Iron Man (32 page)

By the time we got to the Battery Studios, Ray Gillen had left. My friend Albert Chapman managed this guy called Tony Martin. He said: ‘Try him, he's got a good voice.'

Tony came into the studio without having had any warning or anything to sing on some of the tracks we'd written with Ray in mind. He sang some of the stuff similar to Ray, following some of the melody lines that we had already recorded. He did really well, so we replaced Ray's vocals with Tony's voice.

Years later, in 2010, Ray's vocals surfaced on the Deluxe Edition re-release of
The Eternal Idol
. We decided to release it because fans had been asking for it for years, and after all this time it served as a nice hats off to Ray as well.

‘The Shining' was the first single off the album. It was like a faster ‘Heaven And Hell', it had a similar sort of tempo. We needed to do a video for it, but with Bob and Eric gone we didn't have a bass player or a drummer. We brought this guitar player
who I didn't know from Adam, and he ended up miming playing bass on the video. Bloody hell, it was getting ridiculous. Terry Chimes of The Clash played drums in that video. He was a great guy and we ended up doing some shows in South Africa later with him.

The song ‘Nightmare' came from me being asked to do the music for
A Nightmare on Elm Street
. A guy from the movie phoned me in Montserrat and said: ‘Will you come to LA tomorrow?'

‘I'm in the middle of doing an album. I can't just pack up and leave everybody to come to LA.'

They sent me the script and I spoke to the producer a few times. I was all set to do it, but then Meehan started to put his oar in. He asked for so much money that they backed out. I would've loved to have done that. It didn't happen, but I had already written a song and we called it ‘Nightmare'.

Bev Bevan came up to London to see me and ended up playing on ‘Scarlet Pimpernel'. He tried a few things, like maracas. With the old band we always used maracas and bits of wood, tambourines and anything. You were making up your own sounds. We always ordered a percussion box and used different things on every album, ‘doing!' or ‘ping!' or whatever. But the art of that disappeared with the more modern players. In the eighties and onwards nobody seemed to use that any more.

It was Meehan's suggestion to use an idea based on a Rodin sculpture on the cover. I had no clue who Rodin was at that time. He told me about it and I said: ‘Oh, yeah, that sounds good.'

We went to this photo shoot where we had two people done in bronze paint. They stood there for bloody hours having their photos taken, to duplicate the idea of the original Rodin statue. They may well have ended up in hospital, because that's what had happened with Bill when we painted him. You just can't cover parts of the body up like that.

The Eternal Idol
was released in November 1987. We started recording it with one band and ended up finishing it with another. You don't want the band to break up, but when it does you bring somebody else in and that changes it again, and yet another person and it changes it some more, and you're gradually pulling away from what you once were. I lost track of it all in the end, because there were that many people in and out in such a short time. How I've always looked on it is that you replace somebody when they leave. It's like if you have a factory; if somebody leaves, you don't close down the factory, you replace him. It wasn't as cold as that, actually: I always looked to find somebody who could replicate a friendship as well, but I never found that. I was certainly never able to replicate the friendship the original four guys in Black Sabbath had. It was the same with the line-up of Heaven & Hell, with Ronnie. You can't find that again. You think you can, but you never do.

The album didn't sell very well at all, which was really disheartening. It was nice to finally get the thing done and get it out, but it was in the lap of the gods as to what was going to happen with it then. It must have been hard for fans to accept all the changes in the band. I remember when I was a kid and The Shadows got a new line-up it didn't feel the same to me. Now kids saw us with yet another line-up. I can understand that they were thinking, oh, what's going on? It always takes years for something like that to get accepted.

During the recording everything had fallen apart, everybody just left. But I couldn't leave. I had to hold the fort and put it all together again.

I tried on a few occasions to get Geezer back. It was a bit of an up-and-down thing where one minute he wanted to do it and the next he didn't. He came to London one time while we were recording there and we all went out to Trader Vic's, the restaurant below the Hilton. We didn't eat anything, we just drank. We had all these exotic bloody rums and while I was trying to talk Geezer into coming back we got paralytic. Geezer's wife, Gloria, came to pick him up and, as we walked out of Trader Vic's, Geezer gave the guy at the door a £50 note as a tip. Gloria came flying past, and whoosh, she snatched the £50 out of the guy's hand, put Geezer in the car and off they went.

He didn't want to come back. Management would certainly be one reason for Geezer saying no, because he didn't want to have anything to do with Meehan. He was quite right, of course.

I was at an all-time low, but I did pull myself out of it. Once Meehan was out of the picture things started getting better. The last thing he did for us was send us off to Sun City by way of Athens, playing a couple of weeks for a lot of money. We really needed that at the time, because with the band changing constantly we hadn't done any shows.

These people came over from South Africa and they said to me: ‘What can we do for you to make you believe that this is going to happen? What would make you happy?'

Out of the blue I said: ‘Buy me a Rolls-Royce.'

As you do. But they said: ‘Okay. Which one do you want?'

‘Oh!'

It was as simple as that. They said: ‘You pick it, we'll pay for it.'

I picked it, they paid for it, and then I knew they were serious about it.

Before going to South Africa we went to Greece. It was the first time we'd played there and also our first gig with Tony Martin. It was in the huge Panathinaikos football stadium, so Tony must have shat himself. While we were doing our sound check there the promoter let the kids in. I was livid. I grabbed him and pushed him up a wall, going: ‘You fucking idiot!'

Afterwards he took us out to dinner anyway. I thought, oh dear, I called him all the names under the sun and threatened to kill him, and here I am, sharing a meal with him.

It was 21 July, the height of summer, so it was roasting when we did the show. Fans were climbing up the bloody lighting rig at the side of the stage. It got really dangerous, so we were told to get off the stage and we had to cut the show short. So that was a nice start for Tony Martin.

