The subsequent tour (which birthed a live DVD recorded in Melbourne) was notable for the power of its performances and the ease with which the new tracks integrated with Sabbath staples like War Pigs and Snow Blind. Now, with Iommi in treatment for lymphoma (he’s generally keeping on top of the disease, but treatment and recovery makes touring an exhausting proposition), Sabbath have decided to call time on their days as a touring entity. The End tour rolls into Australia this month, and a CD also titled The End will be available exclusively at the shows.
“When we recorded the 13 album we recorded 16 tracks – 16 songs,” Iommi says. “[Producer] Rick Rubin put eight on the album and then we had some bonus tracks that went out with the album as well, but we had these other songs left over. I thought we were going to add some other songs to those to make another album, but we all decided at the end of the day not to do it, and to tour. So we had these tracks and we thought we should put them out. It’s mad to just leave them. So we had the idea to sell them at the shows to do something different.”
The End comprises four of these 13 leftovers as well as four songs recorded during the 13 world tour. “Of course it’s always difficult playing so many new songs because people really want to hear the old songs, but they want to hear new things too,” Iommi says. “You’d be playing three or four hours if you played everything everyone wanted you to play. For this show we mainly do stuff that people want to hear from the old stuff.”
On drums again for this tour is Tommy Clufetos (original drummer Bill Ward refused to play over a contract dispute). It’s a tough gig for any drummer, but Clufetos won over the doubtful and even earned a standing ovation after his drum solo during Sabbath’s last Melbourne appearance.
“It’s difficult for a drummer to do a solo and hold peoples’ attention, but I must say Tommy is such an exceptional player,” Iommi says. “I’m amazed every night. I’m backstage in my dressing room tent and I hear him and he never ceases to amaze me.”
There’s nary a rock or metal guitarist alive who hasn’t been influenced by Iommi’s playing. He pioneered not just a style of playing, but also a whole library of techniques to use in the studio. Take for example his method of having two separate guitar solos playing at once, as heard on Iron Man and Killing Yourself To Live.
“I suppose that was an accident, really,” he says. “I just liked the idea of having two guitars at the same time playing slightly different things. And so we kept it, but it was a bit of a fluke. We’d do the track and I’d play the solo and then try another solo and we’d happen to play them back at the same time and think, ‘Oh, that’s a good effect.’ I always like to experiment and try different things. Of course in the early days it was difficult because you had to make the sounds yourself. You couldn’t go and buy a gadget, plug it in and get the sound. It used to take ages and the rest of the band used to think, ‘Oh bloody hell, what’s he doing? This is taking ages.’ But you just couldn’t buy something to do it.”
It’s a good point: along with instating much of the musical vocabulary of metal, Sabbath and Iommi also invented the genre’s sonic presentation. There was no rule book for how metal was supposed to sound back then.
“That’s right, you had to do everything. You just couldn’t buy the things that exist , so you had to make your own sound with the way you used it, and you had to make the amp adjust to you. Today you can go out and buy all these things with different sounds, and some of them are really good, but I still like the sound from the actual tubes as opposed to a gadget making the sound. I don’t really like using fuzz boxes and all that sort of stuff. I like the sound from the amp.”
So what comes next for Tony Iommi? “After this Sabbath tour I’m not going to be doing tours again. I might do occasional shows, but I’m not going to be going on tour like this again. I’d still like to record, but touring for me is… I get very tired. I’ve got, honestly, hundreds and thousands of riffs and songs that I just never got round to using. It’ll be interesting to have the time to sift through the stuff and see what I’d like to use.”
BY PETER HODGSON
