This summer, Black Sabbath are going back to where it all began, with their original line-up reuniting for one last time for a hometown show at Villa Park in Birmingham, with an all-star cast in tow. But is it really the end for the heavy metal legends? To find out, and to get the lowdown on how they put together what promises to be a historic show, Music Week meets guitarist Tony Iommi and manager Sharon Osbourne…
WORDS: JAMES HICKIE
sensibilities for six decades and counting. It’s somewhat odd, then, that one of his own sources of fear comes from such an unlikely place. If you’ve seen ABBA Voyage of late, and spotted someone who looked suspiciously like Iommi, then your eyes weren’t deceiving you. He recently visited the ABBA Arena in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, describing the experience as “scary”. “It’s fantastic and surreal to see [ABBA] there and yet they’re not,” the warm and personable 77-year-old explains, having identified the show as a prime example of how technological advances have rendered the music industry “unrecognisable” to the one Sabbath rose up in. “It left a strange feeling in me,” he reflects further. “Whether that’s the direction people are going, I don’t know, but I’ve always been into the thing of having the live element. I don’t play the exact same stuff every night, so if I had to mime to what we did, I’d be all over the place!”
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musicweek.com
hat frightens Tony Iommi? Given that Black Sabbath’s only constant member conjured the demonic sonics that spawned heavy metal, the guitarist seems far more accustomed to instilling dread than experiencing it. The dark sounds he has summoned on his guitar have unnerved mainstream
Iommi and his Black Sabbath bandmates – singer Ozzy Osbourne, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward – will reaffirm the importance of live performance at Birmingham’s Villa Park on July 5. The show, billed as ‘Back To The Beginning’, will be nothing short of an extravaganza, celebrating Sabbath, Ozzy, heavy metal in general, and the sense of community the genre has engendered for over half a century.
“I did say that if one more show came up, we’d think
about it...” TONY IOMMI,
BLACK SABBATH
As well as featuring a headline appearance from Black Sabbath, with their classic line-up together for the first time in 20 years, Ozzy will play his own short set. Not only that, the star-studded show will also feature performances from Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Tool, Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins, Slayer, Pantera, Gojira, Halestorm, Mastodon and Alice In Chains. And that’s just for starters.
“I’m amazed and honoured they’re all doing it,” says Iommi. “It’s gone out of all proportion, with so many [bands] coming on board. I will be interested to see what some of the bands are going to do with Sabbath’s stuff, but then again I don’t think I’m going to be there all day – I’ll probably collapse. I think it starts quite early and goes on until I-don’t-know-what-time.” According to the guitarist, the calibre of the bill is evidence of Sabbath’s seismic effect on music. “You can see how we’ve impacted their lives,” Iommi
Music Week | 47
PHOTO: Ross Halfin
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