Iron Man

by Tony Iommi

  And so on. He went: ‘Sign here!’

  We just couldn’t do that. It was all too bombarding. So we came away, thinking, oh God, what are we going to do now? He’ll probably have us killed! He kept getting in touch with us, arranging to take us out to dinner and all that sort of business. He never let go. Then one day, Wilf got in touch. He said: ‘I’ve got another guy that wants to meet you. I’m going to bring him up to Birmingham.’

  It was Patrick Meehan. He seemed a lot calmer than Arden and said the things we wanted to hear: ‘You’ve got an album out, nobody is pushing the record. You should get better gigs . . .’

  All that stuff sounded good to our ears. Instead of being up on billboards, we just wanted to be out playing. He just had the right way about it at the time, so we ended up signing with Patrick Meehan.

  Looking back at it now it was quite strange that Wilf, who worked for Arden, would suggest Meehan to us. Wilf probably thought, oh well, they don’t want Don but maybe they’re interested in Patrick. Which we were. But we didn’t know how close the relationship between Arden and Meehan really was. In the past Patrick Meehan’s dad had worked for Don Arden, so there certainly was a connection.

  Wilf wrote a book a few years ago. There’s a picture of me and him in it, and then on the other side of the page there’s one of Wilf and John Gotti, then the head of the New York Mafia. I thought, fucking hell, how did I get mixed up in this?

  Patrick Meehan had learned the ropes from his dad, who also had a management company. It was all very much roses at first. Meehan talked a good talk and in the early days he really got things going. He was the one who got us to America. The whole thing changed for us. We were travelling in private jets everywhere. Any time we wanted anything, we’d just phone him up: ‘I want to buy a new car.’

  He’d go: ‘Oh, okay, what car?’

  In my case a Lamborghini or a Rolls-Royce, or whatever.

  ‘Where is it?’

  I’d tell him where it was.

  ‘How much is it?’

  I’d tell him how much it was.

  ‘I’ll send them a cheque and I’ll arrange to get the car over.’

  And that was it. If I wanted to buy a house: ‘Where is the house? How much is it?’

  And I got the house. That’s how we lived. But we never saw any significant amounts of physical cash, even though there was a lot of it about. We got some money put into the bank, but not a lot. But for us, coming from what we came from, a few hundred quid in the bank was brilliant. I believe that we never really knew how much money we actually made. We had accountants involved with us, but we never really questioned what their role was or who they were taking instructions from.

  ‘Oh, it’s a big accountancy firm, it must be all right!’

  We knew nothing at all about the business side of things. When we went down to the office it was always come in all’s great: ‘By the way, sign these papers. It’s basically so-and-so, I’ll tell you about it, all from the accountant.’

  And you’d think it was all above board.

  But I liked Meehan. We all liked him at first and we believed in him.

  18

  Getting Paranoid

  After recording Black Sabbath we immediately started writing songs for our second album. Some of them were written when we were on the road in Europe, like ‘War Pigs’. When we played that grim place in Zurich, we jammed a lot and that’s where the initial idea came from. Later, during rehearsal, we turned it into a song. We had writing sessions in whatever rehearsal place we used at the time, putting tracks together. We also did some work for Paranoid in Monmouth, in Wales, because we wanted to go somewhere where we could lock ourselves away. We were one of the first bands there, after Dave Edmunds. At the other places we’d have to go in and then go home, but here we could all be together and around each other all the time.

  The recording of the Paranoid album went pretty quick. We went back to Regent Sound, working with Rodger Bain again. It didn’t take much more than three or four days, just a bit longer than the first one. Because we were in a fight a couple of nights before that, I recorded that album with a great big black eye. It was the days of Mods and Rockers and we were playing at this seaside resort. We had finished and Geezer went out to make a phone call. He soon came rushing back in, going: ‘Fucking hell, loads of skinheads trying to get me, they’re all waiting for us to come out!’

  We went out to see what was happening and it was serious stuff. Ozzy grabbed a hammer and I said: ‘Who is the one that got you then, Geezer?’

  He pointed at some guy and said: ‘It was him!’

