Iron Man (30 page)

Lita helped us look for a new singer. She knew a couple of people we could try, but after Bill and Geezer left I was in need of a whole new band. It was her idea to let me use the drummer and the bass player of her band, Eric Singer and Gordon Copley. Eric wanted to play in my band more than he did in Lita's, so he said to me: ‘If you want a drummer, I would be interested.'

He ended up working with me for quite a while. Lita then looked at it as, oh, he's nicked my drummer. She got the hump about it so bad, that our break-up came mainly from that.

At the time I was doing a lot of drugs again, which was also
hard for her. Me and Geoff Nicholls would be at the penthouse a lot, trying to write something and doing coke at the same time. Every time Lita came home, Geoff would be there. It looked like I was more involved with him than I was with her.

Me and Geoff were in the penthouse one day and I put the chains on the door and something up against it, because you get paranoid when you do a lot of coke. We were working on a song when we heard this loud bang. It was Lita. She couldn't open the door and pushed it so hard that the whole rim of the door came off, with the chains and everything. And then she got pissed off, because we were at it again.

It was a shame, really, because I messed up the relationship by being constantly out of it. She was a nice girl and we got on well. It just started coming apart, certainly when the Eric thing happened. We were together for about two years. Then we went our separate ways. Lita was later managed by Sharon Arden. She phoned me and said: ‘I'm looking for a manager. What about Sharon?'

I said: ‘I don't know. It's up to you.'

Sharon got Lita to do a song with Ozzy that went to No. 1, so she did all right for her. For a while. Until she dropped her.

I was in the middle of doing my album when they asked us to perform at a huge show. All these people were doing it and it was for a very good cause. I said: ‘Sounds good. Let's do it.'

So, in July 1985, the original Black Sabbath line-up got back together for a one-off gig at Live Aid in Philadelphia. We probably thought that it might be the first step towards getting back together again. We got on well when we saw each other there and I think we all hoped it would happen, but the powers that be have to allow you to do it. It has to be in aid of charity, otherwise management would think somebody was making money out of it and it wouldn't happen. And there was no greater charity cause than Live Aid.

The organisation offered us a time slot in a rehearsal facility. We got to the space and were supposed to rehearse three songs. Instead of doing that we ended up talking about old times. We were there chatting away, then we played for a bit and then stopped when somebody would say: ‘Oh, remember so-and-so?'

Not much of a rehearsal, really.

This girl came in and stood at the back, watching. I mentioned this to somebody: ‘Can you tell her this is a closed session?'

I didn't know who it was. She had dyed her hair dark and looked nothing like Madonna, but it was Madonna and she wasn't very happy about being tossed out.

We went back to the bar afterwards, had a great time together and got solidly sloshed. The next day we were on at something like ten o'clock in the morning. I had a dreadful hangover so I put my dark glasses on, and then we played ‘Children Of The Grave', ‘Iron Man' and ‘Paranoid' in the bright sunlight. It was a great thing to do and we were certainly aware of the importance of the occasion, but it was over very quickly.

Meanwhile, Don had issued Ozzy with a writ, because he thought we were going to get together again and that Sharon was going to manage us. Don wanted to stop anything happening, because he made his point that he managed me and that there was no way we were going to do anything without him. Don and Sharon – they were both as paranoid as each other. Don sent a writ to Ozzy; the guy who presented it right there at Live Aid looked like a fan, so Ozzy thought he wanted his autograph and signed it. I didn't actually see the writ, as Sharon whipped that away right quick.

It put a little bit of a dampener on the occasion.

I don't know whether Live Aid made a difference. You do the thing, they raise the money and what happens then? They buy the food or whatever they need, but you're never 100 per cent sure who gets what. But I think it was a good thing to do anyway.

We got to Philly, had a drunken night, got hung over, did the gig and disappeared. The subject of getting back together didn't even come up. I got on the plane back home and didn't see them again for years.

