by Tony Iommi
Mum helped us get the deposit for it. We decked it out and put a couch in the back. We’d drive up to Carlisle in this thing, which was unbelievable. The van broke down constantly. It was shit but the roads were shit as well back then. To go to Carlisle or London seemed like never-ending journeys.
As I was the only one who had a licence and we couldn’t afford a chauffeur, I was the one driving it. I’d pick everybody up to get to rehearsals and gigs, but because it was all down to me I’d get absolutely shattered, so we’re all lucky to have survived that, really. They’d all be asleep in the back and I’d be slapping my face trying to stay conscious. The worst thing was, when I opened the window to keep awake, they’d go: ‘Oy, it’s cold in the back!’
Driving home one night when everybody was asleep, I found this road that was identical to the one Ozzy lived in. I thought it would be great fun to drop him off there! It was four or five o’clock in the morning, Ozzy was asleep and I said: ‘All right, Oz, you’re home!’
‘Weuhh . . .’
He got out of the van and I shouted: ‘See you tomorrow, ta ra!’
I pulled away, looked in my rear-view mirror and saw Ozzy trying to get into the wrong house. By the time he realised it wasn’t his, we were gone. And he had to walk a mile or so to get to his own house. The next night I picked him up again and he went: ‘You dropped me off at the wrong road yesterday!’
I said: ‘Oh, did I? Oh my God, I thought that was your road!’
‘No, no, it was the wrong road.’
Later that night, on our way home, he fell asleep again in the back and I stopped at the same wrong street.
‘All right, Oz, you’re home!’
‘Weuhh . . .’
He got out, we drove off, same again. He fell for that umpteen times.
Mum helping out buying the van was one side of the coin; the other side was her moaning: ‘A bloody nuisance you are. You ought to get a bloody proper job!’
But she did a lot for us and she looked after everybody. She’d always offer sandwiches or something else to eat, so the band loved her. And both Dad and Mum liked all the guys in the band. They took a particular shine to Ozzy. Dad thought he was funny, and he was right: Ozzy was a very funny guy.
Ozzy’s dad also helped out. Ozzy did have his own PA, but we needed a bigger one, so his dad signed a thing called a pay bond. This meant he guaranteed payment and Ozzy could borrow the money to buy it. He bought a Triumph amp and two cabinets. And we had a Vox PA. In those days you didn’t have a sound man twiddling the knobs in the middle of the hall; all the sound came from your own gear on stage so you’d start and you’d turn the volume up and then everybody would start screaming: ‘Turn it down!’
We’d get complaints because we were always too loud. Always. If you were standing in front of your own cabinet you couldn’t hear anybody else any more, so you’d move over to hear what else was going on. You could never really hear the vocals, even though Ozzy turned up his amp so loud it would start whistling.
We played at Henry’s Blues House a lot, where we quickly developed a draw. Jim Simpson, the guy who ran that place, took an interest in us. He was a jazz guy, a trumpet player, and we played jazzy blues. He liked that, so he approached us for management. We didn’t have anybody else, he had his Blues House where we could play, so we thought, if we don’t sign with him we won’t have the gig.
Jim Simpson started managing us around the end of 1968, beginning of ’69. So here we were, in possession of PAs, a huge wreck of a Commer van, a set list filled with jazzy twelve-bar blues and a manager. All dressed down and no particular place to go but up.
The first thing Jim Simpson did was put us on the Big Bear Folly, a UK tour with four bands playing, and the night always ended in a jam with everybody back on stage. In January 1969 we played the Marquee club, but we didn’t go down very well with John Gee, the manager of the place. The guy was into big bands and, when Bill claimed he was also into jazz, John Gee played him some of that music and said: ‘Who’s this then, who is this?’
Bill gave him a totally wrong name and John Gee really got the hump.
