Guitarist Tony Iommi On Upcoming HEAVEN AND HELL Tour - "I Don’t Think We Will (Play OZZY-Era BLACK SABBATH Material)"
March 8, 2007, 17 years ago
BLACK SABBATH guitar legend Tony Iommi spoke to Vueweekly.com about a number of topics including the upcoming HEAVEN AND HELL tour which commences on March 11th at Vancouver, BC at Pacific Coliseum. An excerpt follows:
Iommi says that the differences in sound between the OZZY OSBOURNE and RONNIE JAMES DIO (era) is partly a result of the evolution of his own guitar-playing and writing throughout the years, and partly a result of the differences in the two vocalists.
“Ronnie is a totally different singer from Ozzy,” he considers. “When I wrote for Ozzy I sort of knew where he was going to go—working with him for so many years I sort of had an idea of which things were good for him to sing on or not—and, of course, when Ronnie came in I had no idea, so it was a totally open book and just the whole style of writing changed with Ronnie.”Iommi and the others are focused on playing on the same stage again, and the name change this time out is serving to open up some interesting possibilities, too; there are no plans to play any of the Osbourne-era staples during the tour, freeing them from the greatest hits setlists of the past.
“Ronnie did leave himself open,” Iommi explains. “He said, ‘listen if you want to play any of the old Sabbath stuff, I’m quite open to that.’ But, to be honest, I don’t think we will. I mean, we may try one or two, but we’ve talked about just doing the Dio era, which is nice because we’ve got some great songs there and it’ll be nice to put a show together with them.”Read more here.