  I went down and, bang!, I hit this bloke and then they all came from nowhere. Fucking horrible, but you’re in the midst of it then, fighting. Some bloke got me around the neck and I shouted: ‘Ozzy, hit him with the hammer!’

  Ozzy hit him and at the same time he got jumped from behind and he slammed the bloody hammer backwards over his shoulder in that bloke’s face. It was brutal. They were wearing these big metal-tipped boots and we were getting kicked in the face with them. We managed to get away, but we were a bloody mess.

  Ron Woodward, my old bass-playing neighbour, had driven us to the gig because he had just bought this new car. We jumped in screaming: ‘Quick, drive, fucking get away!!’

  But he took off like a slug on Valium, with us screaming our heads off, big black eyes, blood everywhere: ‘Put your foot down, drive, drive!!!’

  All these skinheads were rushing down the hill, catching up with us, bats in hand, and Ron was making a getaway in slow motion. It turned out he was afraid to speed because you’re not supposed to do that with a brand new car. We got away, but it took us ages to get home because he drove so slowly. I finally walked in the house and Mum was in the bedroom.

  ‘How did the show go?’

  I opened the door.

  ‘Oh, great!’

  Lyrically, the album Paranoid was political, or certainly ‘War Pigs’ was. That wasn’t because of any negative reactions to the supposed ‘occult’ first album, because we never ever regretted what we’ve done. It just happened that way. But not all of Black Sabbath was, for lack of a better word, occult, and not all of Paranoid was political. ‘War Pigs’ actually started off as a song called ‘Walpurgis’, which suggests it might have been a supernatural song. This is not necessarily the case. Maybe it was just a working title, with no lyrics written for it whatsoever. I don’t know why Geezer changed it from ‘Walpurgis’ to ‘War Pigs’. The lyrics were definitely his department. I always liked what he did, so I never questioned him.

  Rodger Bain and Tom Allom speeded up the ending of ‘War Pigs’. When we first heard that, we thought, that’s strange, why would they do that? But we had no say in it in those days.

  We smoked a lot of dope, so that might be why some of the lyrics are a bit unusual. Like ‘Iron Man’, which came from a comic about a robot which became alive. I suppose there was a serious thought behind that, really, that somebody living couldn’t get out of that body, couldn’t get out of this thing. And look at ‘Fairies Wear Boots’. What a lyric! But nobody questioned it, people accepted it.

  After we recorded all the tracks, Rodger said: ‘We don’t have enough. Can you come up with another song? Just a short track?’

  ‘Oh? Yeah, I suppose.’

  The others popped out for lunch, and I started playing DadaDadaDadaDada DadaDadaDadaDadada, dudududududu-dudu, Dada da: Paranoid. When the others came back I played it to them and they liked it. Geezer came up with the lyrics, I can’t remember if Ozzy had any input in that one. When we’d start playing a new song, Ozzy would improvise and just sing anything, ‘Flying out the window’ or whatever, and probably wouldn’t even know what he was singing. And then Geezer would go: ‘Oh yeah, I can use that!’

  Geezer would do the lyrics before we started recording or, in some cases, even in the studio. And then it would be up to Ozzy to get it right. He would come up with the melody, and he’d follow the riff in a lo
t of cases. I don’t know how Geezer came up with the idea for the ‘Paranoid’ lyrics, but he had quite a wide imagination. He would sit and listen to the music for a bit, and sometimes he’d want it to be quiet. He’d write a few things down, cross some out and write something else. And then he’d give it to Ozzy, and of course Ozzy would go: ‘What the fuck does this mean, Geez!’

  Paranoid: I doubt we even knew what the word meant at the time. Ozzy and me went to the same lousy school, where we certainly wouldn’t be around words like that. We knew what ‘fuck’ meant, and ‘piss off’, but ‘paranoid’? That’s why we left it to Geezer, because we considered him to be the intelligent one.

  All our tracks were five minutes-plus. We had never done a three-minute track, so ‘Paranoid’ was like a throwaway: ‘This will fill the gap.’

