BLACK SABBATH bassist Geezer Butler recently spoke to Time Out Dubai about the possibility of the band releasing another studio album to follow last year's reunion CD, "13". "We've still got four tracks left over from ['13'], so maybe we'll fill in the other four or five tracks and put out another album. If it's right. We wouldn't do it just for the sake of it, or the money or whatever. But yeah, maybe."
Butler also talked about SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2012. "Tony is probably healthier than everybody else now, after all the stuff they've done to him," he said. "He's really done well, he's definitely in remission now."
Regarding founding BLACK SABBATH drummer Bill Ward, who was originally announced as part of the band's reunion album and tour in late 2011, but bowed out in early 2012 over a contract dispute, Butler said: "We started off with Bill Ward this time around and it just didn't happen… To be blatantly honest, he just couldn't do it anymore. He was thinking that we could take, like, ten years to do the album, whereas we knew we only had so long to do it and get out on tour, while you're still good at what you do. Bill was a bit unfit, and ironically in hospital with intestinal problems, so he'd have had to leave the tour anyway if we'd gone out with him."
He added: "I love Bill — we all love Bill. It's a horrible thing he couldn't complete [the album]. SABBATH is SABBATH, it's the four of us. We were almost going to call the album '75 Percent' at one time [laughs], because that's what it felt like. Especially when [RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE's] Brad Wilk came in drumming — that was [producer] Rick Rubin's idea to bring him in, and we thought if we're bringing a brand new drummer, why can't we have Bill? But Rick Rubin said, 'We can't be in the studio forever waiting for Bill to get it right.'"
Butler was also full of praise for producer Rick Rubin, calling their working relationship "incredible — it's just like having a fifth member." He added: "Tony came out with tons and tons of riffs, we picked out what we liked, about 40 riffs that Tony had that we thought were worth doing. And then Rick came in and narrowed that down to 14 songs, and it's just like having someone who sees you from the outside after all these years. He didn't want us to come out with a typical heavy metal album. He said ‘when you started there was no such thing as heavy metal, so forget what's come after you, and go back to what you were before that, before METALLICA and all those bands, and just do what you did back then, that experience, play live in the studio as if you were onstage in a little club,' and that's what we did."
BLACK SABBATH is scheduled to end the touring cycle for "13" with a massive July 4 gig at London's Hyde Park, and according to Iommi, it could be the last time SABBATH ever plays live. Iommi told Metal Hammer, "It could be the last ever SABBATH show. I don't want it to be, but there's nothing really planned touring-wise after that show, so for all we know that could be it, really."
Iommi admitted that even if SABBATH does tour again, he does not want to travel as extensively as the legendary group did in the past year. He explained, "To be honest, I don't want to be touring to this extent too much longer, because it makes me feel so bad."
Iommi had to return home for treatments every six weeks during most of the "13" tour, but said that it's now a matter of waiting to see whether the disease comes out of remission. He revealed, "I'm at a stage now where I have no support, which means I have to see whether the cancer is coming back or if it's still there or what. I just don't know. It's a bit of a worry. After we finish this tour, I'll go in and have scan, so we'll see what that shows up."
"13", the first SABBATH album to feature Butler, Iommi and singer Ozzy Osbourne in 35 years, debuted at No. 1 on the U.S. and U.K. album charts last year.
The band has not hinted if it will make another studio album, and Ozzy told The Pulse Of Radio last year that he was fine with the possibility of "13" being its last one. "For whatever reason, if we don't do another studio album, this is where I would have liked to have been at the end of SABBATH, my days with SABBATH," he said. "But life has a funny way of twisting things around, and if we do do anothe
BLACK SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi has told Metal Hammer magazine that the band's headlining appearance at the Barclaycard British Summer Time festival at London's Hyde Park may turn out to be the legendary heavy metal group's final gig.
The July 4 event will see SABBATH perform alongside SOUNDGARDEN, FAITH NO MORE, MOTÖRHEAD and SOULFLY on the festival's main stage.
