I say, when I had the text off him the day before yesterday saying he’s tired and he’s really got no energy. And I thought, ‘Oh, dear.’ ‘Cause it’s a lot for him to do that under the problems he’s got.

"And we could see it in rehearsal. We didn’t want him there every day at rehearsal, because it’s too much. He just wouldn’t be able to stand it. So they’d bring him in and he’d sit down and sing a few songs, and then we’d talk about some rubbish old times or whatever, have a laugh, and then he’d go. And that’s sort of what we did, really.”

Knowing that the band managed to do that gig before his passing has been some compensation, Iommi said. “I’m really glad we did it. It was a final thing for everybody. If we hadn’t have done it, people couldn’t have seen the band and Ozzy and it would have been a shame.”

Black Sabbath packed a lot into the 1970s. They began the decade by inventing heavy metal and ended it by sacking legendary frontman Ozzy Osbourne.

In between were all sorts of highs and lows - which guitarist Tony Iommi discussed in a 2011 interview with Classic Rock.

Iommi began by talking about how the band’s self-titled debut album was slaughtered by music critics upon its release in February 1970.

“It wasn’t nice to read the reviews,” he said. “It’s your first album ever, and you get all the music magazines to see what’s been said about it, and then all you read is: ‘What a load of crap!’ I just went, Oh my God…

“It was hurtful at first, but you learn to live with it after a while. And the most important thing is - we believed in what we did. And that was the way life went for us, right from the beginning. We had to get over a lot of fences.

“I didn’t mind if a reviewer said, ‘It’s not my cup of tea, but a lot of kids do like it.’ But they said that nobody liked us. That was a little upsetting. But we just forged ahead. It’s the only way you can do it.

“You’ve got to believe in what you do. You can’t just fall apart because of what other people say.”

Iommi recalled how Sabbath’s first European tour shaped the sound of their second album Paranoid - and especially its classic opening track War Pigs.

“We ended up playing in this one place in Zurich for what seemed like an eternity,” he said. “In reality it was just a few weeks.

“The first night we arrived there, the place was packed, and it was fantastic. A band was playing, it was their last night and they had champagne. We thought, ‘This is great!’ Little did we know that they couldn’t wait to get out of there.

“When we played the next night the place was as dead as a doornail. We were playing to hardly anybody. Our audience was a couple of hookers and some lunatic who used to do handstands in front of the stage and all his money would fall out of his pockets.

“But we carried on, and we played for ourselves, and it gave us the opportunity to jam and write, because we had so long to play. Every night we had to play seven 45-minute spots. We hadn’t got enough songs, so we used to make up stuff. Which was great, really. That’s where War Pigs came from and some of the other tracks – from jamming.”

As Sabbath got more and more successful, and toured heavily in America, Iommi encountered unexpected challenges with his gear.

He admitted: “We had some problems playing in those big arenas. The Spectrum in Philadelphia, being an ice rink, they had this big machinery in the back – generators to keep the ice from melting. And this machinery always used to effect my equipment.

“My whole guitar sound just turned into this horrendous racket. I had this treble booster that I plugged into my amp, and you name it, it picked everything up – you’d hear a bloody cab radio and all sorts. So those gigs for me were a bloody nightmare.”

The band’s 1973 album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is one of their very best, but Iommi remembered then making of that album as a struggle.

“We started trying to write and I just hit a wall,” he said. “I couldn’t think of anything. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never had writer’s block before. And the more worried I got, the worse it got.

“In the end we decided to go somewhere that was out of the way, so we went to Clearwell Castle [in Gloucestershire]. I thought, ‘We’ll get a bit of atmosphere there.’

“There were dungeons in the basement and that’s where we set up the gear. And as soon as we got down there, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was the first track I came up with, the first riff.

“The whole vibe in those dungeons made me come up with that riff. And once we’d got the starter song, we could just carry on. That was great for us. It was really good, quite exciting.”

Sabbath’s 1976 album Technical Ecstasy had a more experimental sound, which, as Iommi recalled, was mostly his own work.

“We had a keyboard player then, Gerald Woodroffe. And we’d gone to Ridge Farm [in Surrey] to write the album and rehearse.

"It was good for me, because I could rehearse with Gerald. The other lads used to stay in bed quite late, so you didn’t want to make too much noise. But I’d sit down with Gerald and we’d write all this stuff. So that album was different from the others, but I did like it.

“We went to Miami to record Technical Ecstasy at Criteria Studios. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

“We all stayed in a place right on the beach, and I’d go down to the studio and nobody would be there!

“The Bee Gees were recording there too. I spent a lot of time hanging out with Barry Gibb. And the Eagles were there, too, in the room next to us. The Eagles had to pack up and go because we were too loud!”

The 1978 album Never Say Die! was the last they made before singer Ozzy Osbourne was fired in controversial circumstances.

Iommi described the recording of that album as a miserable time.

“I don’t know how we got that album done,” he said. “I booked the studio out in Toronto, never having seen it in my life. I booked it because the Stones had used it. But when we got there, it was just too plush, it wasn’t right for us. I had all the carpet ripped up because it just sounded dead in there.

“We had to rehearse in the morning at this cinema, and it was fucking freezing cold. And then at night we’d go into the studio to record. So it was very hard to put that album together, very frustrating for us all.”

It was while promoting Never Say Die! that Sabbath toured with Van Halen as the opening act. This proved a chastening experience as Sabbath were routinely blown off stage by the young and hungry Van Halen.

Iommi confessed: “We were burnt out and had come to a stage in our lives when the band was not right.

“When we did that tour, Van Halen were really hot to trot, whereas we were established, but burning out.

“We were good friends with Van Halen. We had them on tour with us for eight months, and Eddie Van Halen became one of my best friends.

“Eddie was the first guitarist I’d heard come up with the tapping method. And he was a great player. But that tour was difficult.

“Van Halen were really good. They were great musicians, energetic onstage. But we hit a wall.

“We didn’t know where we were going - and Van Halen were really going somewhere. They were jumping all over the stage, and we were like old farts in comparison.

“They used to be side of stage every night watching us. You could see that they wanted to learn. And they did. They worked hard and really did good. We’d gone as far as we could at that point.”

Black Sabbath would begin the next decade with a new singer - Ronnie James Dio.

But that of course is a whole other story…

Judas Priest will not be playing on Saturday afternoon when the world’s biggest metal bands descend upon Villa Park in Birmingham, England, to perform at Black Sabbath’s last ever show, Back To The Beginning, but the Metal Gods have released their own tribute with a cover of War Pigs.

War Pigs is to Priest what UFO’s Doctor Doctor is to Iron Maiden; it’s the intro tape that always plays before Rob Halford and co take to the stage. But they had never covered it until now.

“We are honoured to show our love for Ozzy and Black Sabbath with our homage to War Pigs,” reads Judas Priest’s statement. “A song we play at every show around the world that fans sing along to – reinforcing their love as well for the legendary Prince of Darkness!”

Where does this rank in Priest's catalogue of covers? It's too early to tell but it's not up there with Diamonds And Rust, and it's no Johnny B. Goode, thankfully.

Priest throw everything at it. All guns blazing. They might have lost KK Downing in acrimonious circumstances (now he is one original Priest member who is playing Back To The Beginning under the renegade banner of KK’s Priest) but we have the Glenn Tipton, Andy Sneap and Richie Faulkner present and correct. Tipton is on his theatrically shaped Hamer Custom GT with the block inlays.

The whiplash editing makes it hard to tell whether Sneap is on a Jackson Rhoads or King V but we’d say the former – it’s usually a Rhoads he plays. And the reason we’re detailing the guitars is because Faulkner is playing what looks like it could be a prototype signature guitar – a Les Paul Custom finished in Pelham Blue with a white double-guard.

It’s the Faulknerisation of the original triple-humbucker Les Paul Custom, more commonly found in Ebony or white, and it’s pretty damn cool. Those three humbuckers are his signature EMG electric guitar pickups.

One thing that suggests it might not be a signature model is the fingerboard, where it is your typical LP Custom configuration, block inlays on ebony – Faulkner’s now out-of-production Custom Shop Flying V Custom had his logo at the 12th fret. Anyway, that could be worth keeping an eye on.

As will Back To The Beginning. Good luck getting a ticket. The event, which is being curated by Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello, will be livestreamed. See Back To The Beginning for more details. In other Black Sabbath news, the band’s early demos – when they were still known as Earth – are being reissued.

The release collects all the demo material that the band tracked at Birmingham’s Zella Studios in 1969. You can pre-order Earth: The Legendary Lost Tapes via Big Bear Records, shipping July 25.

• Laney celebrates Black Sabbath's final show with limited edition Black Country Customs reissue of Tony Iommi's TI100 signature amp

The final Black Sabbath performance this coming Saturday is being billed as ‘Back To The Beginning’, so it’s appropriate that this week it’s been announced that an album of the band’s early recordings is to released, from back when they were still called Earth.

Earth: The Legendary Lost Tapes compiles the demos that the band made in 1969 at Zella Studios in Birmingham. This was the period when Tony Iommi had just rejoined the band after a short stint in Jethro Tull, but before they officially changed their name to Black Sabbath in August 1969.

The compilation has been put together by the band’s first manager, Jim Simpson, who has put out a statement saying: “Before Black Sabbath, the band were known as Earth – a blues-driven powerhouse already making a name for themselves. This new release presents rare early recordings from that era, remastered from long-lost tapes.”

“These recordings clearly demonstrate what fine music they produced right from the very beginning. We recorded these tracks at Zella Studio in Birmingham in 1969, but held back from releasing them as their style was evolving so quickly.”

“Now, some 57 years later, the recordings assume a greater importance, illustrating how these four young men from Birmingham, barely out of their teens, were excellent musicians and a fine band, fully deserving of all the success that was to come their way.”

Here’s a taster of the album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7gCMv10raE

It should be said that none of the four original members have had anything to do with the release, which comes out on July 25 on Big Bear Records. Do not expect to hear any of its contents at Saturday’s gig.

Talking of which, last minute preparations for the all-dayer have been going on – last week the band posted pictures from their first rehearsal, including three of the four members sat on a sofa grinning and waving at the camera.

Meanwhile, last month it was confirmed, for the many thousands who don’t have tickets, that the event will be livestreamed from 3pm on Saturday. For more details go to the Back To The Beginning website here.

With Black Sabbath about to play their last ever show at Villa Park this weekend, Laney Amplification has unveiled a super limited edition replica of Tony Iommi’s signature tube amp head to mark the occasion.

The Black Country Customs TI100 is handmade in the UK, and is an exacting replica of Iommi’s 2012 signature head, complete with the grille plate with crosses backlit in red. Each amp comes with a signed and numbered backplate, plus a certificate of authenticity, limited edition guitar picks and commemorative postcards – and everything you need to nail his electric guitar tone.

A dual-channel amplifier, the TI100 is made for metal guitar, with its Lead channel voiced for down tunings, and does not want for high-gain saturation. But it does a lot more.

The Rhythm channel handles all your cleans, right through to blues guitar crunch. And with an onboard boost section, one per channel, it gives you a footswitchable hotter voice for each channel.

The engineers at Laney’s Black Country Customs workshop configured the boost so that it works just as would in the pedal. When activated, adjust the bright red Boost dials accordingly and they will hit the front end of the guitar amp with some extra decibels.

As Laney's product manager, Simon Fraser Clark explains, when he was co-designing the original TI100 with Iommi, he wanted something different.

“Tony is very much one of these people who hasn’t rested on his laurels,” says Clark. “In 2012, Tony came to us to start talking about his new signature amp, the TI100, and that was used on the 2013 tour, for the album 13, and it was a departure in his sound from pervious tours – he wanted something that was a bit more heavier, had a bit more compression to it, a bit more gain. So that led to the TI100.”

Each channel has its own three-band EQ and controls for Enhance and Presence. The latter is something most players will be familiar with; it allows you to adjust the high-end response of the output section, a little post EQ spritz and polish – it can sometimes give your electric guitar tone the extra sparkle it needs to make harmonics and feedback pop out.

Enhance does something similar for the low end frequencies. Again, it sits in the output stage, and shapes the response. Fully counterclockwise, that response is tight, the kind of tone you might use for contemporary metal styles, full-bore chug and all that animalistic business.

Turn the dial clockwise and it opens up a bit, letting those chords bloom – fine-tuning for doom. It is nice to see independent Enhance and Presence controls for each channel; it is more common to find them as global controls serving both.

Under the hood there is a quartet of 6L6 power tubes, with 8 2AX7 preamp tubes. Altogether you get 100-watts to play with. Laney are only making 50 of these. They come with a protective covering, and all the case candy and extras mentioned above.

But this is an amp that was designed to play. It’s built for the road. Those integrated grab handles are a super practical feature when lugging a 21.5kg amplifier up a flight of stairs.

Other nods to pragmatism include an “ultra transparent” effects loop that can accommodate your pedalboard – and/or rack equipment. The loop has an FX Return Gain dial so you can compensate for any change in gain when effects are applied, and you can bypass the loop altogether.

The TI100 ships with an FS4-TI footswitch for changing channels and turning each channel’s boost on and off. Again, this is replete with signature details, with Iommi’s signature and cross logo on the enclosure.

Around the back of the amp there are all the 1/4” speaker outputs you’d need – 4 Ohms, 8 Ohms, 2x 8 Ohms, 16 Ohms, 2 x 16 Ohms… It’s a serious piece of kit, and they’re only making 50 of ‘em. And Sabbath have only one show left, Back To The Beginning, Villa Park, Saturday July 5.

As Laney says, it was Laney in the beginning for Iommi, the LA100BL pressed into service as he inaugurated heavy metal with Black Sabbath’s eponymous anthem, and it has been Laney all the way since.

Priced £2999, the Black Country Customs Tony Iommi TI100 is available now. See Laney Amplification for more details.

All four members of the ‘classic’ line-up of Black Sabbath have been awarded the freedom of the City Of Birmingham.

The Lord Mayor of the City presented scrolls and medals to Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward and Geezer Butler in a private ceremony on Saturday. It’s an honour that no Brummie (and surely no metal fan) would quibble about.

And it comes a week before what is set to be an emotional evening at Villa Park, when the band will make their final appearance together at the Back To The Beginning concert.

Interviewed afterwards, Ozzy Osbourne reflected on how far he and the band have come since their early days: “I first put an advert in a music store in town. If these guys hadn’t come to my door, I wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

“It seems to have flown by so quickly. It’s amazing. I think about my dad, who went into debt to buy me a microphone. If only he could be here now. I think he would be very proud. I’m a Brummie and I always will be a Brummie. Birmingham forever!”

