And as a signifier of where Iommi wanted Sabbath to go, completely off-message. Exciting for the audiences that were there for the shows, perhaps, but utterly enervating on record, as draining as a coke comedown. This was primeval Sabbath, heavy as hobnailed boots trudging through mud, obnoxiously loud and overbearing. Plus a live album cost relatively nothing to make, an idea that particularly excited everyone.īut when Iommi listened back to the tapes, he was aghast. Sabbath had been going to release a double live album, à la Deep Purple, whose double live Made In Japan, released in December ’72, was now a colossal international hit. Iommi craved the one thing money couldn’t buy: respect. Iommi finally had his house with ‘everything’ and didn’t have to go out again – ever.īetween tours, while the rest of the band took their wives and girlfriends on long holidays, Iommi stayed behind to work alone in his new home studio, snorting coke and ‘creating’ long into the night. Susan’s wealthy father invited the newlyweds to move into his 200-room mansion on several hundred acres of grounds halfway between Birmingham and London. But it was clear from the day they got married in November 1973 that they were destined to remain strangers throughout the seven years they would be together. They were worlds apart, opposites that attracted. But we did go out to dinner, and that’s how it all started.” I found out she couldn’t sing – and she found out I hadn’t written a song for her. However, as he recounted in his 2011 memoir Iron Man: “She came up to my house one day and it was a bit awkward. Snowdon said she was a singer Iommi offered to write for her. Iommi had recently fallen for Susan Snowdon, a “posh bird” introduced to him by Sabbath’s manager. “I have a big house with a swimming pool now, but I want one with tennis courts and a studio, so I have everything in the house and don’t have to go out at all…” To get away from everybody so he could work undisturbed, the Phantom Of The Rock Opera. “I want to move to a bigger house,” he said. “I’ve got a few tapes of Deep Purple in the car, but I prefer to listen to things like Peter Paul And Mary, Sinatra, the Moody Blues and The Carpenters.” He wants Sabbath to carve out their own hallowed place in the pantheon, and for the name Tony Iommi to be up there, where he feels it belongs, alongside those of Jimmy Page and Ritchie Blackmore, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.Īs he complained in an NME interview that year: “On drawing power and album sales we can compare with groups like Zeppelin and The Who, although we seldom get recognition for the fact.” He wasn’t just a heavy rock guitarist, he complained. The others still feel more comfortable sitting at the back of the class, sneering at teacher. The other members of Sabbath want it too, but not nearly as much as Iommi does. Now all Iommi wants is to get back into the studio and produce the masterpiece that will, finally, he is determined, prove that Black Sabbath are as important, as worthy of serious consideration, as the bands they have been outselling, like the Rolling Stones and Deep Purple like anyone you would care to name, with the sole exception of Led Zeppelin, who are now outselling everybody. But eight months on the road has nearly killed them. What no one knows is that a few days after the Rainbow show there’ll be a phone call that quietly cancels what should have been Sabbath’s next US tour.
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