Tony Iommi’s Iron Man, My Journey Through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath

TIIMMJTHAHWBS

TIIMMJTHAHWBS


Tony Iommi, Iron Man, My Journey Through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath – Ozzy has already released his amazing I Am Ozzy autobiography, now it’s Tony’s time. Except there’s one big difference – Tony Iommi is not just a member of the original Black Sabbath line-up, he’s the only musician to appear in every Black Sabbath line-up. Yep – he’s the boss, and is solely entitled to tell the ENTIRE Black Sabbath story. Unfortunately, however, while we do learn a lot of great stuff here about the post-Ozzy line-ups of the band, Iommi’s book is skimpy and pretty boring. It also rather disingeniously hints at the possibility of another album and tour of the original Black Sabbath line-up of Ozzy, Tony, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward, when the band announced at a press conference held ten days after the book’s publication that they would indeed do just that. Good news, even if the book isn’t so good…

The first warning is the large font of the book, the second is the many chapters (90!!), many of which are only two pages long (the whole book only has 369 pages). Nearly every chapter ends with a twee comment of sorts.

“What’s Bill doing?”
“Oh, he’s cooking his banana skin.”

And he said: “Well, you started it!”
There was no answer to that!

But I didn’t leave. The only person left standing was me.
Mug!

But who knows? Maybe we’ll do it again someday.
Just for a laugh.

But whatever happens, there’s one thing I’m absolutely sure about.
I will never set fire to Bill Ward again.

But the book is full of pain and conflict – Iommi has to justify his decisions as a band leader, hiring and firing people, and he lists a lot of expensive mistakes, such as the Black Sabbath and Blue Öyster Cult “Black and Blue” tour, loans to various insolvent former business partners, ruined band equipment, the Stonehenge stage set, etc. He doesn’t address drug use the way that Ozzy does in his book (in fact, he talks often about being the only one not in therapy among the aging Black Sabbath line-up, making it hard to drink himself on tour). He talks about family pain as he recounts some of his marriages and relationships, along with the distress of his daughter’s life during a painful divorce. His father, like Ozzy’s, was too proud to go the doctor when he got sick in his old age, which also did him in, sadly. Then there’s also the various pains he’s had in his body, with the amputation of two of his fingertips that he had to create fake fingertips for (there’s a funny story about guitarists with perfectly good fretting hands building fake fingertips as well), carpal tunnel syndrome, bad hand joints, a decaying spine, snapped tendons, and much more.

Eerily, Iommi recounts being on hand as several people died, such as an aunt of his, and he talks seriously about seeing ghosts. He talks about his relationship with Lita Ford and the death of Ronnie James Dio and Cozy Powell. But all along Iommi also incessantly and with very good humour talks about his very good friends, people like Brian May, Rob Halford, John Bonham and Glenn Hughes and other people he has become close to over the years… including Ozzy, Geezer and Bill.

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