Meanwhile Geezer Butler added: “This is a great working class city, and we’re all working class, from Aston.”

“We weren’t given a chance when we started out, but Birmingham has always been behind us. People used to make fun of our accents, but we’re all proud Birmingham people and we love this city. It’s one of the greatest cities ever, it’s given the world so much and we’re proud to be here.”

The band also found time to visit a newly-created mural of the band that’s been painted on Navigation Street in the city and they met the artist, a fellow known only as ‘Mr Murals’ and gave him two free tickets to next week’s Villa Park show.

"Every single one of them took the time to speak to me and were so kind," Murals said. "It's mental. I'm still not over it."

It has to be one of the most bizarre promotions of all time. Liquid Death, the makers of iced tea, have launched a limited edition run of cans that includes Ozzy Osbourne’s own DNA.

Yes, you read that correctly. It’s an ultra limited release of just 10 cans of what the brand are calling ‘Infinite Ozzy’. Each of the cans were consumed by the Black Sabbath singer before being sealed to preserve his DNA. They all come in a lab-quality display container and is hand-signed by the man himself

The drop happened yesterday (June 17) at liquiddeath.com/ozzy so if you’re reading this it’s probably already too late. But then the collectors’ items were retailing for $450 each, making them among the most expensive soft drinks of all time.

Liquid Death have stated that the goal is to preserve Osbourne’s DNA should fans want to clone him in the future, once technology and law allow. Indeed, in a teaser video to accompany the promotion, Osbourne says: “My DNA is in this can. You could clone me — but why the f**k would you want to?”

Of course, it’s all cunningly timed to tie in with the Back To The Beginning Show, which is now just two and a half weeks away. On his Sirius XM show Ozzy Speaks, the singer said he was confident he’d be able to perform at the gig. “I haven’t done any physical work for the last seven, six and a half, seven years,” he said. “By hook or by crook, I’m gonna make it (to the stage at Villa Park).”

“I’ve got this trainer guy who helps people get back to normal,” he added. “It’s hard going, but he’s convinced that he can pull it off for me. I’m giving it everything I’ve got.”

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi admits that he is worried about the band's upcoming performance at singer Ozzy Osbourne’s farewell show in Birmingham on 5 July.

In a new interview with Music Week, Iommi says of the event at Villa Park: “This would be a big, monumental thing if it all comes good. The worrying thing for me is the unknown. We don’t know what’s going to happen.

“Normally, when we’d tour, we’d rehearse and run through the thing for a while, and it’s just us. But with this event there are so many other moving parts.”

This show, under the banner ‘Back To The Beginning’, will feature performances from a host of guest stars including Metallica, Guns N’ Roses and Tool.

Ozzy Osbourne is scheduled to perform a set of solo material before reuniting with Black Sabbath alongside Iommi and fellow founding members Geezer Butler and Bill Ward.

But with Osbourne in poor health, Iommi says that fans should not expect too much from the singer.

“You’re used to Ozzy running around,” Iommi says, “but he certainly won’t be doing that for this show. I don’t know if he’s going to be standing or sitting on a throne or what.”

Iommi says he is approaching this show with “excitement mixed with fear”.
He clarifies: “Once we start playing, then we’ll know we’re doing it. It’s always a worry, even when we did tours before, there’s always that build-up, and then it gets to the point that we do it and it’s OK.”

He also states that this show is definitely the final performance from Ozzy and from Black Sabbath.

“It’s absolutely the end,” he insists. “This show has come up because of the situation [with Osbourne’s illness] and because it’s a charity thing. But there’s no way we could go out and do a tour.

"Everybody in the band is looking forward to doing it, though it’s a nerve-wracking thing, as we’ll be touching on some stuff that we haven’t done for a long time.”

We’re just a month away now from Back To The Beginning, the final Black Sabbath performance and the woman who conceptualised the whole thing – Sharon Osbourne, of course – has given a fascinating interview to Music Business UK.

It touches all aspects of her managerial career, from learning what (and what not to do) from her father, Don Arden, to starting out managing Gary Moore before she guided Ozzy through to a successful solo career.

She also dishes out some sage wisdom gleaned from her five decades in the music business. “Never let your publishing go,” she says. “Until you get to the stage where you think you want to bail, and then you sell it all for a fortune.

"You look at where your songs could end up; you could get a couple of million each time your song is used in an advertisement.

“Other people could cover your song and have a hit with a song that wasn’t a hit for you. It’s something which, now, I know a lot of artists, they go in, and they want deals, (and the) record companies want their publishing. It’s like, ‘Fuck you, no way.’”

Osbourne also doesn’t think much of the long term development of artists in the modern music industry: “There is no development currently at record labels. They take everything. Record labels developing (artists) doesn’t exist. A&R departments just go on the internet. That’s it. They’ll take your publishing, your merchandise and everything else, and all they do is press and distribute and stream you.

“Most of the record companies own the streaming anyway and all of this about, ‘Oh, I’ve got a billion streams, it’s amazing.’ Well, you’re getting less than a fucking penny for a stream. It’s absolutely bastardising an artist’s music.”

She also revealed that the creation of Ozzfest – a huge festival success of the 1990s/2000s - was a direct result of her husband getting turned down by Lollapalooza.

“They were like, ‘No, not at all. Not for us.’ It gave me the idea of, ‘Fuck it (then) we’ll do our own metal festival’, because it didn’t exist. There were no touring metal festivals. It was the beginning; all the rest followed. And I’m so proud of that.

"We did it first, and it was an opportunity for so many younger bands to play in front of a huge crowd.”

There’s much more, of course. Click here to read the whole interview.

When Ozzy Osbourne was kicked out of Black Sabbath in 1979, fans were stunned. But as guitarist Tony Iommi insisted, the only other option the band had was to split up.

In an interview with Classic Rock, Iommi recalled how the problem with Osbourne came to a head in Los Angeles during sessions for Sabbath’s ninth album.

“We had some chats with Ozzy," Iommi said. "Whether he’d remember them or not, I don’t know.

“I was in a terrible position, because I was the one who used to go to meetings with the record company. I’d go over to Warner Brothers and they’d say: ‘How’s the album coming along?’ ‘Oh, alright.’ ‘When can we hear some tracks?’ ‘Um, soon…’

“I was lying. It just wasn’t happening. We were coming up with riffs, but Ozzy just wasn’t into it anymore.

“He’d done too much of everything. A lot of times when we were working, he’d be asleep on a couch.”

Osbourne would later claim that being sacked by Black Sabbath for drinking too much and doing too many drugs was akin to being “hung by a jury of murderers”.

Iommi maintained that the band’s bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward were in agreement that Osbourne had to go.

“It wasn’t just my decision to fire him,” the guitarist said. “It was a decision made by all three of us.

“It was Bill who told Ozzy. Ozzy probably thought I was behind it all, but it was a band decision. It was either we break up or we carry on without him.”

Iommi also admitted that he had contacted another singer, Ronnie James Dio, before the decision to fire Osbourne was made — and that the contact was made via Ozzy’s future wife and manager Sharon Arden.

“I got in touch with Ronnie through Sharon,” Iommi said. “I met Ronnie at a party.

“I really didn’t feel happy with the way things were going with Ozzy. I thought about doing something with Ronnie. And then when we split with Ozzy, I said to the others, ‘Well, why don’t we try Ronnie?’