Ozzy had a pyjama top on and a tap around his neck. John didn’t like that either. He probably thought we were really scruffy. Well, we were. We didn’t have the money to look good. Ozzy actually used to walk around in bare feet. Geezer was the fashion guru who’d get the latest trend. He had these lime-green trousers. They were his only pair and he washed them all the time and wore them over and over again. One day he dried them by the heater and one of the legs caught fire. Because he loved this pair of trousers so much, his mum sewed another leg on and from then on he walked around with one green leg and one black leg. Mad!
Bill actually won an award for the worst dressed rock star once, ‘The Scruffiest Rock Star Out There’ or something like that. He was really proud of it as well. And there was me in my buckskin jacket. What with the clothes and lots of hair, we certainly looked heavy. We all grew handlebar moustaches and Bill grew a beard as well. There was no conscious thought behind that. If you’re in a band you develop a similar look.
‘Oh, your hair has got a little longer, looks good, leave it like that.’
The downside of it was that we didn’t have any women coming to the gigs. Scruffy long hair, only blokes sitting there . . .
Come to think of it, you did see some. But they looked like blokes!
13
A flirt with Tull in a Rock ’n’ Roll Circus
Earth had gigged for just a couple of weeks when we opened for Jethro Tull, who were already getting very popular. I thought they were really good, but obviously there was something going on, because during that gig their guitar player, Mick Abrahams, passed this note to Ian Anderson. It said something like: ‘I’m leaving’, or: ‘This is my last night’. After the gig they asked me if I’d be interested in joining.
I went: ‘Oh, bloody hell. I don’t know.’
And I didn’t. I was shocked by it all.
On the way home in the van I said to the others: ‘I’ve got to tell you something. I’ve been asked to join Jethro Tull. And I don’t know what to say.’
They were really supportive and said: ‘You should go for it.’
Tull got in touch and I said: ‘Well, yeah, I’ll give it a go.’
But it wasn’t as simple as that. They said: ‘You’ve got to come for an audition.’
I protested, but they said: ‘Come down to London. You’ll be all right.’
I went down there and I walked into this room and there were so many guitar players from known bands there that I panicked . . . and walked out again. I knew John, one of their crew, from his time with Ten Years After. He rushed after me and said: ‘Look here, don’t worry, just go and sit in the caf across the road and I’ll come and fetch you when it’s your turn.’
‘Well, I don’t feel comfortable with this.’
But he insisted: ‘You’ve got to have a go; they really want you to play.’
So he came and fetched me from the caf. Everybody was gone by the time it was my turn. We did a twelve-bar blues and I got to solo. We did another two or three jams and then they said: ‘You’ve got the job.’
Before I knew it I was in rehearsals with Jethro Tull for the recording of their Stand Up album. The song ‘Living In The Past’ from that album would go to No. 1 in the British charts. I came up with a couple of the riffs for ‘Nothing Is Easy’.
Because I felt so out of place in London and I really felt bad about leaving Earth, I took Geezer down with me for moral support. He would sit at the back of the room, and they were fine with that. John put us up in his flat and took us to the rehearsals. They started at nine o’clock in the morning sharp. I had never heard of nine o’clock in the morning with our band, none of us had. With Earth we would just straggle in whenever we felt like it. But with Tull it was: ‘Gotta be there, on time!’
The first day we got there maybe ten minutes late and I could hear Ian Anderson screaming at John:
‘Nine o’clock, I said!’
I thought, bloody hell, this is a bit serious. I hadn’t even plugged in and already the tension was palpable. At twelve o’clock sharp it was: lunch. I just sat down with Ian at a table. The others were at another table whispering to me: ‘No!’
I thought, what’s the matter with them?
They went: ‘You don’t sit with Ian. You sit with us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He likes to sit by himself. And we sit together.’
I thought, bloody hell, that’s a weird set-up. This is supposed to be a band!
That night Ian Anderson took me to see Free play at the Marquee. He introduced me to everybody as his new guitar player, so I thought, this is wonderful. I felt like a pop star. From being a nobody from Birmingham to people at the Marquee taking an interest – it seemed great. We watched Free for a bit and left early. Rehearsal again the next morning, nine o’clock. And don’t be late!