  We never thought that it was going to be the hit. Out of all our stuff, that’s always the one that people put on compilations, use in TV themes and in films. And it took probably four minutes to write. It’s that basic, simple thing, that catchy theme, that seems to appeal to people. ‘Paranoid’ even brought us to Top of the Pops. We were very nervous doing that, because it was such a prestigious thing in Britain to be on that show. We were probably the loudest band they’d ever had on. I didn’t like the atmosphere there at all, with the BBC people telling you what to do and all this rubbish. Things came to a head when I said: ‘Get that light off of me, it’s driving me mad.’

  ‘We can’t turn that off.’

  I was like: ‘Well, get it off!’

  Of course I played in the dark then. We never did it again after that. We weren’t really a Top of the Pops band anyway.

  If the Black Sabbath album with the inverted cross on its sleeve caused some controversy, Paranoid did its best to top that. At first we were going to call the album War Pigs and they’d done the album cover up with a guy with a shield and a sword: the ‘war pig’. But then they wouldn’t accept that title and changed it to Paranoid. We asked: ‘What’s that got to do with that cover?!’

  But it was too late to change it, because they needed a title quick.

  ‘No, we can’t use War Pigs. What are we going to call it?’

  ‘It’s got to be Paranoid!’

  And that was it.

  19

  Sabbath, Zeppelin and Purple

  John Bonham and Robert Plant were both from Birmingham. Me and Bill, when we were in The Rest, played gigs together with Bonham a lot. He’d be in one band and we’d be in another and we’d play the same clubs. And Geezer knew Robert Plant more than I did in those days. Geezer and myself were out shopping one day and we bumped into John and Robert. They said: ‘We got a new band, we’re getting together with Jimmy Page.’

  ‘Oh, great!’

  We didn’t know Jimmy personally, but we knew him from The Yardbirds, so we were happy for them.

  The first time I heard Led Zeppelin’s first album I thought it was really good. Their heaviness was in Bonham powering the drums. Jimmy Page played great riffs, but he didn’t have the heavy sound; his was a different sound. But it was a great combination. However, our direction was the other way round; it was the riff, the heavier sound of the guitar. Where Zeppelin relied on thundering drums, we had our massive guitar and bass wall of sound.

  Bill Ward has said that at the time we decided to out-heavy Led Zeppelin. I don’t remember that, but we may well have. As you did in those days. But in reality there’s never been much rivalry between Sabbath and Zeppelin. We were both from Birmingham, we were all from the same gang if you like, so we always wished them well, as I’m sure they did us.

  Nowadays everybody communicates with everybody else in other bands, but you never did that much then. We talked to the guys in Led Zeppelin because Bonham and Plant were mates. There was always this thing between bands from London and from Birmingham, from the Midlands. London musicians always thought that their bands were better than your bands. They looked down on people from the Midlands, and we in turn looked at Londoners as being snobby. There was a lot of competition because of that, with bands trying to outdo each other. It was always Zeppelin and Sabbath and Purple, but the rivalry was with Deep Purple, certainly later on, when we had Paranoid in the charts and they had ‘Black Night’ out. It was then, when we were both climbing the charts, that we felt real rivalry.

  We were such good mates with Led Zeppelin that they even wanted us on their Swansong label. I don’t know why that didn’t happen. Maybe we couldn’t get out of the deals with Warner and Phonogram, because we did sign ourselves to them forever. We would have loved to have had Peter Grant as our manager as well, but it wasn’t to be. I think he only managed Zeppelin and of course later on Bad Company, who were signed to Swansong. In the early days there weren’t that many managers who managed a lot of bands. There was just one manager for one band. We had Patrick Meehan and he didn’t manage anybody else, at least not in the beginning.

  When the guys from Zeppelin visited us while we were recording Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, we had a jam together. Bonham wanted to play one of our songs, I think it was ‘Sabbra Cadabra’, but we said: ‘No, we’re playing our songs already. Let’s just jam and play something else.’

  I don’t know if any tapes exist of that. That would’ve been a different one: Black Zeppelin. It’s the only time the two bands played together. John did get up and jam with us in the early days, but Bill never liked him playing his kit. It was his pride and joy and Bonham always broke something.