“We’d heard the Rainbow albums with Ronnie singing. I thought we had to try to see what we could do with him.”

American singer Ronnie James Dio had made four albums with Rainbow, the band led by ex-Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore.

The second of these albums, Rising, was released in 1976 and featured the classic track Stargazer.

In 1978, however, Ritchie Blackmore decided to pursue a more commercial hard rock direction with Rainbow — a move which resulted in Dio being replaced by British vocalist Graham Bonnet.

Dio was therefore available when Iommi made his approach.

Iommi knew that it was a gamble. But this was one gamble that really paid off.

“Ronnie had so much against him,” Iommi said. “It was so hard for him to walk into a band as established as we were, and he wasn’t a big chap, just a little guy.

“But I just looked at the size of the talent. He sang so well.

“As soon as we heard Ronnie sing with us, we knew he was the right man. It was different to what we’d done, but there wasn’t much else we could do.

“We started writing completely differently, because Ronnie was such a different kind of singer. If we had got another singer who sounded like Ozzy, I think that would have been worse. It had to be something different. The music we wrote with him was a different approach.

“It was like we were starting over again. But it made us fight again. We’d lost that fight — you get too comfortable. It made us have to work again, it kicked us up the arse, and that was good for the band.”

With Dio in place of Ozzy, a rejuvenated Black Sabbath created one of the greatest albums of their career — Heaven And Hell.

Released in March 1980, the album included a monumental title track and others destined to become classics — Neon Knights, Children Of The Sea and Die Young.

In September of that year, Ozzy Osbourne bounced back with his first post-Sabbath album, Blizzard Of Ozz, featuring a new guitar hero in Randy Rhoads.

Over time, Heaven And Hell would be acclaimed as a true Sabbath classic and arguably the crowning glory of Ronnie James Dio’s career.

Back in 1980, what this album represented for Tony Iommi was a new beginning and a complete validation.

“I had an excitement about the band again,” Iommi said. “I had to keep this band going. I’ve never been one to give up. I had to fight and to try and make it work.

“It would have been so easy to have turned my back on it and just said, ‘That’s it.’ But I couldn’t do that. I had to go with it and make it work. And it did.

“Heaven And Hell turned out to be great album. Black Sabbath hadn’t died. We were back out there with Ronnie and the band was great again.”

Here's a collaboration no one saw coming. Robbie Williams has recruited Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi to play on his new single, Rocket, the first track shared from the former Take That singer’s forthcoming album, Britpop.

The track features electric guitar from Iommi throughout, and is a sort of bland high-energy pop-rocker that is more P!nk than Paranoid, and comes and goes in under three minutes. Whatever you can say about Williams he is at least eager to get right down to it.

Britpop (stylised BRITPOP, all caps, you gotta shout to be heard these days) is scheduled for release in the Autumn, and you can expect more guest appearances.

“I set out to create the album that I wanted to write and release after I left Take That in 1995,” said Williams, on Instagram. “It was the peak of Britpop and a golden age for British Music. I’ve worked with some of my heroes on this album; it’s raw, there are more guitars and it’s an album that’s even more upbeat and anthemic than usual.

“There’s some ‘Brit’ in there and there’s certainly some ‘pop’ too – I’m immensely proud of this as a body of work and I’m excited for fans to hear this album.”

There are no details as to who produced Rocket, or as to how a boyband idol ended up working with the Godfather of Heavy Metal, but it’ll keep Iommi’s chops up as he prepares for Black Sabbath’s final curtain call – this time for real – on 5 July at Villa Park when he takes to the stage with metal’s original Fab Four for the Back To The Beginning one-day festival.

Sabbath are headlining. The lineup reads like a who's who of metal guitar. There will be sets from Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Gojira, Halestorm, Alice In Chains, Lamb Of God, Anthrax and Mastodon.

Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello is musical director for the show and has put together an all-star band featuring Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, Slash and Duff from Guns N’ Roses, Wolfgang Van Halen, Zakk Wylde, Anthrax’s Scott Ian, Ozzy Osbourne alumni Rudy Sarzo and Jake E Lee, and many more. Morello will no doubt play.

Hey, maybe Robbie Williams will be a surprise guest. Isn’t 2025 crazy?

Okay, speaking of Iommi guesting on other people’s records, Williams should be congratulating himself. This is a coup. Iommi does not make a habit of it. He guested on NWOBHM heroes Quartz’s 1977 debut album, but then he was producing his fellow Brummies so maybe that doesn’t count.

Notably he joined forces with Cathedral on Utopian Blaster, from the UK doom legends’ 1995 album, The Carnival Bizarre.

He also played on Diamond Head’s 1993 album, Death And Progress, on a track called Starcrossed (Lovers of the Night). Come to think of it, that is maybe what ChatGPT would come up with if you asked it to come up with a Ronnie James Dio-era Sabbath song-title.

Iommi joined Dio on Girlschool’s I Spy, from 2008’s guest-laden Legacy album, and contributed lead guitar to Candlemass’s Astorolus – The Great Octopus, from 2019’s The Door To Doom. And of course he did his old mate, Ozzy, a turn on Patient Number 9.

Black Sabbath’s 1975 album Sabotage is one of the band’s very best - but it also includes some of their weirdest music.

Guitarist Tony Iommi recalled in an interview with Classic Rock: “We wanted to do a rock album.” And certainly there are songs on Sabotage to rank among the heaviest that Sabbath ever recorded - songs such as Hole In The Sky and Symptom Of The Universe.

But this album also features what is surely the most bizarre track ever to feature on a Black Sabbath album - Supertzar, an ambient piece featuring the English Chamber Choir, and described by drummer Bill Ward as “a demonic chant”. And the weirdness on Sabotage doesn’t end there...

On their previous album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, the band had experimented with synthesisers, played by a guest star, Rick Wakeman of progressive rock pioneers Yes.

On Sabotage, those experiments continued with Am I Going Insane (Radio), which was essentially a pop song, written by singer Ozzy Osbourne on a Moog synthesiser, which he played on the finished track.

“Oz drove us all nuts with that Moog thing,” Ward recalled, “but the song was great. And in hindsight, it was kind of a precursor for his solo career. His personality was blooming on this song.”

Strangest of all, at the very end of the album, after the last notes of the closing track The Writ, there is a 31-second snippet of music that was recorded by producer Mike Butcher without the band’s knowledge - and added during the mixing process.

“Microphones were plugged in all around the studio,” Butcher explained. “So one night, when Ozzy and Bill were messing around on the piano, I pushed the record button.”

What he captured was a joke song they named Blow On The Jug.

“This stupid fucking thing,” Ward said. “A drunken song that Ozzy and me would sing together in a van or on a plane.

“That’s me on piano, and Ozzy blowing on one of those brown cider jugs, playing it like a tuba.”

Tom Morello has shared some intel about Black Sabbath’s upcoming Villa Park gig, which is already shaping up to be the metal show of the century.

The Rage Against The Machine/Audioslave guitarist was asked to be musical director of the day by Sharon Osbourne and in an interview with The Independent, Morello described how between himself, Ozzy and Sharon, the three have gone about shaping the event.

“The North Star from the first conversation was to make this the greatest day in the history of heavy metal,” he said.