But it just didn’t feel good. The thing that put the nail in the coffin for me was a meeting with the band’s manager. He said: ‘You’ll get £25 a week and you are really lucky to have this position.’
That pissed me off. I said: ‘What do you mean I’m really lucky? They want me because they like what I play, not because of luck!’
After that I thought: I want to be a part of a band that’s going to make it all together, not be put in a band where they’ve already made it and I’m ‘lucky to be in there’. I went back to the rehearsal room and said to Ian: ‘Can I have a word with you?’
We went outside and I said: ‘I don’t feel comfortable about this whole thing.’
He said: ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m not happy with the situation. And I don’t feel right about being “lucky” to be in a band and all this sort of stuff.’
Ian was great, I can’t fault him at all; he was very nice about the whole thing. He said: ‘Look, if you are definitely sure you want to leave . . .’
‘Well, I am.’
‘We’re in trouble now, because we’re doing this film, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, and we don’t have a guitar player. Would you do that at least?’
I felt bad walking out on them, so I said: ‘Yes, I’ll do that.’
And that was it. As soon as I came out of that last rehearsal I said to Geezer: ‘Let’s get the band back together.’
He said: ‘Are you sure about leaving Tull? You ought to give it time.’ He was pushing me, but then he said: ‘I’m glad you’re not doing it.’
I said: ‘Let’s make a proper go of it. Do what they’re doing: rehearse in the morning, really get down to it.’
He agreed. So we phoned the others from London and made a plan to get back together.
I still had to do this Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. The opening of the whole thing was in the Dorchester Hotel. There was me with the same buckskin jacket again. I wore it for the film as well. The Stones had all their gear set up on the floor of a ballroom. The Who were there and Taj Mahal and all the people who were in the movie, but I didn’t know a soul and felt like a spare dinner. Marianne Faithfull must have sensed that; she came over and went: ‘You’ll be all right, I’ll talk to you.’
And so she did, she was great.
The Stones started playing but within a minute or so they stopped. They started arguing and had the biggest row. The whole room went quiet. Brian Jones and Keith Richards were screaming at each other: ‘You are fucking out of tune, you fucking . . .’
Because he was with Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger came over to us, saying: ‘They can’t even fucking tune their fucking guitars.’
It was a sure sign of troubles to come.
The next day we filmed in a big warehouse somewhere. They had a stage set up and something that looked like a circus ring. They wanted people to dress up in silly hats and circus stuff, which seemed ridiculous to me. Even Eric Clapton said: ‘I feel fucking silly wearing this stupid thing.’
They gave me this bloody clarinet and we all had to come out pretending to play as we were going around the ring. Clapton, The Who and John Lennon – everybody had to go around this thing. After we all did that I don’t know how many times to get it right, people started chatting and it got a bit more comfortable.
We were all eagerly awaiting the much anticipated jam with Clapton, Lennon, Mitch Mitchell, and Keith Richards playing bass. I said to Ian Anderson: ‘I’m really looking forward to seeing Clapton play.’
They started jamming on this instrumental thing, bloody Yoko sitting at John’s feet, and they weren’t good at all. So Ian said: ‘What do you think of your hero now then!?’
We shared a dressing room with The Who, so that was my first time meeting them. They were nice enough and when they started to play they were really good. I was completely surprised when I heard Pete Townshend playing lead, because you never normally heard him do that very much and he played great.
Not everybody played for real; we did ‘Song For Jeffrey’. Ian Anderson got this hat and he said: ‘Try that on.’
I said: ‘It looks all right’, but I felt pretty embarrassed and kept my head down while I was playing so people couldn’t see me.
It was ages before that ever came out. I bumped into Bill Wyman two or three times and he said: ‘Oh yeah, I’ll get you a copy of that for you.’