One of the first things we did when we got to South Africa was go to Johannesburg to do some press. Right in the middle of doing that, somebody let a bomb off down the road. That was the only sign of any kind of trouble that I noticed. It wasn't connected to us, it was just one of those things. Well, I hope it wasn't to do with us.

The promoter took us out on a safari. We left at five o'clock in the morning in a couple of open-topped Land Rovers, and all I saw was the dust from the car in front. We'd stop for a bit, look into the distance and everybody would go: ‘No, I can't see anything.'

We saw nothing, absolutely fuck all. Great safari!

Sun City turned out to be a good place to play. We did six shows in the three weeks, playing Saturdays and Sundays. During the week it was as dead as a doornail there, but at the weekends, when we played, it was packed. The promoter was black and we were playing to audiences just like everywhere else, black and white. They'd never seen us and we did a couple of great shows. To me it was another gig. Why not branch out? I never thought about the political side of it. I was a bit blind to all that, I didn't really know how bad it was. I just thought, I'm a musician, I want to play and get my music around wherever I can. But, boy, did I get some stick for playing Sun City.

When I got there I saw all these pictures on the walls of all the bands that had played there before us, like Queen and Status Quo, so I wonder why it was me who got all the shit then. They really came down on me hard back in England. But I can't say I regret doing it. Fans are fans and it seemed a shame that these people shouldn't be able to hear our music.

In November and December 1987 the Eternal Idol tour went through Europe. The last gig was in Rome, where we played at the same venue as the Pope. He was appearing there the day before us and he had this light and sound system. After his thing was over we tried to get rid of his stuff, so we could get ours in.

‘Can you ask the Pope to move his gear, please? For Black Sabbath?'

That didn't go down very well.

It was around this time that I started having problems with the taxman, and it was then that I got in touch with Phil Banfield, basically looking for help. As well as having his own agency, Phil continued to manage Ian Gillan and he told me about Ernest Chapman, who was Jeff Beck's manager. I met up with him and the first thing Ernest said was: ‘You don't do drugs, do you?'

I said: ‘No, no!'

‘I don't want anything to do with anybody doing drugs.'

‘Oh. No, I don't do them!'

Lying through my teeth. A really good start to the relationship.

I was amazed at how straight he was. We started talking about stuff and I said: ‘What about commissions?'

We had nothing signed and he just said: ‘Don't worry about anything like that. When we've sorted it out, I'll take a percentage. What do you need now?'

There was nothing in it for him except grief, but I think he liked a bit of a challenge. Ernest and Phil Banfield worked a lot of things out, and then Ernest said: ‘Ralph works with me at the office and he does a lot of my stuff as well.'

I met Ralph Baker and then Phil gradually moved out. And Ralph and Ernest have been my managers ever since.

The first thing they helped me with was this big tax situation that I went through after the break-up with Meehan. The tax people came on to me like a ton of bricks. I didn't go bankrupt, but I did become insolvent. The taxmen said: ‘You have to sell your house.'

They came to my house and looked around at everything. They saw all the guitars and all the equipment, and they jotted it all down.

‘Right, how much will we get for this and how much for that?'

‘Eh?'

I couldn't believe it. They were willing to rip everything from under me.

I phoned Ernest up and he got them off my back for a bit. But I still had a huge bill to pay.

They asked: ‘What has happened?'

I started: ‘Well, the accountant's . . .'

They said: ‘This is not the accountant's problem, it's your problem.'

I thought, wait, the accountant was taking some of my money
and putting it to one side for tax! When I spoke to him he said: ‘Well, I did, but you wanted this and that, so I used the tax money.'

‘Oh, that's just great!'

My income was frozen during the investigation, but Ernest got it sorted out for me. He managed to work a deal out and got my royalties coming in properly as well. And he sorted the Meehan thing out.

We were back to square one. There was me, Tony Martin and Geoff Nicholls. It was time to leave all the ugly business behind and rebuild the band.

After eighteen years our deal with Vertigo in England and Europe ended, and the one in America with Warner Bros as well. It's horrible to be dropped, but that's the way it goes I suppose. Soon after, I met Miles Copeland who owned I.R.S. Records. He came to my house and said: ‘You know how to write albums, you know what people want. You do it and I'm fine with it.'

I thought that was great, so we went ahead and signed with I.R.S.

Most of 1988 I was busy sorting out a lot of rubbish from my past. When Phil, Ernest and Ralph got involved there was a mountain of shit to go through. It seemed like we were in never-ending meetings about everything, trying to clear the path before we could start afresh. Of course there were stumbling blocks along the way.

There was a guy who lived near me, a wrestler, who wanted to put a charity thing on to raise money for Children In Need. He asked me: ‘Could we put a gig on?'

I said: ‘Yes, we can play there, but I don't want it announced as a Black Sabbath thing.'

It was just a one-off with me, Geoff playing bass, Tony Martin and Terry Chimes, but it got blown out of all proportion. The gig
was on 29 May 1988 in the Top Spot Club in Oldbury, one of those working men's clubs where they have a comedian, a juggler and all that sort of stuff. And here it was: ‘Top of the bill tonight: Black Sabbath!'

I just wanted to help raise some money for kids. It was all done as a kind gesture but it became a bloody thorn in the side. We got lots of flack for it, with people going: ‘Look at Black Sabbath playing a little club like that.' To make things even worse, apparently the bloke made money out of it and kept most of it.

By that time we had already made steps to put the band back together again and regain some credibility. I met with Phil Banfield, we talked about drummers and Cozy Powell's name came up. He had played with Jeff Beck, Rainbow and Whitesnake and I had been threatening to work with him for years but it never happened. Me and Cozy met and he was on board. That was a great start; it gave us the credibility we were looking for.