"It could be the last ever SABBATH show," Iommi told Metal Hammer. "I don't want it to be, but there's nothing really planned touring-wise after that show, so for all we know that could be it, really. To be honest, I don't want to be touring to this extent too much longer, because it makes me feel so bad."
Iommi has had to go back to England every six weeks for treatment ever since being diagnosed with lymphoma in 2012, forcing him and SABBATH to work around both the treatments and the recovery time needed afterward.
"I'm at a stage now where I have no support, which means I have to see whether the cancer is coming back or if it's still there or what," he said. "I just don't know. It's a bit of a worry. After we finish this tour, I'll go in and have scan, so we'll see what that shows up."
"But the show at Hyde Park will a great way to end the European tour," he added. "It has a really great bill, with a really good mix of people. We haven't made any specific plans as the gig is a way off yet, but I think it'll be special."
Last year, Iommi said that his ongoing treatments and their physical side effects could severely restrict SABBATH's activities, explaining, "I can't commit to doing another two years or anything like that. I have to play it as it comes now."
Singer Ozzy Osbourne told The Pulse Of Radio that Iommi never let his treatments slow him down during the making of the recent SABBATH album, "13". "My hat goes off to him 'cause he really is Iron Man," he said. "I mean, that chemotherapy knocks you sideways, you know. I mean, when my wife had cancer a few years back, she was having three chemo things a month and it would knock the life out of — literally every time she'd have a treatment, she'd have a seizure. It's scary stuff. But he came down, plugged in and carried on. He's my hero, I swear to God he is."
"13", the first SABBATH release in 35 years to feature Iommi, Osbourne and Geezer Butler playing together, was released in June 2013 and landed the band its first-ever No. 1 album in the U.S., also topping the chart in the U.K. and a number of other countries.
The band also earned three 2014 Grammy Award nominations, for "Best Rock Album" for "13", plus "Best Metal Performance" and "Best Rock Song" for "God Is Dead?"
The making of "13" was marked by several dramatic events, including drummer Bill Ward's withdrawal from the project over a contractual dispute.
Butler told Revolver that he started writing a song for "13", called "Hanging By A Thread", that was inspired by Iommi's illness. He explained, "It was very much about dying, about giving your last breath and passing your spirit on." But the track didn't make it onto the album because, Butler said, "We never came up with the finished thing."
SABBATH completed a 10-date North American run on April 26 in Los Angeles.
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PAPA ROACH has spent the last few months recording its eighth album at The Hideout Recording Studio, owned and operated by Kevin Churko (OZZY OSBOURNE, FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH, IN THIS MOMENT). Speaking to Loudwire at yesterday's (Wednesday, April 23) Revolver Golden Gods awards show in Los Angeles, PAPA ROACH singer Jacoby Shaddix said: "[We've been] in the studio working with the one and the only Kevin and Kane Churko, father-and-son production combo, and we are making the sickest, most illest P-ROACH record to date, guaranteed. It's fiery, that's how I explain it. It's fiery. It's like I'm holding a light orb in my hand and when I put it to the sky, I take off like a superhero, if that makes any sense. It's for real."
He continued: "We've got a song called 'Just As Broken As Me' that's about forgiveness, when you don't want to forgive but you know it's the best thing to do. We have a song called 'Never Have To Say Goodbye'. It's about a really good friend of mine who passed away the last couple of years. It's just my song … I never got to say my piece, and he was someone who really helped me when I was down and out and helped me clean my life up and then I went out there and lived that wicked life again, and when I was out there, he passed away. I've always had a hole in my heart from that so I decided to write a song about that.
"What else? I just finished another song called 'Face Everything and Rise', which is just the P-ROACH mode of operation, you know. That's what I'm all about. It's about stepping up to your problems and connecting with my God and walking through those things."
