November 29, 1969. That’s the day metal changed forever.
It’s when Black Sabbath appeared on John Peel’s Top Gear radio program, performing ‘N.I.B.’, ‘Behind The Wall Of Sleep’ and the ominous, devilish song that started it all, ‘Black Sabbath’. In the nearly 50 years since, Black Sabbath have done it all: blockbuster tours, epoch-defining albums, rejuvenating lineup changes, reunions and rebirths.
When Tony Iommi (guitar), Ozzy Osbourne (vocals) and Geezer Butler (bass) reconvened for 2013’s 13 album, it looked like Sabbath wanted to prove one last time that they could still write compelling, important material. The subsequent tour was notable for the power of its performances and the ease with which new tracks like ‘God Is Dead?’ and ‘End Of The Beginning’ integrated with original-era classics like ‘War Pigs’ and ‘Snowblind’. Now, with Iommi in treatment for lymphoma (he’s generally keeping on top of the disease but treatment and recovery makes touring an exhausting proposition), Sabbath have decided to call time on their days as a touring entity. The appropriately named The End tour rolls into Australia this month. And available exclusively at shows is a CD, also titled The End, making it a must-have for fans.
“When we recorded the 13 album, we recorded 16 tracks – 16 songs,” Iommi says. “[Producer] Rick Rubin put eight on the album and then we had some bonus tracks that went out with the album as well, but we had these other songs left over. I thought we were going to add some other songs to those to make another album. But we all decided at the end of the day not to do it, and to tour. So we had these tracks and we thought we should put them out. It’s mad to just leave them. So we had the idea to sell them at the shows to do something different.”
The four new tracks are combined with four songs recorded during the 13 world tour to make up the CD. “It’s always difficult playing so many new songs,” says Iommi, “because people really want to hear the old songs, but they want to hear new things too. You’d be playing three or four hours if you played everything everyone wanted you to play. For this show we mainly do stuff that people want to hear from the old stuff.”
On drums again for the final tour is Tommy Clufetos (original drummer Bill Ward refused to play over a contract dispute). It’s a tough gig for any musician, but Clufetos has won over the doubtful. “It’s difficult for a drummer to do a solo and hold people’s attention, but I must say, Tommy is such an exceptional player,” Iommi says. “I’m amazed every night. I’m backstage in my dressing room tent and I hear him and he never ceases to amaze me.”
There isn’t a rock or metal guitarist alive who isn’t influenced by Iommi, whether they know it or not. He pioneered not just a style of playing but also a whole library of techniques to use in the studio – for instance, his method of having two separate guitar solos playing off each other at once, as heard on ‘Iron Man’ and ‘Killing Yourself To Live’.
“I suppose that was an accident, really,” Iommi says. “I just liked the idea of having two guitars at the same time playing slightly different things. And so we kept it, but it was a bit of a fluke. We’d do the track and I’d play the solo and then try another solo and we’d happen to play them back at the same time and think, ‘Ooh, that’s a good effect.’ I always like to experiment and try different things. Of course in the early days it was difficult because you had to make the sounds yourself. You couldn’t go and buy a gadget, plug it in and get the sound. It used to take ages and the rest of the band used to think, ‘Oh bloody hell, what’s he doing? This is taking ages!’ But you just couldn’t buy something to do it!”
It’s a good point: along with inventing the musical vocabulary of metal, Sabbath and especially Iommi also invented the sonic presentation – there was no rule book for how metal was supposed to sound back then. “That’s right, you had to do everything,” Iommi says. “You had to make your own sound with the way you used it, and you had to make the amp adjust to you.”
So what’s next for Iommi? First there’s the possibility of recording some bonus tracks with another Sabbath vocalist, Tony Martin (who recorded five albums with the band). “After this Sabbath tour I’m not going to be doing tours again,” Iommi says. “I might do occasional shows but I’m not going to be going on tour like this again. Otherwise if I was, I’d be doing it with these guys! But that’s the plan, to basically retire from touring. I’d still like to record, but touring for me is… I get very tired. I love doing the shows, but it’s all the travelling. You get very exhausted with it, and arriving at four o’clock in the morning in a hotel doesn’t excite me anymore.
“I’ve got, honestly, hundreds and thousands of riffs and songs that I just never got round to using, really. It’ll be interesting to have the time to sift through the stuff and see what I’d like to use. But what I tend to do is not go back on stuff. I tend to start writing new stuff, so it accumulates more then!”
[Black Sabbath photo by Ross Halfin]
Black Sabbath rock Allphones Arena on Saturday April 23.