“Black Sabbath invented the genre… it’s a tribute to (them) but unlike other tributes, Black Sabbath’s going to play at the end of the night, and so it’s a chance for artists of all ages and branches of the heavy metal tree to pay respects by playing some of our own music that owes a debt to Black Sabbath, and then also have 14 to 16 of the greatest Black Sabbath cover bands that ever graced the stage.”

As we already know, the line-up that they’ve put together is simply astonishing: Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, Slayer, Tool, Pantera, Alice In Chains, Anthrax, Mastodon and Rival Sons. Then there is the ‘supergroup’ that is likely to include Billy Corgan, Sammy Hagar, Chad Smith and Andrew Watt, as well as Slash and Duff McKagan from Guns N’ Roses.

And there are likely to be more names added, according to Morello: “Some of the biggest artists who are performing have not been announced,” he revealed. “There’ll be some surprises during the day.”

Asked what fans should expect, Morello advised them to “get there early”.

He added: “I think it’ll be very emotional for Black Sabbath fans in the room and around the world on that day, to really give that band their due.”

Meanwhile, Zakk Wylde has been suggesting that 5 July may not be the end of the road for Ozzy after all. Speaking to the Birmingham Mail, the guitarist said: “The game plan is, let’s hope this is what happens, I mean, you always gotta stay on the bright side of life, because Oz was singing at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame thing.

“Ozzy was just sitting on the chair and he was singing Mama, I’m Coming Home, and it sounded great. So hopefully we’ll just do this and then Oz will go ‘let’s fire up the machine again and we’ll do another tour.”

We’ll see. Tickets for 5 July? You’ll be lucky. When the Osbournes donated a pair of tickets to a charity auction in aid of a Birmingham children’s hospice that took place this week, one anonymous bidder pledged £16,700.

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi reckons that the band’s dark image was great for getting publicity in their early days - but it could have cost him his life.

In an interview with Classic Rock, Iommi recalled how Sabbath’s heavy music and the references to Satan in their signature song Black Sabbath created a powerful mystique around the band.

“The image was good and bad, really,” Iommi said. “It created this thing, this kind of aura, and people wanted to come and see what we were like.

“So I think in one way it helped us. At one point we weren’t doing any interviews, so nobody knew much about us. I heard stories about people being frightened to meet us!”

Iommi said that he and the band’s bassist Geezer Butler had a keen interest in the occult.

“We were young and learning and trying to experience things,” he said. “So we were really interested in the occult, Geezer and I. Very interested in what it was like on the other side of life.

“I think in those days we were open to a lot of stuff. We tried a Ouija board and frightened each other!”

But as Iommi admitted, this dark image was - almost literally - a double-edged sword.

“With a name like Black Sabbath, we had all sorts of weird people coming to the gigs in America – witches and all sorts,” he said.

“There would be people coming to our hotel with black cloaks on, lighting candles. It was something that grew out of proportion.

“You never know what people will do. You didn’t know what sort of people would be around. Some of those religious weirdos were as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan.

“And the most disturbing thing I ever had was when one person came on stage with a dagger to stab me. Very disturbing to say the least!

“We were playing this open-air show, and when we got to the venue, somebody had painted a cross on a door in red….

“We didn’t think much else of it. But later on we found out this bloke had cut his hand and drawn the cross in his blood.

“He was some religious freak.”

Iommi revealed that he had no idea how much danger he had been in that night.

“During that show, my amps were playing up and I really got pissed off,” he said. “I lost my temper and kicked my stack over and walked off. And as I’m walking off, this bloke’s behind me.

“He’d got past security but somebody managed to jump on him. I didn’t know what was happening. I was still moaning about my gear.

“It was only afterwards that I found out this bloke had a dagger and was trying to bump one of us off!”

Black Sabbath’s first album is effectively ground zero for heavy metal - and as guitarist Tony Iommi recalled, it was an album made under intense pressure.

In 2013, Iommi told Classic Rock how Sabbath recorded the album with an incredibly tight deadline and with a vision to revolutionise rock music.

“The idea was to make an album heavier than anything that had ever been heard before,” he said. “We wanted to make something different.

“We had only bass, drums, guitar and vocals. We didn’t have keyboards or a rhythm guitarist. The idea was to make the sound as big as we could for what we’d got.

“We were relying on [producer] Rodger Bain, because we’d never done a record before. It was very different for us to go into a studio with a producer.

“We knew nothing about recording. All we knew in those days was how to play the songs, like we did at gigs.

“Because we only had a couple of days to do the whole album, it was hard for us because you only had one go at each song. There was no time to keep going over and over the songs. We had one try and that was it.

“I remember when we did Warning, it was quite a long track – when we used to do it on stage it was fifteen minutes – but when we recorded it we cocked it up a bit.

“I said, ‘Can we do it again?’ And Rodger said, ‘Well, okay you can have one more go at it.’ And that was it. We were like, Fucking hell! It was a bit nerve-wracking. In the end, Rodger edited it down a bit.”

The album, titled simply Black Sabbath, was released on 13 February 1970, and peaked at No.8 on the UK chart.

As Iommi remembered: “We loved the idea of having an album out, but we never knew for one minute what was going to happen with it, of course. It was just exciting to be able to do an album.

“We were coming back from a European tour when we heard that the album was in the top ten. Bloody hell! We were in shock.”

Black Sabbath’s Vol.4 is more than just a great album. It is a monument to excess. And if one track in particular sums up the craziness of this band’s life in the early ’70s, it’s the weird instrumental with the joke title: FX.

As Rolling Stone accurately described it: “Vol. 4 is one of those difficult ‘cocaine’ albums that bands were fond of making back then. Sabbath was rich, bored, huge in America, and it was the Seventies—you do the math.”

During the summer of 1972, the four members of the band lived together in a mansion in Los Angeles, and it was there that the songs for Vol.4 were written and rehearsed.

As Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi recalled in an interview with Classic Rock: “We lived in a beautiful house in Bel Air. It had a ballroom and bar leading out to the garden, and we rehearsed in the bar area.

“It was a big room. We had the gear set up there, but we never thought for a minute that all the sound was going out across the valley!

“It was dead quiet outside. You could hear a pin drop at night.

“We used to write in the day and jam at night. It was a great atmosphere. We had a fabulous time.

“In this ballroom there was a grand piano. I’d never played piano before. But that’s where I leant to play, and the first thing I wrote on it was Changes.”

A beautiful ballad, Changes was a radical departure for Sabbath.

And there were other experiments on Vol.4.

The album’s opening track, Wheels Of Confusion, has the complexity of progressive rock.

The heaviest number, Supernaut, turns funky halfway through.

And then there is FX. 1min 44sec of odd noises from Iommi’s guitar.

As Iommi remembered it, the band were working at The Record Plant studio when FX was created on the spot.

“It was a mad time,” Iommi told Classic Rock. “We used to have this coke flown in especially, in sealed containers, sealed with wax. You’d peel the wax off and there are these phials of coke.

“We’d sit up all night. We used to make our own entertainment.

“And there was one day when we were in the studio and I took my guitar off and put it on the stand, and as I put it down it went, Boing! And that became FX.

“For the life of me I can’t think why we ended up taking our clothes off, but that’s how we recorded that track, prancing around, naked, banging the guitar."

“It was one of those stupid things that you do," Iommi said. "We were stoned, of course.

"We were always joking around. That was our release - to joke around or play jokes on each other."

The world is not exactly short of TV content about Ozzy Osbourne, but there’s a new documentary in the pipeline that sounds like it will delve a bit deeper than most of what we've already seen.

