Iron Man (40 page)

‘Well, just come up with us then.'

‘I don't like heights. I can't!'

‘You play on stage then and I'll play up there!'

‘I'd never learn it in time!'

Thank goodness I said no to that. But Brian was brave enough to do it.

Backstage before the gig I stood outside talking to Paul McCartney and some other people. It was great, but there were all
these signs saying ‘No Drinking', ‘No Swearing', no this, no that. That terrified Ozzy more than anything, because with him everything is fucking this and fucking that, so he was practising not swearing. He walked up and down in the dressing room going: ‘Raise your hands, come on, raise your hands . . .' instead of his normal: ‘Raise your fucking hand, you fuckers!'

I thought, no way he's going to keep that up! But he did.

We went on, and Ozzy went on too soon. He was excited and was already walking on as they announced us. We did the gig and it went really good. We came off and I had a chat with a few others, Tom Jones and the rest of them.

A great day.

Afterwards we were invited to the Palace for a drink. I was standing there in this fantastic, huge, lovely room talking to Phil Collins when Tony Blair spotted me and came over: ‘Tony! Tony!'

‘Eh?'

I'd never met him in my life. It was unreal to have the prime minister come over to me like he'd known me for years. He said: ‘I'm a big fan. I've got all the early albums!'

Then his wife came over and he introduced me to her. While I was talking to them, I saw Ozzy walking over to me. He asked me something and I went: ‘Oz, meet Tony Blair.'

He went: ‘Oh, eh . . . hello.'

And that was it. Tony Blair put his hand out and it was like . . . nothing. Ozzy didn't even acknowledge him and just walked off. I said to Tony: ‘He's always like that, you know.'

Because I didn't know what to say.

Tony said: ‘It's okay.'

Then I saw Prince Charles walk over to talk to Ozzy. I thought, oh hell, there's no way Ozzy is going to be able to talk to him without swearing. The whole thing, it was just unreal.

I ended up meeting the Queen, Prince Charles, Princess Anne and all the gang, and they were really nice. When you see them on
TV it's all very serious, but they were down to earth. I was quite surprised. The Queen didn't really say anything and I didn't say anything to her. She just comes by and smiles and you nod and that's it really. She talked to hardly anybody. But the two young princes, William and Harry, came over and said to me: ‘Why didn't you play “Black Sabbath”?'

I said: ‘I don't think that would have gone down that well.'

It was a great night. The original idea was to stay there for only fifteen minutes and clear off, but I'd been there half an hour, forty minutes, and I was the first to leave. Maria and me went back to the hotel, the Lanesborough, overlooking the back of Buckingham Palace, a real flash place. We went up to our room, got into bed and about two and a half hours later the fire alarm went off: ‘Would you please leave the rooms, please leave the rooms.'

We got dressed and, as we walked out into the hallway, I saw the Fire Brigade going into Ozzy's room.

Somebody had set the alarm off and they assumed it was coming from his room. But it wasn't him; he was in bed with Sharon. The Fire Brigade burst in and Ozzy had a fit.

We had to evacuate and stand around outside. I couldn't believe it: twice in one day, in the afternoon at Buckingham Palace and then at our hotel. So everybody thought, that's strange, it happened over there and now here as well . . . it must be them!

On 9 December 2003, people from several British television shows got in touch with me to see if I would do an interview about Ozzy's accident. I didn't know what the hell they were on about, but I soon learned that he had crashed his quad bike and broken his collarbone and lots of other things. He was in hospital for quite a while where he had metal bars put in his shoulder and his collarbone. He was very lucky to be alive.

I spoke to him, of course – I wouldn't just leave him like that – and Sharon let us know how he was doing as well. Apart from him nearly dying, he was doing very well actually. Ozzy had just released the old Black Sabbath song ‘Changes' as a duet with his daughter Kelly. I never knew he was going to be doing that and I was quite surprised, but it was great. And after his crash it went straight to No. 1.

It took Ozzy quite a while to heal, but in June he was well enough to do the Ozzfest again, with Black Sabbath headlining once more. We kicked off in Hartford, Connecticut. While we were playing ‘War Pigs', they projected a film behind us showing George Bush sporting a clown's nose, together with Adolf Hitler. One of the problems with these Ozzfests was that all this stuff was
done without us knowing about it. Either that, or they would show it to us at such a late stage that it would be a case of use it or scrap it altogether. The Hitler thing caused a bit of an uproar, but, then again, there's been uproar about everything we've bloody done.

Judas Priest was on the bill as well. Towards the end of the tour, Rob Halford had to step in for Ozzy. In the afternoon of the Camden, New Jersey, show, the tour manager and the production manager said to me: ‘We've got a problem.'

I thought, oh, here we go.

They said: ‘Ozzy is not going to make the gig tonight.'

‘Ah . . .'

‘How would you feel about somebody else doing the gig, like Rob Halford?'

‘Has anybody asked Rob? If he'd be interested in doing it?'

‘No, we thought we'd ask you first.'

I said: ‘As long as you let the kids know that Ozzy is not doing the gig before they're coming in, or let them know well in advance that Rob is going to do it, fine. We will do it if Rob can do it.'

Rob quickly learned our stuff in his bus. He'd seen our show umpteen times so he just had to watch the DVD a bit and run over the things that he didn't know so much.

We were due to go on stage and I said to the tour manager: ‘You did tell the kids, right?'

‘No, we haven't said anything.'

‘You're kidding. You have to let the kids know that Ozzy is not going to be doing it!'

They asked me if I would go on and announce it and I said: ‘You left it this late, I'm certainly not going to walk out and say Ozzy's not showing up!'

