BLACK SABBATH's TONY IOMMI: 'I Think Certainly What We're Doing Is Honest Music'

Kevin W. Smith of AZStarNet.com recently conducted a short interview with legendary heavy metal guitarist Tony Iommi (BLACK SABBATH, HEAVEN AND HELL).

Q: When you guys hired Dio to front BLACK SABBATH back in the late '70s, how big of an artistic risk did you feel you were taking?

Iommi: "There wasn't a choice, to be honest, at that time. We got to a situation where we couldn't go on any longer as we were. It was either the band break up or we carry on and Ozzy goes his own way. That's really what happened. Ozzy wasn't into it anymore at that time, so it seemed a good choice to add Ronnie. A different direction vocally. If we had got someone who was too much like Ozzy, everyone would be comparing it."

Q: You're considered one of the founders of metal, which has always had this devoted fan base. What is it about metal that draws people's devotion?

Iommi: "I think certainly what we're doing is honest music. We're not going on as a glam-show or anything like that. We're going on and playing and we're not doing acrobats on stage and stuff like that. We just go out and play."

Q: When you guys were doing metal back in early days, from what inspiration were you pulling, since there didn't seem to be a lot of bands out there like you guys at the time?

Iommi: "That was it, there was no sort of inspiration. The inspiration came from ourselves as far as how we felt and where we lived. It was something that came up that we couldn't explain. I can't explain how I came up with those riffs initially, because it was something, at that time, that was very different. Nothing like that existed. We really got a lot of attacks in the early days, 'Oh, what is this music?' because it wasn't liked by a lot of the press in those days. Because we were doing something, (even) we didn't understand what it was. We just liked what we were doing."