It’s called Ozzy Osbourne: No Escape From Now and is set to be aired on Paramount+ by the end of the year. It deals in particular with the singer’s last six years and the health problems he’s encountered, including his fall in 2019 and Parkinson’s diagnosis.

“This is Ozzy Osbourne like you’ve never seen before: an honest, warm and deeply personal portrait of one of the greatest rock stars of all-time,” a synopsis says, “detailing how the singer’s world shuddered to a halt six years ago, forcing him to contemplate who he really is, confront his own mortality and question whether or not he can ever perform on stage for one last time. Addressing his health issues and the impact of his Parkinson’s diagnosis, the film showcases the central role music continues to play in Ozzy’s life.”

Ozzy himself has said: “The last six years have been full of some of the worst times I’ve been through. There’s been times when I thought my number was up. But making music and making two albums saved me. I’d have gone nuts without music.”

It’s directed by the BAFTA award winner Tania Alexander, who’s best known for being one of the co-creators of the Channel 4 show Gogglebox. Filming began way back in early 2022 whilst Ozzy was working on his Patient Number 9 album. And it’s still in production so filming will continue into the summer, including the final Black Sabbath gig at Villa Park on July 5. I think we can already envisage what the redemptive feelgood ending is going to be, can’t we?

Contributors include Tony Iommi, Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses, Billy Idol, Chad Smith of the Chili Peppers, Robert Trujillo of Metallica and, of course, his wife Sharon.

The latter has described the doc as an “honest account” of what has happened to her husband since 2019. “It shows how hard things have been for him and the courage he has shown while dealing with a number of serious health issues, including Parkinson’s,” she said.

“It’s about the reality of his life now. We have worked with a production team we trust and have allowed them the freedom to tell the story openly. We hope that story will inspire people that are facing similar issues to Ozzy.”

Kiss star Gene Simmons says it very simply: “I've always loved and admired Black Sabbath. And can proudly say the early days of touring together will be a lifelong memory.”

But as he admits, there was a fierce rivalry between Sabbath and Kiss during their brief time together on a US tour in 1974.

Gene recalls: “The Sabbath of 1974 had all the adrenaline of a new band in a strange land doing what they believe in. There was no question Sabbath was going to do things their own way. Love them or hate them, this would be a band that would mark its own territory like an animal.

“Kiss was touring on its first album. We got an opening slot, thankfully, on the Sabbath tour… but only for three or four shows.

“It was at the Boston Theater in 1974, if memory serves me correctly…

“I was backstage fully made-up and ready to go out on stage with the band. Standing next to me was the great Geezer Butler. All five feet six inches of him! In my platform heels, I stood at about six feet nine inches tall.

“It's in my DNA – once the war paint was on, I became The Demon. And Geezer didn't quite know what to make of me.

“As he stood next to me, he looked me up and down. I looked down at him. I glared at him and stuck out my tongue, lowered my head so we were face-to-face with each other and said, ‘Aaahhhh!’

“Many years later, Ozzy either told me or I read it someplace – Geezer had come back and told him he felt threatened by the bass player in the opening act. He didn't think that was a good sign. And he was right!

“Our intention was to go out on stage and destroy all living things. We did.

“At the next show in Rochester, New York, our road manager was told that we would have to go on [stage] immediately. The problem was that the Sabbath amplifier line was too close to the edge of the stage, so we did not even have enough room to go by each other to get to the other side.

“What followed was a staring contest. We would not go on until the Sabbath amplifier line was pulled back. It was pulled back.

“On another occasion - perhaps it was in Albany, New York – Sabbath was nowhere to be found. We later learned they had checked into a hotel and when it was time to go to the concert hall, they could not find Ozzy. What had happened was he walked into an open hotel room, shut the door and went to sleep. The problem was he didn't go into his room!

“Needless to say, when Sabbath’s road manager went looking for Ozzy he was nowhere to be found. He was fast asleep in the stranger’s room.

“All of the above comes with a great deal of admiration, respect and love for one of the few bands who forged the way for countless others to follow.

“I will never forget the first time I ever heard the name Black Sabbath. It was an advertisement for their first album. It appeared in Rolling Stone. It said: Black Sabbath – louder than Led Zeppelin!!!’

"Louder and prouder, indeed.”

Ozzy Osbourne has warned fans not to expect him to be the singer he once was at what is being billed as his final show this summer.

On his Sirius XM radio show, Ozzy Speaks, the veteran frontman said he would only be partially on stage during the show. "I'm not planning on doing a set with Black Sabbath but I am doing little bits and pieces with them,” he said. “I am doing what I can, where I feel comfortable."

It’s no secret that the singer hasn’t been in the best of health these past few years. In 2022 he revealed that he has been battling Parkinson’s Disease for two decades. He was unable to perform at his induction into the Rock N’ Roll Hall Of Fame last October. In fact he gave his acceptance speech at ceremony whilst seated

He said he was trying to get as fit as he can be. "I am trying to get back on my feet. When you get up in the morning, you just jump out of bed. I have to balance myself, but I'm not dead. I'm still actively doing things."

This, of course, raises the question of who exactly will be singing the bulk of Black Sabbath’s set, if not Ozzy? There have been periods in the band’s long history when they have used other singers, most notable Ronnie James Dio and during the late '80s and '90s, Tony Martin. But Dio is sadly no longer with us and a reunion with Martin would seem unlikely given the bad blood between him and the band after his departure in the late '90s.

There is, of course, the option of using a selection of guest singers and given the line up of rock and metal royalty that will be on display at Villa Park on July 5, surely a viable one? No doubt all will be revealed in the coming weeks…

On this day (13 February) in 1970, Black Sabbath’s debut album was released. It was recorded in a matter of hours, but its impact would echo through the decades.

Titled simply Black Sabbath, the album is one of the seminal rock records, a touchstone for countless heavy metal bands. And it happened more by accident than design.

In 1968, when the four members of Black Sabbath’s original line-up first got together as The Polka Tulk Blues Band, their music was as advertised, inspired by the stars of the British blues-rock boom such as Fleetwood Mac. All four were born and raised in Birmingham –“within a mile of each other,” as singer John ‘Ozzy’ Osbourne said.

Ozzy and guitarist Tony Iommi had known each other at school. Iommi and drummer Bill Ward had played in a band named Mythology, and bassist Terry ‘Geezer’ Butler previously played rhythm guitar for Ozzy’s band Rare Breed.

It was in early 1969, after a change of name from The Polka Tulk Blues Band to Earth, that Iommi heard the first Led Zeppelin album and vowed to make music that was, in his words, “even heavier”.

What Iommi discovered, by chance, was a sound of subliminal power. In a simple three-note riff, he unwittingly recreated a dissonant harmonic scale known for centuries as diabolus in musica – the Devil in music. Iommi’s riff was the foundation for a song in which heavy rock power was matched by visions of Satan and hellfire in Ozzy’s lyrics. In a stroke of genius, they named this song, and then rechristened the band, after a 1963 horror movie starring Boris Karloff: Black Sabbath.

The band's debut album was recorded in October 1969 at Regent Sound studio in London. According to Ozzy, it was completed in one session, “12 hours straight”. Iommi remembered it differently: three afternoons on consecutive days.

For much of the album the band played super-heavy, on riff-driven songs such as The Wizard, Behind The Wall Of Sleep and N.I.B.

