Source: Blabbermouth
Corbin Reiff of the Seattle Weekly recently conducted an interview with legendaryBLACK SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Seattle Weekly: [BLACK SABBATHsinger] Ozzy [Osbourne] has said that a lot of the songs on the [“13”] album were arranged in a manner that would be conducive to playing live. Do you agree with him in that regard?
Iommi: Yes, absolutely. When we spoke with [producer] Rick Rubin, we talked aboutOzzysinging more in his range and trying to sing more in a lower register like on the early albums. Like on “Black Sabbath”,Ozzysang more in his range in a lower tone and that’s what we wanted to get back to with this album so that we could do them live onstage.
Seattle Weekly: In your opinion, how are the new songs stacking up against some of your older classic material and how does it feel to bring something new into the set?
Iommi: They are fitting in really well with the old material and it is really great to be able to do these songs. We’ve got a big catalog of the old stuff and we’ve sort of gotten locked into doing so many of them and certain ones Ozzy couldn’t do because they were so high —“Hole in the Sky”and things like that. We’re also throwing some older ones in there that we haven’t played since 1970, so it’s been quite good.
Seattle Weekly: Last year you were diagnosed with lymphoma, which has been successfully treated. How are you holding up health-wise currently and what sorts of accommodations are being made with your health in mind?
Iommi: It’s early days, but I’m all right at the moment. Our first couple of shows I got really tired when we were through. Of course, we’ve also been playing out in the open air, and with the heat, I’ve been drenched, so it’s been a bit of a jump in the deep end for me. But yeah, I’m holding up all right, I hope. We have had to work the tour around my treatments because I can’t go out indefinitely now. I have to do two months or seven weeks and then go back to England for treatment. That knocks me about for ten days or so, then I start feeling better, then it’s on to the next leg.
Read the entire interview atSeattle Weekly.