Shaddix also spoke about his knack for putting himself out there for the listeners without holding back. "That's just my spirit, man," he explained. "The more that I put myself out there 100 percent and fully, the more that I find it humanizes me, makes me real and connects me with the fans of PAPA ROACH. That's the most important thing and that's what our fans love about what we do and our band. I'll continue to do that. The more I shed the shell and be honest, it's just great."
Back in February, Shaddix spoke in an online chat about another new song, "Gravity" that "Jerry [Horton, guitar] was working on, and we all heard it, and we were just, like, 'This just sounds cool," he said. "It just sounds like the sound of us driving down this desert road.' And it just sounded like the environment that we were in."
Shaddix further explained what the song "Gravity" was about. He said, "'Gravity' is about what are the things in the world that keep pulling you back to reality or back down to the ground or back down to earth or back down to who you really are. And so that's a great track. And for me, that was just something really different. I was, like, Jerry wrote the song, and I started lyricizing on it, and I was, like, 'This song seems like it would be cool if I rapped on it.' Everybody was, kind of, 'Huh?! Really?' And then I did it. And I remember I was just getting really painfully honest about some of the dark moments in my life that I never spoke about. I think that that's when I really expose myself in the most vulnerable ways and step out of my comfort zone and really put myself out there, like, 'You guys are gonna know this about me now?' That's when I think the best art is created . . . when you're pulled the furthest out of your comfort zone. And that's why PAPA ROACH records are so diverse."
Shaddix and his wife, Kelly, welcomed a baby boy, Brixton Gabriel Shaddix, last summer.
During the making of PA
Greg Prato of Songfacts recently conducted an interview with legendary guitarist Michael Schenker. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Songfacts: How do you find that you write your best songs?
Michael: I just do it the same way over and over. I love to play. I play and discover on a regular basis, so when I bump into a great piece of something that I think, "Wow, I should capture that" — and it's usually just 5 seconds, 10 seconds long — I'll put it on the cassette recorder in its raw form and I'll just leave it there. When it's time to make a new record, I listen to what I have selected, and then that inspires me to write the additional parts to it. So I never really know what the song is going to be until the album's finished. On this album in particular, I was looking for more of a balance: Not too many mid tempos, but enough fast songs and many different elements in it that keep it going and keep it interesting. It's like putting a puzzle together and never really knowing what comes out at the end.
Songfacts: How did the songwriting work in the band UFO? Was it more of a collaboration?
Michael: Well, when I joined UFO, they were a psychedelic band. They were playing very different music. But I was attracted to them being British, since that's where the music that I fell in love with came from: [LED] ZEPPELIN, BLACK SABBATH and Johnny Winter. Well, Johnny Winter was American, but a lot of the music that we were listening to at that point in time when I was 15 years old was coming from there. When I toured with UFO and SCORPIONS, the guitarist from UFO lost his passport, so in order to continue the tour, I had to play for both bands. That was when I was 16 years old. I opened up with the Scorpions and then I played with UFO for a couple of days. And that's when they asked me to join them. I always told the SCORPIONS that if a British band would ever ask me, I would go just to get to a country where there was the interest for rock and roll. In Germany, it was dead. It was disco music and it wasn't very interesting what I was doing. So I was more than happy to go over there. They invited me over and I took the offer. When I got there I just laid down a riff and another one and another one, and Phil [Mogg] did his vocals to it and it just became a totally different band based on the pieces that I gave them, which every song was built on. I wrote that way right from the beginning, and it's still how I write today. But because I had just joined them, we were more in the mode of making a record, touring, making a record, touring, making a record, touring. Because we were doing everything in the short amount of time, we spent a lot of time at the rehearsal studio. Some very early songs, like "Rock Bottom", were very spontaneous. We were just sitting there looking for an additional song, and when I played "Rock Bottom", the riff, that's when Phil jumped up and said, "That's it! That's it!" So we started putting it together and putting it into form. But in general, I would always come up with some riffs, give it to the singer and he would find something, too. Then we'd go into the rehearsal studio and work on it. That's basically how we used to write.