I was now the only guy left in Black Sabbath. Without a band, I got the idea of doing a solo album with all different singers. I made a list of people I wanted, like Robert Plant, Rob Halford, David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, but it opened a huge can of worms trying to get somebody to sing. I ran into all sorts of contractual stuff, the record companies didn't let them, so it was: ‘Oh no, we are doing an album, I can't sing on yours.'

Eventually the idea was dropped. We then tried this guy called Jeff Fenholt. He was another one who had played the lead in
Jesus Christ Superstar
, in the Broadway version of that musical. So we had had Ian Gillan, who was the original Jesus Christ Superstar, and here we had the Broadway Jesus wanting to join Black Sabbath. We tried Jeff out and he had a good voice. I cut a couple of demos with him in Los Angeles. One of the tracks was ‘Star Of India', which later turned into ‘Seventh Star'. Another one was ‘Eye Of The Storm', which ended up on the album as ‘Turn To Stone'. And we had a track that eventually turned into ‘Danger Zone'. Of course these demos got out and found their way on to a bootleg album. Again. They called it
Eighth Star
or something like that.

Jeff seemed a nice enough guy. It might have worked with him, even though I wasn't 100 per cent convinced that he'd be able to do our older stuff. But then Jeff Glixman came in to produce the album and he didn't think Fenholt was working out, recording-wise. And that was that.

A little later Jeff Fenholt suddenly became this big TV evangelist. I couldn't believe it, because when we met him he was saying things like: ‘Oh yeah, I fucked that chick.'

The
New York Times
did a thing about him being with Black Sabbath and they wrote that he saw the light, rejected evil and all this bollocks. We were right back in the satanism thing because Fenholt was going on about it. I was getting phone calls to do
Larry King Live
about him. I thought, I'm not getting involved in that! You try and talk religion on TV in America and you have no chance. Especially him being an evangelist now; they're all going to side with him and I won't have a leg to stand on!

Around the time we did some demos I thought Geezer was going to return. His wife and manager, Gloria, said he wanted to come back as well. But the next thing I knew, he had joined Ozzy.

‘Bloody hell, what happened!?'

Glenn Hughes was, as I've said, one of the singers on my wish list. He came in and sang, and I thought, bloody hell, he's good! He was so impressive that I thought it would be great to use Glenn on all the songs of what was to become the
Seventh Star
album. But it was difficult to work with him. Fucking hell, he did ten times more coke than me!

It just turned into a nightmare. He'd go: ‘I've got this idea, I've got this idea!'

He'd snort a big line and say, all hyper: ‘Listen to this, listen to this!'

‘Yeah, okay. Good.'

‘Yeah, but I've got this other one, listen to this!'

He drove you up the wall. Even he himself now says: ‘I don't know how you put up with it.'

What made it even worse was that he had all these hangers-on coming down to the studio as well. I tried to get rid of them, because I could see that they were just leeches. I guess he could afford this big entourage at the time, as he'd just come off the Deep Purple thing, but it didn't last. He lost a lot of money and ended up selling all his stuff.

When we were doing
Seventh Star
, we recorded the album with Glenn Hughes and Eric Singer, and we had Dave Spitz on bass, a good player we'd found through Jeff Glixman. It was a first for me to play with musicians that young. I was thirty-seven at the time, and Dave and Eric were about ten years younger than me. It felt funny because, when I talked about old times, they didn't know what I was on about. They would ask me stuff and I'd start talking away and then I'd find out, hang on, they haven't got a clue, I can't go back that far because they can't relate to that.

‘Remember so-and-so?'

‘No, we don't.'

‘Oh . . . you forgot.'

And then I'd realise, bloody hell, they weren't even born then!

We started recording in LA, but we finalised the album in Atlanta, Georgia, because Jeff Glixman could get a good deal on a studio there. The basic tracks had been done already, so only me and Glenn went down there. I had taken this big stereo to Atlanta with me. Glenn had nothing to play his stuff on, so I lent it to him. I had just bought it and he swapped it for some coke. I said to Glenn: ‘What happened to my stereo?'