  ‘Oh, Bill, let me play them . . .’

  ‘No, you’re going to break something.’

  ‘Let me have a go, Bill.’

  ‘No!’

  They were mad, really.

  We’re still mates with Zeppelin, even though Bonham really upset Ronnie when they came to see our show at the Hammersmith Odeon back in May 1980. John was on the side of the stage having a good time and drinking Guinness, getting more and more sloshed as the show went on. We came off stage and he said: ‘That guy’s got a great voice for a fucking midget!’

  Of course Ronnie heard him. Bonham meant it as a compliment really, but it didn’t come out as one. Ronnie turned to John and said: ‘You fucking cunt!’

  It nearly came to blows. That would have been a lopsided fight because John was a bit of a hooligan. So I said to him: ‘Look, please don’t.’

  He said: ‘What’s the matter with him!’

  ‘Well, he didn’t much like that. Just go back to the hotel and I’ll see you later. It’s not a good time right now.’

  He went away then, but blimey, it could have been quite nasty.

  Pagey is a mate. A couple of years back he wanted to see our gig at Fields of Rock in Holland and he flew out with us. We hung out, he saw the gig, we watched Rammstein together and we flew back. I’ve seen him many times at various functions since.

  20

  This is America?

  Our first album was in the charts for quite a while in America, even though we had never been there. After we recorded Paranoid, we finally went. One of the stupidest things we ever did was take over our own PA. We took a Laney PA, Laney columns, and we had no flight cases or anything for them, so all the amps and cabinets suffered greatly from being thrown in and out of the plane’s cargo hold. We got to New York and our expectations were sky-high: ‘This is the real thing, ah, great, I can’t believe it!’

  But our first gig was in a poxy little club called Ungano’s on West 70th Street in Manhattan. It was supposed to be the place to play, like when you’re in London you do the Marquee, but we didn’t think that when we saw what a shithole it was. I guess they booked us in there because agents and record company people were supposed to show up.

  Our roadie, Luke, didn’t realise it was a different mains in America, so when he plugged the equipment in, it blew up.

  ‘Oh bloody hell, what are we going to do now?’

  It was chaos, but they soon managed to get the fuses going again. We had two nights at this club and I though
t, well, this is it? This is America? It was such a disappointment. But on the third night over there, we played the Fillmore East, which was fantastic. Bloody hell, monitors . . . what a difference! It was the first time we heard each other properly on stage, the first time I could actually hear Ozzy sing. It was brilliant and after that we never looked back.

  We played the Fillmore with Rod Stewart and The Faces. We really went down well and Rod Stewart came on and he was practically booed off stage. We did two gigs with him and the same happened the second night. He was not a happy chap. But that’s when we realised we were grabbing them . . .

  The Americans, they really liked us!

  Us being not very well known yet, some people thought that Black Sabbath was a black band. That didn’t last very long, as they soon found out we weren’t much of a soul group. As the tour progressed, we used to hang around and see other bands, like the James Gang. We did the Fillmore West in San Francisco with them and Joe Walsh was smoking this bloody angel dust. Right before the gig Geezer said: ‘I’ll just have a puff of that.’

  Ozzy joined him. They thought they were just smoking a joint. Geezer said he was hallucinating on stage. It frightened him to death. Most of us were pretty out of it half the bloody time. I didn’t partake as much. I was certainly no saint, but I thought it wise to try to maintain a clear head. Up to a certain point.

  21

  Happy birthday witches to you

  There were people in whatever country out there who wouldn’t even understand our lyrics at that time, because they couldn’t speak English. But it was because of the vibe of the music that they felt it was satanic. We were actually invited to join satanic sects. Alex Sanders, the head witch of England, ‘the King of the Witches’, came to the shows trying to get us into his thing. And the first time we played San Francisco, Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, held a parade for us there. I still have a picture of that. LaVey with a Rolls-Royce and a big banner that read: ‘Welcome Black Sabbath’. I thought, what’s all this? That’s nice of them to do that!