Martin Popoff from BraveWords.com chatted with BLACK SABBATH guitar legend Tony Iommi a while back about HEAVEN & HELL's debut album, The Devil You Know (click here to read the complete feature). There were plenty of 'scattered leftovers' from the chat. Check 'em out below:

BraveWords.com: Where in the process does Ronnie bring the lyrics to you? Do you see him working on them live, or does he bring them in all done, ‘Right, they’re ready to go’?

Iommi: "While we’re playing, he can be writing lyrics down. Whenever we rehearse or whatever it is, you can see him jotting stuff down. And when were at his house, he actually would disappear for half an hour and then come back, have a listen, go again, and he’s just writing ideas, making notes, and when we come back the next day, or to work on the song again, he would have an idea of what he’s going to say. And so he would sort of stay up until, I don’t know, two or three clock in the morning writing lyrics."

BraveWords.com: Did he ever say to you guys anything to the effect that, OK, this is a direction I’m really excited about with my lyrics? ‘Here, what do you guys think’?

Iommi: "Absolutely, yeah. Oh yeah, it was a real band effort. He shared what he was going to do with everybody, and do you like it? Like we do with everything, when we write the music. It’s like, everybody has to like what we do. Otherwise if somebody doesn’t like a particular riff or doesn’t like a part, we don’t do it."

BraveWords.com: Who is playing keyboards on the record?

Iommi: "Mike Exeter, is the one bit of keyboards we’ve got. He was playing, because he’s a keyboard player as well."

BraveWords.com: Something I’ve never asked you or Ronnie, at the time, I mean, there are a fair number of slowish things on here, and Dehumanizer was a bit that way, and then the Ronnie albums right around that time were like that as well. Were you much of a student of Ronnie’s records at any point? Do you know Ronnie’s Dio material quite well.

Iommi: "I can’t say I know them all. But I’ve heard some of them."

BraveWords.com: Were there are certain things that inspired you about what he was doing with that band?

Iommi: "Not really. I mean, you know, the only time I really listened to Ronnie’s stuff, was with the RAINBOW days, to listen to his voice. But I wouldn’t say, I mean, he’d done some great stuff, Ronnie, no question about that, but as a question, to get inspired, I get inspired when we all get together and start playing, really."

BraveWords.com: Something I always found interesting, and I never got a comment from you, this whole idea of Sharon being more or less, ‘Hey, go ahead and do this. Everybody’s gotta earn a living.’ What exactly is Sharon’s view of this whole Heaven & Hell thing?

Iommi: "There’s no view. I mean, it’s a separate thing. That’s why we wanted to do what we’re doing now, going out as Heaven & Hell and not infringe on the Black Sabbath thing so there is no comeback. You know, that’s a separate issue. We kept the Black Sabbath thing with OZZY, and we want to do something where, we stand out our own. You know, we don’t have to go out and play 'Iron Man' and 'Paranoid' and all those. We’re under Heaven & Hell, and we’re doing all the stuff we did with Ronnie, and we quite enjoy that. Really good. Because some of it got neglected when we were doing the Ozzfests and all that, because we played 'Iron Man' forever. And it was a great challenge, I think. I thought it was a really different thing to do. Do a different name, not playing old stuff. We jumped in the deep end and it really worked."

BraveWords.com: Does Ronnie have any sort of relationship with Sharon? Or are all the relationships with all of you guys really without Dio?

Iommi: "Ronnie doesn’t see Sharon. No, he doesn’t see her. We see her occasionally. I still talk to Ozzy lot. I still talk to Ozzy once a week or so. He calls up and I call him; we stay in touch. Find out what each other are doing and that. So there is no bad vibe with anybody. That’s the great thing there. We all get on well, so there are no complaints of any kind, really."

BraveWords.com: Any extra b-sides, or tracks that are getting released at all?

Iommi: "No. We can’t do that this time. We’ve just done the album, and we thought well, we don’t want to do any extra bonus track thing again. Because they basically disappear; you never hear of them again."

BraveWords.com: Did you have any working titles besides The Devil You Know?

Iommi: "For the album? No, actually Geezer (Butler) came up with Devil You Know; he came up with that title. And there are some others he came up with, some funny ones, but that one really appealed to me straight away, and the same with Ronnie. We said 'oh yeah, that’s good.'"

BraveWords.com: Can you remember the other titles?

Iommi: "No. And if I could, I wouldn’t tell you, because it’s Geezer’s typical humour."

BraveWords.com: Anybody voice any of their own sort of things about the philosophical direction they wanted the album to go? Vinny (Appice), Geezer, I mean, did any of them say I really want to revive the spirit of a certain album? Or certain kind of sound?

Iommi: "No, I think with us is, we got together and played, and whatever, that’s what I say about doing all the CDs, the idea of the initial, everybody doing their own little bits that they present, on CD, and then you say yes, that sounds good. And we went on that thing yeah, yeah, I like that part, let’s work on that one. And then everybody did it. So that was the decision; there was no sort of saying, oh we want to do this, you want to do that. We want to sound like this or want to sound like that. Whatever we liked on the CD, the initial riff, or whatever we liked that we made up then and there. And that’s what we worked on."

BraveWords.com: OK, one more question around guitar soloing – how have you changed over the years? Is this easy stuff, hard stuff? Give me the lay of the land on the guitar soloing on here, the vibe, the direction?

Iommi: "How do you answer that one? Hmmm."

BraveWords.com: Is there anything new you’ve thrown into the stew, any new gear?

Iommi: "Oh yeah, sound-wise, I can answer it. I was using, on this album, I used some Engel amps, which I thought really worked out good. And the same for the soloing. I used me old JD guitar, and the Engel amps, and that was it really there."

(Tony Iommi photos by Mark Gromen)