In addition, there were two cover versions on which Sabbath exhibited a broader stylistic range. Evil Woman, essentially a pop song, was originally recorded by little-known Minnesota band Crow. There was also evidence of the band’s blues roots in their version of Warning, a 1967 single by The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, transformed by Sabbath into a trippy ten-minute jam.

But it was that one song, so dark and sinister, that defined the album and the band.

Black Sabbath was the album's opening track, prefaced by a chillingly atmospheric introduction: the sound of rainfall, rumbling thunder and the ominous tolling of a church bell.

In Iommi’s grinding riffing and Ozzy’s anguished wailing was a sound like nothing ever heard before.

“It had a certain vibe about it when we played the riff all together,” Iommi said. “It had this really spooky feeling.

“I used to like horror films and so did Geezer. I liked the power and the atmosphere in those films, and that had an impression on my writing. When you’re watching a horror film and you get that tingling sensation when something frightens you – I wanted to try to create that in music.”

And the Satanic imagery sealed the band’s reputation: Black Sabbath, the Devil’s disciples.

“It was great to have that kind of image,” Geezer Butler said, “because people were going, ‘Well, are they or aren’t they?’”

The album made the UK top ten, and in the US it sold a million.

Black Sabbath had arrived: as the heaviest of the heavy, and the scariest rock band on God’s Earth.

In February 1975, exactly 50 years ago, Black Sabbath were working on their sixth studio album Sabotage. It would become one of the greatest and most influential albums in rock history.

It was also the last classic album that Sabbath would make with singer Ozzy Osbourne.

The album was recorded at Morgan Studios in Willesden, north-west London, a state-of-the-art facility where Sabbath had made their previous album, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. The band worked at Morgan for a total of four months, split into three-week sessions.

Mike Butcher had been the engineer on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and he was charged with producing Sabotage.

In an interview withy Classic Rock, Butcher recalled that the sessions ran to a loose schedule. “I’d arrive at two in the afternoon, but the band wouldn’t start showing up until four. And because Morgan had a bar, that’s where the guys would wait for the others to arrive. So most days, we’d start work at nine and go through till one or two the next morning.”

Guitarist Tony Iommi – identified by Mike Butcher as Black Sabbath’s “unofficial leader” – stated that Sabotage was in part a reaction to the complex style of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, on which the band had combined their signature heavy metal with elements of progressive rock, aided by Yes keyboard player Rick Wakeman and even an orchestra.

“We could’ve continued getting more technical,” Iommi said, “using orchestras and everything else. But we wanted to do a rock album.”

Iommi said of Sabotage. “The sound was a bit harder than Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. My guitar sound was harder.”

Iommi’s heavy riffing is the dominant tone on Sabotage, not least on the song chosen as the album’s opening track, Hole In The Sky, which begins with the hum of amplifiers set at maximum volume and a scream of “Attack!”

The scream was an in-joke, delivered by Mike Butcher, who explained:“Sabbath had a supporting act who had a manager who would stand behind them on stage shouting, ‘Attack! Attack!’” says the producer. “So that’s what I shouted from the control room through the Tannoy.”

Even heavier was the album’s most famous and influential song, Symptom Of The Universe. Its bludgeoning, staccato riff would provide the template for Metallica and countless other metal bands, but it was more than a one-note head-banger. It ended in a funky coda, created by the band jamming while recording the track and subsequently overdubbed with acoustic guitar.

There were more left turns throughout the album. Iommi may have set out to make a more straightforward rock record, but Sabbath continued the experimentation they started on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. And, ironically, it was Iommi who created the most bizarre and unorthodox song ever to feature on a Black Sabbath album: Supertzar.

More atmospheric even than the song that gave the band its name, Supertzar was a dark, dreamlike piece featuring the English Chamber Choir, and described by drummer Bill Ward as “a demonic chant”. Tubular bells, played by Ward, carried an echo of the 1973 movie chiller The Exorcist.

On this track, the only connection to conventional rock music was Iommi’s slow guitar riff, played like a death march.

Ozzy had no part to play on Supertzar, but what he heard as he observed the song being recorded was, in his words, “a noise like God conducting the soundtrack to the end of the world”.

Iommi said, with characteristic reserve, that “it sounded really different and really great”.

In stark contrast was Am I Going Insane (Radio), essentially a pop song written by Ozzy on a Moog synthesiser, which he played on the finished track.

“Oz drove us all nuts with that Moog thing,” Ward recalled, “but the song was great. And in hindsight, it was kind of a precursor for his solo career. His personality was blooming on this song.”

The ‘Radio’ in the title was British rhyming slang: Radio Rental – mental.

As bassist Geezer Butler said, Ozzy’s lyrics were “definitely autobiographical”.

Sabotage is essentially the connoisseurs’ Black Sabbath album.

A retrospective review in Rolling Stone stated: “Sabotage continues the theme of themeless epic suites with twisted stoner-prog anthems that rock as hard as the early days, but also hyperextend themselves in unexpected ways.

“It might be the most underrated of their albums, and was certainly the original band's last stab at greatness together.”

If there is one album, above all others, which defines heavy metal, it is Paranoid, Black Sabbath’s masterpiece.

The colossal power in classic songs such as War Pigs, Iron Man and the title track was the template for generations of heavy bands to follow.

It was also the album that confirmed Sabbath as major stars, hitting No.1 in the UK and No.12 in the US.

Paranoid was released in 1970 just seven months after the band’s self-titled debut.

The whole album was completed within four days, according to guitarist Tony Iommi. And it was at the very last moment that the title track was written and recorded, after producer Rodger Bain insisted that the album needed one more song.

Iommi wrote the speedy, fuzz-toned riff. Bassist Geezer Butler already had a rough draft of lyrics and the title. And once singer Ozzy Osbourne had worked out a vocal melody, the song was complete. Written and recorded within an hour, it is the essence of Black Sabbath distilled into less than three minutes.

At first, Ozzy disliked the song. As he later explained: “I thought it was too pop. I rebelled against it.”

Despite the singer’s protests, Paranoid was issued as a single on July 17, 1970 – two months ahead of the album.

By August, it had reached No.4 on the UK chart.

In the wake of this success, the album – originally titled War Pigs – was hastily renamed Paranoid. But there was no time to change the album artwork, a somewhat bizarre visual interpretation of War Pigs, featuring a blurry, wild-eyed warrior figure in a motorcycle crash helmet, brandishing a sword and shield.

Paranoid is an album full of bad vibes. War Pigs is the thunderous opening salvo, a furious anti-war tirade that resonated powerfully at a time when the US was still embroiled in the Vietnam conflict. There is also an echo of Vietnam in Butler’s lyrics for the heroin blues Hand Of Doom, while Iron Man is a sci-fi horror fantasy, beginning with Iommi bending notes to fearsome effect before a leaden riff kicks in.

There is a brief moment of calm in Planet Caravan, a tale of astral travel with a trippy, spaced-out ambience. There is also a touch of humour in the album’s final track, Fairies Wear Boots, a heavy number named in reference to a gang of skinheads with whom the band had a punch-up during a British tour.

But on an album in which the central themes are death, destruction and insanity, Black Sabbath laid down a marker as the heaviest band on Earth.

Paranoid is arguably the most influential heavy metal album of them all.

In its dark power are the roots of bands such as Judas Priest and Slayer, and various sub-genres including black metal, doom, and stoner rock.