‘I lent it to somebody.'

‘Oh . . .'

Then I saw this coke dealer with my stereo and put two and two together. Glenn was uncontrollable, but he sang like a dream
and absolutely effortlessly. He'd sit in the studio, slouching, with a mic, and . . . sing! Just incredible, a God-given voice.

We didn't take a long time recording the album: some tracks were actually done in the first or second take. We also tried to finish quickly because I paid for it all. The record company came up with a good advance later, but I fronted everything myself.

We finished
Seventh Star
in August 1985. Gordon Copley's original bass playing is on ‘No Stranger To Love'. We kept that from the very first sessions. It just seemed to go well with that track. I thought it was a great song, but what I didn't like was doing the video for it. The first day they took some footage of me and Glenn playing away. The next day I had to be there at something like 5.30 a.m. to do this shoot with the girl from
Star Trek
, Denise Crosby, Bing's granddaughter. I'm not very good at videos anyway, but I had to do this love scene with her, which was very embarrassing. They put this black eyeliner on me and everything else. It wasn't what we were all about at all, and I hated it. To make matters even worse, they had me walk into Los Angeles canals at seven o'clock in the morning, in the freezing cold with mist rising. I had just bought these new boots so they were well and truly knackered after that.

Seventh Star
was released in January 1986. It was supposed to be a solo album. I certainly didn't want to release it as a Black Sabbath album, because I hadn't written it as a Black Sabbath album. I wanted the freedom for it to sound as it did and tour without calling the band Black Sabbath, also because Glenn was uncomfortable about that. But when the question of the name came up, Don said to me: ‘The record company says that you owe them a Black Sabbath album, so they want this one.'

‘Ah . . .'

In the end it was billed as ‘Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi'. Neither I nor Glenn was pleased with it, because we felt we weren't doing the record justice presenting it this way. And to go out and play ‘War Pigs' and ‘Iron Man' – it just wasn't right.

Seventh Star
reached No. 27 in May 1986 and it dropped off the charts after five weeks. Not really a big seller. I don't think I even noticed it, because of all the aggro we had within the band.

We had a tour coming up, but somebody was about to choke on it.

The Seventh Star tour kicked off in Cleveland, Ohio, in March 1986. We had a big stage set with lasers and everything. Don Arden's idea again, but I had to pay for it all. Of course. To say the tour got off to a bad start is an understatement, because it went disastrous with Glenn. I had hired this bodyguard called Doug Goldstein, who later managed Guns N' Roses, to watch him and to keep all the hangers-on away from him. But no sooner did the tour start than Glenn disappeared back to Atlanta. Doug brought him back just in time for the show. We were at the side of the stage and he went: ‘I can't go on, I can't go on.'

So I literally threw him on: ‘Get out there!'

I hated being like that but I had to do it.

Doug Goldstein ended up doing all sorts of things to pin Glenn down. While staying in rooms with adjoining doors, he actually attached a string to his toe and tied it to Glenn's hotel room door, so as soon as Glenn moved Doug would know about it. It was a bloody nightmare. But Glenn was cunning; he managed to get drug dealers in somehow.

I wasn't there when it all happened. I just know that our stage manager, John Downing, ended up thumping Glenn on the day before the first show. John was tough, very forceful, and he could handle himself. He was good at what he did. He had worked for Jimi Hendrix and The Move in the past. John said that he couldn't control Glenn and that he took a swing at him, so he clocked him. That was John Downing's side of it, but he is dead now so we can't ask him about it any more. He drowned. While he was on tour in Europe, John had had a row with some bootleggers and when he was coming back to England on the ferry, they were on the same boat. The story goes that those bootleggers lobbed him overboard and his body was washed up a couple of days later.

John broke Glenn's nose. Don Arden apparently said to John: ‘He had to go on stage, why didn't you thump him in the back of the head?'