Eventually Bill told the crowd Ozzy couldn't do it, but that Rob was kind enough to stand in, and so on. Black Sabbath followed Judas Priest, so Rob came off the stage, changed his clothes, and
he had like a half an hour before he had to go on again. It went great. It was tremendous how he did his set and then ours as well. My hat off to him, he's such a great performer.

The tour went on until 4 September, when we were going to do a show in West Palm Beach. You could say we went down a storm without even playing, because it was cancelled due to Hurricane Frances. We were staying at this hotel there and I had some friends who flew out from England to watch the show. As soon as they arrived it was cancelled.

The band had a private jet so we got out before the storm came in big time, and I let my friends stay in my hotel room. They survived it. They must have been all right, because when I received the bill later I saw they drank my minibar dry.

Late in 2004 I started working on my next solo album. First we tried a singer called Jørn Lande from the German band Masterplan. He was a nice lad with a great voice who sounded very much like Ronnie James Dio. But then it turned out Glenn Hughes was free to work on a record with me again. Glenn is really talented, he is good to work with and we get on really well, so it seemed good for us to have another go at making an album.

We went into a rehearsal room in Birmingham to work on the songs of what was to become
Fused
. The first day we got together we met Mike Exeter there, who is the engineer in my own studio at home. Mike said: ‘Do you want a cup of coffee, Glenn?'

‘Yes, please.'

It was fatal to give Glenn a cup of coffee, because as soon as he had it, he went into overdrive. Bang! It was just like he'd had three lines of coke again. He drove us up the wall getting all excited like that.

‘Well, Tone, is it all right, Tone, let's go, Tone!'

He couldn't sit still for five seconds.

I said: ‘Glenn!'

He was fidgeting and talking away: ‘Yeah, well, I'm sorry, I don't drink coffee! And I . . . I . . . I shouldn't drink it really!'

He wouldn't shut up. Mike came in and I said: ‘No more coffee for him!'

Just like I'd done for the DEP sessions, I played Glenn some riffs. He is the sort of bloke who will sing on anything you play him.

‘Oh, I like that one. And I like that one. And that one!'

‘Which one do you want to do then?'

We'd pick one and build it into a song.

We had a bash for a couple of days and then we brought Bob Marlette in to work on some more songs and produce the record. I said to Bob: ‘Let's put a few tracks down, let's have a little bash', and we came up with four or five tracks in no time at all. We recorded them at my house and most of those tapes were actually used for the final tracks.

Since working with Kenny Aronoff on the
Iommi
album I just thought he was a really good drummer, so we brought him over. The four of us worked on the songs, we did rough takes of all the tracks and we took it to the Monnow Valley Studios in Monmouth to record it properly there. It was all very quick: got together, wrote it and recorded it.

Fused
was released in July 2005 on Sanctuary Records. We did a promotional tour for that, with quite a lot of radio stuff, but we didn't support the album with a concert tour, because I was out with Black Sabbath doing Ozzfest at the time. It was good to see that it was received very well by the critics and the audience alike. After having been met with terrible reviews and negative articles for most of my career, it shouldn't have mattered to me that much any more, but it was nice to see so many people appreciating our music that much.

We were up for it probably seven or eight times, and on 13 March 2006 we were finally inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And a couple of months before that we'd already been inducted in the UK Music Hall of Fame.

When it rains, it pours.

We were inducted into the UK one in November 2005 at Alexandra Palace in north London. We played ‘Paranoid' at that ceremony and that went great. Brian May inducted us. There was a bit of a commotion about that, because Sharon wanted Angus Young of AC/DC to do it. I wanted Brian. Then she wanted Angus and Brian to do it together, but Brian just didn't want to do it that way. I'm glad he stuck to his guns. He wasn't going to do it and I had to phone him up and said: ‘Please do it. Do it for me.'

He came and made a great speech, absolutely fantastic. I was really proud of him.

Ozzy was playing there as well with his band and Angus Young said about three words about that. Well, his first few words were: ‘Hello, can you hear me? Can you hear me?' He's probably as good a talker as I am on those bloody occasions.

We went into this TV station to do an interview right after the
presentation, and the bloke said: ‘Last year we had Michael Jackson in here. He came in with his award and when he walked out again he forgot it. I've got it in my bathroom at home now.'

I said: ‘Oh, really? Fancy him doing that!'

And, blimey, if I didn't do exactly the same thing. In fact, he probably had mine sitting in his bathroom for a while next to Michael Jackson's. But I've got it back now, so everything is good.

When we collected our award for the American Hall of Fame, we stayed at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. The event was held in the hotel ballroom. It was great; you could just go downstairs, go to the presentation, collect your award and clear off. Well, supposedly, but you don't do that, because from then on you go into the different TV stations that are hooked up at the back there to do interviews. In doing so I held on to my award like it was glued to me, because I didn't want to lose it like I had at the UK Music Hall of Fame.

When we finally got it after all those years of being nominated, I was really pleased. Ozzy had said some stuff in the past, like: ‘I don't give a fuck about being inducted.'

I thought it was a great honour and I am very proud of it.

They wanted us to play there, but there was some problem so Metallica played instead of us. They did ‘Hole In The Sky' and ‘Iron Man'. They were really good and they inducted us as well, which was really nice of them. Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield said some wonderful things about us. They are genuine blokes and they do love what we've done. In fact, James came along to a few Heaven & Hell gigs later, so he's a big fan. And in turn I think they are really good. I like them a lot.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a funny old do, really, because it gets a bit stuffy. Fortunately we could loosen up a bit with the guys we knew there. And, of course, I loosened up a lot later, when I sat in the bar with Geezer Butler until God knows what time. The next day I felt bloody awful.

When I left New York about four days after the event, I put my award in my hand baggage, just to make sure I didn't lose it. It's a big thing, maybe a foot long, and when I passed security at the airport they said: ‘You can't take this through.'

‘What do you mean? It's an award!'