Two of the most significant bands of later years covered songs from this album – Faith No More with War Pigs, Pantera with Planet Caravan.

As for the song that Ozzy originally dismissed as “too pop”, he has sung it ever since, with Sabbath and without. As he said: “I couldn’t go onstage and not do Paranoid.”

Heavy metal fans got an early Christmas present this week when rare concert footage of Black Sabbath was posted online.

The 30-minute clip was filmed at Sabbath’s show at the 10,000-capacity Selland Arena in Fresno, California on 9 November 1976.

This show was part of Sabbath’s Technical Ecstasy tour and features the original and classic line-up of the band: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass) and Bill Ward (drums).

The six songs featured are Symptom Of The Universe, Snowblind, All Moving Parts (Stand Still), War Pigs, Gypsy and Children Of The Grave.

Technical Ecstasy was Black Sabbath’s seventh studio album. It was after the following album, 1978’s Never Say Die!, that Ozzy Osbourne was fired from the band in a move that shocked rock fans.

But in this footage from the Technical Ecstasy tour the band are a tight unit and Ozzy commands the stage brilliantly - especially during Snowblind, when he yells at the audience: “Everybody clap your hands and boogie!”

It’s classic stuff!

Geezer Butler has been talking about the time the rest of Black Sabbath sacked him - and then promptly forgot all about it.

The bassist was speaking with LifeMinute TV about his new-ish memoir Into The Void, when he alighted on the state of the band in the late 70s.

“Everybody was totally out of their brains all the time," he admitted. "We’d sold millions and millions of albums and sold out thousands of gigs around the world. We still hardly had any money to show for it, and we'd sort of realised that we were being ripped off by the management.”

Things came to a head in 1977. “I think people just wanted a scapegoat for the whole thing - it just happened to be me at the time. Bill Ward came to the house and said, ‘Oh, by the way, you’re fired.’ ‘Oh, thanks very much. Why?’ ‘You don’t seem into it any more.’

“I was actually relieved because we were under so much pressure at the time. [It was] probably the best two weeks that I’d had for years! I could just relax and not think about the business, or getting albums together, or anything like that.”

But the rest of the band were in such a state at the time that they forgot that they had sacked the bassist. “About two or three weeks later, Bill calls me up and says, ‘Where are you?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘We’re here, rehearsing!’" he explained. “I said, ‘I thought I was fired… You told me I was fired from the band!’ He said, ‘Oh, yeah - forgot about that.’ So I went down to rehearsal, nobody said anything about it, [and we] just carried on as normal.”

Butler did leave the band briefly a couple of years later, but was back on board for the post-Ozzy album, 1980’s Heaven And Hell. He left for a few years in the 1980s and again in the mid '90s, but has been there consistently since 1997.

The bassist also talked about the possibility of the four core members performing one more time. Although he doubted whether a full reunion would ever happen now, he said: “Maybe a one off show. Ozzy was talking about when he does his farewell concert, which he still wants to do... he suggested for the four of us to get up on stage and maybe do three or four songs together and then that would be it. But definitely no more tours.”

The new football season is just a few weeks away (I know...) ‘Tis the season then for Premier League clubs to launch their new kit, which in the 21st Century tends to be conducted via social media. Aston Villa though have chosen to do theirs with the help of a pair of bona fide rock legends.

Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler feature prominently in the one minute-long Youtube clip. The two can be seen chatting on the phone, with Ozzy suggesting they play Villa Park. “As long as I’m left wing,” Geezer replies. And then we’re into a montage featuring Villa fans, staff, manager Unai Emery, all soundtracked by Paranoid.

At one point goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez can be seen in the dressing room and says ‘who’s that?’ pointing at Butler, who’s stripped down, ready to play and asking ‘do you want me through the middle, or on the left?’ 

Seconds later Geezer can be seen, eyes closed, listening to the Champions League theme on his stereo (Villa will play in the prestigious European competition this season for the first time since the early 1980s).

Then there’s an announcement on the tannoy: ‘Number Eleven: The Prince Of Darkness’. ‘Who’s that?’ asks a disbelieving John McGinn. ‘The biggest frontman to ever come out of Birmingham,’ answers Ozzy, not unreasonably.

It goes without saying that Osbourne and Butler are lifelong fans of the club. And that comment about the band playing Villa Park isn’t there for show either. Earlier this year Sharon Osbourne revealed that whilst her husband is done with touring, he’d like to play two final shows at Villa Park to “say goodbye” to fans.

In other Sabbath news Geezer Butler has been opening up about his battles with clinical depression. In an interview with NPR’s Bullseye With Jesse Thorn, the bassist talked about how he used to hide it out of fear: “Back then nobody ever said anything about depression or anything like that, and people were terrified to mention that you might be depressed 'cause you automatically thought you were gonna be taken away to a mental hospital and be locked away forever. So you couldn't talk about it to people in case that happened.”

Things changed in the 1990s after he suffered a nervous breakdown. “And I went to this doctor, the usual doctor, and I just explained everything to him and he told me that I was clinically depressed and he put me on Prozac. And after six weeks, I finally came out of the depression. And I thought, 'Oh, yeah. This is what I'm supposed to feel like.' And ever since that, I've been okay."

Paranoid, of course, was originally inspired by these feelings of mental anguish, which the success of that album did little to alleviate. "I enjoyed the success of the album, absolutely,” Butler explained. “People would say, 'You've got all this money coming in. You've got a No 1 album. What have you got to be depressed about?' But it's like a disease. There's nothing you can do about it, no matter how much money you've got or how happy you are with your job.”

Geezer Butler has been talking about his band’s formative years to Matt Pinfield.

In an interview on Pinfield’s New And Approved, the Black Sabbath bassist, who published his memoir Into The Void last year, revealed that in their early days the band were so impoverished that they had to boil his bass strings to clean them because he couldn’t afford to buy new ones.

"In those days, I couldn't afford a set of strings, so I'd play the same strings for about six months until they were completely worn out. And then, what we used to do is boil all our strings, so all the crap would come off them, and they'd sound almost new again. And that was the way we did it because we couldn't afford to buy new strings."

It was during this period of penury when the band were still called Earth that Tony Iommi was poached by Jethro Tull after the two bands played a gig together. “Ian Anderson came out into the audience and he was transfixed by Tony. And we thought ‘what’s all this about’. At the end of the gig Ian asked Tony to come outside and asked him to join.”

Butler suggests that this was a pivotal moment in Sabbath’s development. “It was the best thing that happened to us because he went down to London, rehearsed with them for a week and said ‘I’m not going to do this. Ian’s trying to tell me what to play and only I know how I’m going to play’. He came back and said ‘Look, to be like Jethro Tull we’ve got to write our own music and take everything really seriously from now on.’”

The band’s first album was recorded in cramped circumstances, on a shoestring as Butler recalls in the interview: "We had two days in the studio because you only had £500 to make the album, which is like $700. And so, the only way we could do it is just to play live. 

"It was recorded straight away as a live album on day one. And then, the next day, we did some vocal overdubs, and Tony did some guitar overdubs, fixed a few things, and that was it.”

“We'd never been in the studio before, so we didn't know [much about studio work]. The way we played it at that particular moment was the way it was recorded, and that was the way the album was put out."

Into The Void gained positive reviews when it was initially published last year. It’s recently joined the other Sabbath memoirs – Tony Iommi’s Iron Man and Ozzy’s Memoirs Of A Madman - in paperback.