More than half a century after he all but invented the language of heavy metal, Tony Iommi still can’t pick up a guitar without a riff tumbling out of it, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. In a new conversation, the Black Sabbath architect reflected on the creative instinct that has powered his entire career, and how that same reflex shaped his forthcoming solo album, From The Dark.
Speaking with Loz Guest, head of music and a presenter at U.K. digital station “Planet Rock“, Iommi boiled his lifelong drive down to something almost involuntary.
“It’s just in my blood. I just can’t help but… If I sit down with a guitar, I’ll come up with a riff. I like to do it, and I think it’s good for your brain as well. That’s the only thing I can do. I mean, you ask me to do anything else, I’m useless. But that’s something I enjoy doing, is creating,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
It’s a habit that stretches all the way back to the band’s beginnings, and one that hasn’t changed in the decades since.
“Ever since the early days of Sabbath, when we used to go in a rehearsal room, I’d come up with a riff and the other guys would go, ‘Oh, yeah, we like that,'” Iommi explained. “And then we’d work on that. And it’s the same thing now. I’ll play something and I think, ‘Oh, I like that. I’ll keep that and put something to it.’ It’s the same way we’ve always done it, really.”
That instinct got to breathe on From The Dark, due October 23 via BMG, in a way it rarely has. With no record deal in place and no deadline bearing down on him, Iommi built the album slowly and on his own terms, a luxury he clearly relished.
“Obviously, we didn’t know what was gonna happen to Ozz [Ozzy Osbourne], but it was a thing I’ve been working on over a period, just putting ideas down for a while. And the thing about this is I didn’t have to have the album ready by six weeks or anything like that. I could do it in my own time because we didn’t have a deal or anything. So I just managed to be able to sort of say, well, every Monday and Tuesday I’d go in [my home] studio with Mike Exeter, the engineer, and put some ideas down and it sort of went like that. And sometimes we couldn’t make it, other times we could, and we’d just done it at leisure, really, which was brilliant because there was no pressure,” he explained.
That unhurried approach extended to how the songs actually came together with Norwegian vocalist Jorn Lande, who sings across the whole record and shares its writing credits. Iommi described a fluid, ping-ponging method, and a singer whose relentless perfectionism he sometimes had to rein in.
“It’s gone backwards and forwards. I’d come up with a riff and the basic idea of the track,” Iommi said. “And then Jorn would probably sing something to that, and then I might change a riff afterwards, think, ‘Oh, I might put a different riff in there.’ So it’s been backwards and forwards like that. Jorn would come over to my house, and then he’d sing something. I’d say, ‘Well, yeah, we like that.’ And that’s how we did it, really… And he’s never satisfied with it. That’s the thing. We had to say, “That’s fine. Leave it.” Because he’d just go, ‘I can do it better.’ ‘No, no, that is it.’ ‘Cause you’ve gotta catch that emotion. It’s not the thing of getting it perfect. It’s a matter of how it comes over emotionally.”
Iommi‘s admiration for Lande goes back years, and it’s ultimately what landed the singer the job, as well as the album’s title.
“He’s done a lot of stuff. He was in Masterplan and various other things, and he’s had his own solo albums and tours. So he’s been around a while. But I really liked his voice. And funny enough, when we did the [Ronnie James] Dio tribute [at the 2010 High Voltage festival at Victoria Park] in London, Jorn was the one we picked to sing the songs,” Iommi said.
As for the name From The Dark, it came straight from his collaborator’s pen: “It’s one of Jorn Lande‘s lyrics, who’s the singer. So he’s got quite a lot of lyrics, which don’t ask me about at the moment. But, yeah. So it was taken from that, really.”
Whether any of it will make it to a stage remains an open question, but Iommi isn’t ruling it out: “Well, it could be live. I mean, there’s no plans at the moment, but, again, my life hasn’t been planned out that much. We just do it as it happens, if something happens. And I’ve done a few things that I never thought I’d be doing.”
During a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Iommi explained his connection to Jorn Lande.
“We’ve worked with him before. When we’d done the [Ronnie James] Dio tribute after Ronnie passed away [at the 2010 High Voltage festival at Victoria Park in London, England], we had Jorn come and sing a couple of songs with us at the tribute, and I really liked his voice. So, I thought, ‘Well, I’d like to use him.’ I liked his voice. I mean, you could go and pick some named people, but I’ve done that,” he said at the time.
Rather than steer the vocals, Iommi handed Lande the reins on lyrics entirely, saying he gave him no lyrical direction at all, a decision rooted in his years working with the late Ronnie James Dio. “With a singer, it’s good if they can do their own stuff because when they’ve got to sing it, they can put it over better,” he explained. “It’s like with Ronnie — when he used to write the lyrics, there’s certain words that he could really get powerful on. And I think it’s the same with Jorn.”
Iommi also explained that he’d hoped to bring Butler into the fold before circumstances got in the way.
“I wanted him to play on this album, but he couldn’t do it,” Iommi said. “He’s doing his own album, I think. Or at the time, something happened there, so he couldn’t come to England. I wanted to get it done and finally get it out, really. Because Becky‘s, as I say, a fan of Geezer, and she plays in that style, I though let’s give it a try. And she was good.”
The “Becky” in question is Becky Baldwin, the Birmingham bassist, also known for her work in Mercyful Fate and Fury, who ended up handling four-string duties across the album. For Iommi, her feel for Butler‘s playing was the whole point.
“Becky lives in Birmingham, and she’s a really good player,” he continued. “And she’s certainly a fan of Geezer, and she plays in Geezer‘s style. And that’s what I wanted. She’s really good.”
He also revealed that the recruitment of drummer Karl Brazil came about almost by accident.
“It’s strange, really,” he recalled. “I’ve got a house by the beach, which we go down to now and again. I was walking along the perimeter of the beach, and this guy come up to me and said, ‘Oh, Tony, hello.’ And I thought he’s just a fan. And he said, ‘We’ve got a mutual friend. Mike Exeter is my engineer. I’m Robbie Williams‘ drummer.’ Then Mike, my engineer, he said, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s a good drummer, Karl.’ I used him on one of my instrumental tracks with the perfume thing I did. And then I thought it’d be nice to use him on the album because he’s a good player. Also, he’s from Birmingham, which is really good because I wanted to try and keep it local.”
From The Dark will be the guitarist’s third solo album, following Iommi in 2000 and Fused in 2005. That it exists at all is a testament to the very instinct he describes: after 50-plus years, the riffs simply keep coming.