He never did, so I never saw it until years later and it was horrible. It’s so out of date. But it’s a classic now; half the people who were in that show are dead. There’s John Lennon, Keith Moon, Brian Jones and Mitch Mitchell . . . it’s a Rock ’n’ Roll Circus, all right.
14
The early birds catch the first songs
After I came back from London I said to the rest of the band: ‘If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it seriously and really work at it, starting with rehearsals at nine o’clock in the morning. Sharp!’
We booked a place in the Newtown Community Centre in Aston, across the road from a cinema, and started a whole new regime. I’d pick everybody up to make sure that we got there on time. Geezer didn’t live that far away, so he’d walk down. Occasionally he’d be a little bit late, but on average we were there at a sensible hour to start work. And that’s when we began writing our own songs. ‘Wicked World’ and ‘Black Sabbath’ were the first two that were written during those rehearsals. We knew we had something; you could feel it, the hairs stood up on your arms, it just felt so different. We didn’t know what it was, but we liked it. I just came up with this riff for ‘Black Sabbath’. I played ‘dom-dom-dommm’. And it was like: that’s it! We built the song from there. As soon as I played that first riff we went: ‘Oh God, that’s really great. But what is it? I don’t know!’
Just a simple thing but it had a mood. Only later did I learn that I had used what they call the Devil’s interval, a chord progression that was so dark that in the Middle Ages playing it was forbidden by the Church. I had no idea; it was just something that I had felt inside. It was almost like it had been forced out of me, these things were coming up just like that. Then everybody started putting bits to it and afterwards we thought it was amazing. Really strange, but good. We were all shocked, but we knew that we had something there.
Geezer was going to be an accountant. That’s why he had the job of sorting all the money out every time we had a gig. He was the clever one, so it was him that came up with the lyrics as well. I certainly wouldn’t be able to sit down and write stuff and Bill would be on it for twenty years to write one line. Ozzy would come up with the vocal melody line. He’d just sing what came into his head and so it might very well have been that he sang: ‘What is this that stands before me’ at the time. Geezer would then use that and put the rest of the lyrics in. So both of them really would come up with stuff.
Back then we did a lot of dope. One night we were at this club, in the middle of nowhere. Ozzy and Geezer saw somebody leaping around outside, being silly. To them it was like an elf or something. I fear it mu
st have been the drugs, but that’s where I think ‘The Wizard’ came from, another one of those early songs. They simply put what they saw into lyrics.Those first songs are often described as scary. I liked horror films and so did Geezer. We used to go to the cinema across the street from our rehearsal place to see them, so maybe it was something that subconsciously directed us to that sort of thing. I know there is a Boris Karloff movie called Black Sabbath, but we never saw it at that time. Geezer came up with the name Black Sabbath and it just sounded like a good one to use.
We always thought there was something there that led us into this music that we were playing. I played that ‘Black Sabbath’ riff straight off, dang-dáng-dang, and that was it. It just came up, as a lot of my riffs have. It was like somebody was there, saying: ‘Play that!’
Something or somebody was providing ideas and guidance from some other dimension, like an invisible fifth band member . . .
15
Earth to Black Sabbath
When we played near Carlisle at the Toe Bar, they always put us up in a caravan. In winter it was so cold we burned the furniture to keep warm. One day we turned up at this gig in Manchester and there was a guy on the door wearing a suit and a bow tie. We thought, this is weird for a blues club. He said: ‘Oh, you’re Earth, come in.’
In we went and he said: ‘I really like your new single.’
‘Oh, thanks!’
We didn’t have a single out at the time, but we took no notice, got all the gear in and set up. Then we saw all these people coming in in bow ties, suits and ballroom dresses and we realised they had booked the wrong band. We soon found out that there was another Earth, and that was a pop band. The manager caught on to us but said: ‘You might as well go on and play.’
We played one song and everybody out there, all expecting to dance, was going: ‘What is this crap!’
