“He was difficult”: The Black Sabbath singer Tony Iommi didn’t enjoy touring with
Some of the biggest metal acts of all time don’t even feel like they’re human when they get onstage. Even though a band like Black Sabbath is made up of four people playing the darkest riffs imaginable, it’s hard not to see Tony Iommi as some spiritual demon summoning music from the depths of hell out of his fingers. Although Iommi may have been able to keep Sabbath going for years after Ozzy Osbourne and even Ronnie James Dio’s departure, that didn’t mean that every facet of their career was going to be smooth sailing.
If you want to pair down the Sabbath sound to its bare essentials, though, everything circles back to Iommi half the time. The lion’s share of their best moments came from when he was writing the best riffs he could, and even though not everything worked out every time, it’s hard to deny that records like Never Say Die still have some epic moments on them that are far beyond what most artists could do at their best.
But when someone as charismatic as Osbourne or Dio leaves the group, there’s usually a massive void left in the band. Especially since they were the mouthpieces of the group, they would need some major shoes to fill it, and for a while, getting another legendary vocalist for the band for every subsequent record wasn’t exactly a bad idea.
After all, Ian Gillan of Deep Purple was seen as another founder of heavy metal, so why not work with Iommi to get a few hits? Well, anyone who listened to the album Born Again would know that getting rockstars together to do what rockstars typically do leads to a lot of songs that are made up of decent ideas and a lot of cocaine thrown about the studio half the time.
Considering how long he carried the Sabbath name, though, Iommi wanted to stretch, and despite having the keep the moniker for legal reasons, getting Glenn Hughes to work together for Seventh Star was an inspired choice. Hughes had also done time in Deep Purple, but when listening to his bluesy tone, Iommi had the chance to flex his chops a bit more, having a few more tasty licks that didn’t always have to cater to the mind-melting riffs on tracks like ‘No Stranger To Love.’
If working with Gillan had its ups and downs, Hughes was about to become a nightmare on the road. Outside of having his own demons, ‘The Voice of Rock’ was considered a walking drug fiend on the road, eventually having people hired to watch over him to make sure that he didn’t get up to any bad behaviour when he wasn’t onstage.
Even though the record is still one of the highlights of the non-classic Sabbath era, Iommi felt that Hughes was always a bit of a headache during those sessions, saying, “He’s so lucky that he came out of that. When Glenn was in Sabbath we did try to help him. I booked him into rehab, and he just ran off. But you have to decide for yourself to do it, and eventually, Glenn did. Music is his drug now. But he was difficult, yes.”
While Hughes was out the door following the massive tour that left him with his voice completely shot, bringing in Tony Martin turned out to be a godsend. His profile is not nearly as high as ‘The Prince of Darkness,’ but listening to what he did for the band in their forgotten middle period on albums like Headless Cross is still far better than Sabbath had any right to be at the time.
The only real tragedy here was never getting to hear a proper sequel to the record. There have been the DEP Sessions that have since been leaked online, but if Dio could return for the massive return to form on The Devil You Know, what’s stopping Iommi and Hughes from going back and giving everyone the blues-metal masterpiece that they are more than capable of giving us?
