![]() “I found a dead rattlesnake, so I tied it on a bit of thin fishing line and put it in his car and tied the other end to his door handle, so when he opened the door, this snake jumped towards him,” recalled Iommi. And when Iommi found out Dio was afraid of snakes, the door was open for another practical joke. At one point, Iommi set Ward on fire as part of a prank they had pulled dozens of times, only this time the drummer was badly burned. When they finished a track, they’d take it to the local strip club and the DJ would play it while the girls danced. Just because Black Sabbath didn’t party like coke fiends didn’t mean there weren’t some crazy moments while they worked on Heaven and Hell. But we didn’t say, ‘Right, we’re going to do an album. Having said that, we had our days when we would dabble a bit. “We couldn’t possibly operate at the level we were used to,” Iommi said. ![]() With time burning holes in their pockets, Sabbath worked more quickly than they were used to, which meant less personal indulgences. So the band funded the sessions themselves. We just believed in what we were doing and carried on with it.”ĭespite their enthusiasm for the songs they were writing, Black Sabbath's label was skeptical that anyone would be interested in Sabbath without Ozzy, and refused to pay for the recording. “Everybody was wondering what was gonna happen, and what it was going to be like and was it going to work. “We were writing out of sheer stubbornness, I think,” Iommi said. Black Sabbath, "Neon Knights" - Live (1980) For the first time in years, Black Sabbath were the underdog and they were fighting against the system. Geezer came down and that was another tribulation to have to deal with because he wasn’t exactly in the best headspace at the time.”Īs songs like the pile driving “ Neon Knights” and the epic, imagistic title track started coming together, Butler and Ward’s interest in the band was reignited and Black Sabbath began playing with an efficiency and vitality they hadn’t displayed since Sabotage, five years earlier. But I felt it was important that Geezer play with Tony. Is there any chance?’ I didn’t think it was working that well with the other bass player we hired, anyway. And in the middle of it, Geez called Tony and said, ‘I’d really like to come back. We went to Florida with another bass player to start recording. “Geezer was only there for a couple days after I arrived,” Dio recalled. Drummer Bill Ward was in an alcoholic stupor most of the time and bassist Geezer Butler left a few days into the songwriting process to sort out some personal issues, forcing Iommi and Dio to hire a couple of fill-ins while they finished writing. While the two main songwriters of the second generation of Black Sabbath were rebuilding the band’s shattered foundation, other forces, both inside and outside of the group were putting up obstacles that even Iommi’s dense, muscular rhythms couldn’t immediately penetrate.
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