Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi isn't a fan of Robert Fripp's 'Paranoid' cover

It’s safe to say that Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi isn’t a big fan of Robert Fripp’s recent cover of his iconic Sabbath song ‘Paranoid’.

The King Crimson guitarist Fripp and his wife, musician and actress Toyah Willcox, went viral recently with their “Sunday Lunch” series, thanks to some, um, entertaining performances. Weird might be a more suitable word. While taking on Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’, Willcox rode on an exercise bike while singing the classic metal anthem.

That video gained more than 4.5 million views, a remarkable amount, and was the song that grabbed the internet’s attention but they’ve also been covering some other heavy classics, including songs by Billy Idol, Guns N’ Roses, and Joan Jett, all averaged about 1 million views each.

It was their attempt at ‘Paranoid’ that had Sabbath’s guitarist Iommi aghast though. As per Heavy Consequence, the rock legend seemed both amused and annoyed at the cover: “I think they’ve gone mad, actually. I think this lockdown has drove them mental. Oh dear, yeah — somebody had told me about it; in fact, somebody sent it to me, and I had a look at it. They do a thing now regularly, those two, they do a thing online, where they’re acting up.”

In the video for ‘Paranoid’, Fripp plays guitar while Willcox sings and dances behind bars (is she in prison for crimes against music?). It’s wild, it’s fascinating, and they simply can’t be faulted for their effort.

And it seems like Iommi’s comment was done in good humour, considering he’s been pictured with Fripp before a few years ago. We simply couldn’t have two rock legends being at war with each other: Iommi, of course, is one of the progenitors of heavy metal through Sabbath, while Fripp was in one of the most influential prog-rock bands of all time in King Crimson.