Songfacts: How close did you come to joining Ozzy Osbourne's band after Randy Rhoads' death?
Michael: That was around '81. Graham Bonnet just came over and we started writing and doing things, and then I get a phone call in the middle of the night from a very devastated Ozzy Osbourne telling me what happened [Rhoads was killed in an airplane accident, on March 19, 1982]. I said, "Okay, it's the middle of the night. I'll let you know, but I have to speak to Peter Mensch" and so on. And then I had to look... I was tempted to do that, but at the same time I was in the middle of doing "Assault Attack" and it was going to be the second album with Cozy Powell. We were getting ready, and I had to look at my situation. Then I heard some crazy stories about Ozzy dragging people across the stage by their hair and stuff like that. And then some other horror stories that didn't sound too good. I was tempted to do that, but something tells me, you know what, Michael, first of all, the SCORPIONS, my own brother, he asked me to play, to help the SCORPIONS and to join them and tour with them. And I couldn't do it because I'm not made for copying people. I love to invent things, to express myself, and so my vision is a different vision. Sometimes you have to battle a little bit with your true vision and temptation. Same with AEROSMITH: It was a good thing it didn't work out, because again, I would have not enjoyed myself. I know that. At the end of the day, I said, "I can't do that." It came to the point when I stretched it for so long that I think Cozy Powell took it over and told them, "He's not going to do it." And that was that. It was a very strange situation.
Read the entire interview a
An exclusive VIP listening party for the Ronnie James Dio tribute album "This Is Your Life" and awards gala was held last night (Monday, March 17) at the Avalon in Hollywood, California. Fans got to hear the entire album two weeks before they could buy it and there were very special live performances by HALESTORM, Corey Taylor (SLIPKNOT, STONE SOUR), Duff McKagan (GUNS N' ROSES, VELVET REVOLVER, DUFF MCKAGAN'S LOADED, WALKING PAPERS), Scott Ian (ANTHRAX), Tim "Ripper" Owens (JUDAS PRIEST, YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, ICED EARTH, DIO DISCIPLES), Oni Logan (LYNCH MOB, DIO DISCIPLES), Jimmy Bain (DIO, LAST IN LINE, RAINBOW), Rowan Robertson (DIO), Brian Tichy (OZZY OSBOURNE, WHITESNAKE) and many other special surprise guests all performing their renditions of Ronnie's songs. There were also awards presented during the evening, including an award to "The Metal God" Rob Halford of JUDAS PRIEST.
Fan-filmed video footage of last night's event can be seen below.
Ronnie James Dio is one of the most beloved figures in rock history. His gifts, both as a singer and songwriter, are instantly recognizable, whether he was with RAINBOW, BLACK SABBATH, HEAVEN & HELL, or leading DIO. Sadly, Dio lost his battle with stomach cancer in 2010 but his towering voice and legacy live on.
To celebrate one of rock's most powerful voices, an all-star group of his friends and fans recorded 13 of their favorite tracks for a tribute album, 100% of proceeds from which will go to the Ronnie James Dio Stand Up And Shout Cancer Fund. Produced by his longtime manager and wife Wendy Dio, the album includes contributions by such metal heavyweights as METALLICA, MOTÖRHEAD, SCORPIONS, ANTHRAX, and Rob Halford, as well as appearances by many of the musicians who performed with Dio over the years.
"This Is Your Life" will be available from Rhino on April 1. A digital version will also be available.
Although the songs featured on the album touch on the different eras of Dio's career, several spotlight his time with RAINBOW, including METALLICA's epic, nine-minute "Ronnie Rising Medley", which combines the RAINBOW songs "A Light In The Black", "Tarot Woman", "Stargazer" and "Kill The King". SCORPIONS add a scorching take on "Temple Of The King" while MOTÖRHEAD is joined by Biff Byford from SAXON on "Starstruck". Rob Halford teams with frequent Dio collaborators Vinny Appice, Doug Aldrich, Jeff Pilson, and Scott Warren for "Man On The Silver Mountain". The final lineup of Dio's solo band — Simon Wright, Craig Goldy, Rudy Sarzo and Scott Warren — are joined by Glenn Hughes (DEEP PURPLE, BLACK SABBATH) for "Catch The Rainbow", a track from RAINBOW's 1975 debut.
