Former Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has opened up about a time he set upon a journalist for writing some ‘terrible’ things about his band.
Back in February of 1970, Black Sabbath released their self-titled debut, effectively giving birth to the genre of heavy metal in the process. However, as Tony Iommi has recalled, the reception of this new genre was in no way universally positive to begin with.
Being interviewed by Chris Phipps at the Whitley Bay Film Festival back in August (via Ultimate-Guitar), Tony Iommi noted just how much the press hated Black Sabbath back in the day.
“We always classed ourselves as heavy rock,” Iommi began. “I was doing an interview, and they said, ‘You’re playing heavy metal.’ ‘Heavy metal? What’s that?’ And they said, ‘That’s what you play.'”
“We’d never admit to being heavy metal, we were always heavy rock. And at the end, we gave in. Because, you know, everybody called it heavy metal. So alright, we’re heavy metal.”
Speaking in regards to how the band were often derided by the press, Iommi also recalled the time a journalist negatively reviewed a gig they never actually played. “He’d done us a terrible review, but the thing was – we canceled the gig,” he explained.
“We didn’t play. He reviewed the show that we never played. So he didn’t like us.”
Love Eminem?
Get the latest Eminem news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
However, one of the most shocking moments of the interview came from Tony Iommi’s recollection of the time he beat up music journalist Allan Jones.
“I had a problem with a guy from the Melody Maker many years ago,” Iommi began. “He came to my house to do an interview. I picked him up at the station – and I picked him up in a Lamborghini – and he came back to the house. And he was treated well.”
“Anyway, then he left, after the interview. And the interview was awful. He slagged us, terrible. And it was a personal thing. It wasn’t the music, it was just really not nice. And I saw him again at a gig. And basically, I beat him up.”
“And then, of course, nobody would interview us,” he explained. “I remember we were in America… Of course, it got to America about what happened. And we’re doing all these interviews on the phone.”
“And I’m going, ‘What’s happened? They don’t really like face-to-face interviews?’ And they’re going ‘Well, they heard about the journalist in England.'”
Back in 2005, the journalist at the heart of it all, Allan Jones, recalled just what went down between him and Iommi following the notorious interview (which saw him note that Black Sabbath “looked like Mott the Hoople groupies masquerading as gay Cossacks”).
In a story told to the Press Gazzette, Jones noted how he interviewed Iommi at his “stately pile”, where the guitarist possessed a horse’s carcass, and spoke of how “God and the devil might controversially be the same person”.
“I came back and wrote this up exactly as it was,” Jones noted. “I later got a message from Tony Iommi saying if he saw me again he’d cut my head off and feed it to his dog.”
“One day, while I was checking into a hotel in Glasgow, I felt this vice-like grip on my bicep that nearly broke my arm and I turned and there was Tony Iommi. He said: ‘You’re Allan Jones, intcha? I’ve got a bone to pick with you.'”
“He dragged me across the floor of the hotel and out into the car park and said: ‘Right, put ’em up’,” Jones explained.
“I tried very hard to say it was all water under the bridge but he wasn’t persuaded. He was taking off his Rolex and wrapping it around his knuckles and I thought: ‘Aw no’, and he just split my lip. I must’ve lost about three gallons of blood. Fortunately two of his roadies dragged him off.”
While we can’t speculate about what happened between the pair after this incident, we’d like to assume that Tony Iommi and Allan Jones have since buried the hatchet.
Check out Black Sabbath’s ‘Sweet Leaf’:
