#59 Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath) 1984

The Tapes Archive

11-01-2023 • 12 mins

In this episode, we have Black Sabbath’s guitarist and the godfather of heavy metal, Tony Iommi. At the time of the interview in 1984, Iommi was 36 years old and was promoting Black Sabbath’s Born Again album and tour. In the interview, Iommi talks about Ian Gillian joining Black Sabbath and blowing up his boat, thoughts on Ozzy Osbourne remaking old Sabbath tunes, the Born Again live show, Randy Rhoads, and how he really did disturb the priest.  The interview is conducted by a new Tapes Archive contributor, Canadian music journalist and author Steve Newton. During his four decades as a freelance music writer, he has interviewed everyone from AC/DC to ZZTop. We highly recommend that you head over to his Patreon page patreon.com/earofnewt and check out over 340 of his exclusive interviews. For only $5, you get full access. We are not paid for this endorsement; we truly feel it’s money well spent. Link to Newton's Patreon page: https://bit.ly/3WQBr9S For zero money, you can head over to Newton’s website, earofnewt.com, where he has posted more than 3,000 of his interviews, album reviews, concert reviews, and horror movie reviews. Link to Newton's website: https://bit.ly/3ij9GIa 00:00 - Intro 01:44 - Start of Tony Iommi Interview 02:07 - Ian Gillian joining Black Sabbath 02:21 - Playing Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water 03:02 - Why Ronnie James Dio left Black Sabbath 03:22 - The addition of Bev Bevan from ELO 03:58 - If former Sabbath drummer Bill Ward will be back 04:13 - The story behind Black Sabbath’s song Disturbing the Priest 04:50 - Blowing up Ian Gillian’s boat 05:18 - The comparison between Black Sabbath’s debut album and Born Again 06:10 - His thoughts about former bandmate Ozzy Osbourne’s music 06:22 - What he thought of Randy Rhoads 06:34 - On Ozzy remaking old Black Sabbath songs 07:06 - Black Sabbath’s influence on other bands 07:46 - What music does he listen to 08:11 - A very surprising favorite song of Iommi’s 08:23 - Talks about Born Again’s live show. 09:33 - Iommi plays a bit of a joke on Newton 09:58 - Why growing up he did not think he would play the guitar 10:26 - His main influences on guitar 10:48 - How he doesn’t actually play a Gibson SG 11:58 - His current amps Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.