ANTHRAX and ADRENALINE MOB honor Dio's memorable stint with BLACK SABBATH with their takes on "Neon Knights" and "The Mob Rules", respectively, as does a group, led by Oni Logan on vocals along with Jimmy Bain, Rowan Robertson, and Brian Tichy, which performs "I" from "Dehumanizer".
"This Is Your Life" also includes songs from Dio's back-to-back platinum albums "Holy Diver" (1983) and "The Last In Line" (1984), with DORO's take on "Egypt (The Chains Are On)", HALESTORM tackling "Straight Through The Heart", Corey Taylor (STONE SOUR, SLIPKNOT) covering the classic "Rainbow In The Dark" and TENACIOUS D (Jack Black and Kyle Gass) putting their signature spin on "The Last In Line". KILLSWITCH ENGAGE's cover of "Holy Diver", a hit in its own right when released in 2006, is also included here.
Fittingly, Ronnie James Dio provides the finale (and the album's title) with his moving performance of "This Is Your Life". Originally released on "Angry Machines" (1996), the song's lyrics explore mortality and are backed by a stark and beautiful arrangement that features Dio accompanied only by his longtime keyboardist Scott Warren on piano. The song serves as a poignant reminder that we will never hear a voice like Dio's again.
"I'm letting them pick what songs they wanna do in the way they wanna do it," Wendy told Artisan News in 2011.
"We reached out to Wendy Dio about wanting to be a part of the Dio tribute that's getting put together," METALLICA singer James Hetfield told U.K.'s Metal Hammer magazine. "We're very honored to be a part of that, and to be a part of a celebration of Ronnie's life and his great contribution, man."
In an interview with Guitar International, former ANTHRAX guitarist Rob Caggiano stated that the band's cover version of "Neon Knights" "came out pretty smoking."
The Ronnie James Dio Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund, co-founded by Wendy Dio, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) charitable fund dedicated to supporting cancer-prevention research, raising awareness and educating the public about the vital importance of early detection and prevention when dealing with this deadly disease.
"This Is Your Life" track listing:
01. "Neon Knights" - ANTHRAX *
02. "The Last In Line" - TENACIOUS D *
03. "The Mob Rules" - ADRENALINE MOB
04. "Rainbow In The Dark" - Corey Taylor, Roy Mayorga, Satchel, Christian Martucci, Jason Christopher *
05. "Straight Through The Heart" - HALESTORM *
06. "Starstruck" - MOTÖRHEAD with Biff Byford *
07. "Temple Of The King" - SCORPIONS *
08. "Egypt (The Chains Are On)" - DORO
09. "Holy Diver" - KILLSWITCH ENGAGE
10. "Catch The Rainbow" - Glenn Hughes, Simon Wright, Craig Goldy, Rudy Sarzo, Scott Warren *
11. "I" - Oni Logan, Jimmy Bain, Rowan Robertson, Brian Tichy *
12. "Man On The Silver Mountain" - Rob Halford, Vinny Appice, Doug Aldrich, Jeff Pilson, Scott Warren *
13. "Ronnie Rising Medley" (featuring "A Light In The Black", "Tarot Woman", "Stargazer", "Kill The King") - METALLICA *
14. "This Is Your Life" - DIO
* Previously unreleased
The Ronnie James Dio Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund is a privately funded 501(c)(3) charity organization which has already raised more than $600,000 in its short history. Monies raised to date have been committed to the cancer research work of the T.J. Martell Foundation for Cancer, AIDS and Leukemia Research and the gastric cancer research unit of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, where Ronnie was treated for gastric cancer during the last six months of his life.
