When Black Sabbath founder and guitarist Tony Iommi talks, you listen.
The man has probably done 6 million interviews since his music career got started in the '60s, but when he casually mentions stuff like legendary Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham being the best man at his wedding, it's cause for pause.
Iommi, 59, is swinging through Casino del Sol's AVA next Thursday night with Heaven and Hell, which is basically the early '80s version of Black Sabbath: minus an Ozzy Osbourne, adding a Ronnie James Dio on vocals. Rounding out the group is longtime Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Vinny Appice — who played drums on Sabbath records featuring Dio.
Heaven and Hell will mostly be playing songs from the three albums it recorded under the Black Sabbath moniker: 1980's "Heaven And Hell" (from which the band has taken its name), 1981's Mob Rules," and 1992's "Dehumanizer."
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The quartet decided to tour this year after getting together to record some new songs for a retrospective, 2007's "Black Sabbath: The Dio Years."
We caught up with Iommi on a stop in Chicago.
When you guys hired Dio to front Black Sabbath back in the late '70s, how big of an artistic risk did you feel you were taking?
"There wasn't a choice, to be honest, at that time. We got to a situation where we couldn't go on any longer as we were. It was either the band break up or we carry on and Ozzy goes his own way. That's really what happened. Ozzy wasn't into it anymore at that time, so it seemed a good choice to add Ronnie. A different direction vocally. If we had got someone who was too much like Ozzy, everyone would be comparing it."
You're considered one of the founders of metal, which has always had this devoted fan base. What is it about metal that draws people's devotion?
"I think certainly what we're doing is honest music. We're not going on as a glam-show or anything like that. We're going on and playing and we're not doing acrobats on stage and stuff like that. We just go out and play."
When you guys were doing metal back in early days, from what inspiration were you pulling, since there didn't seem to be a lot of bands out there like you guys at the time?
"That was it, there was no sort of inspiration. The inspiration came from ourselves as far as how we felt and where we lived. It was something that came up that we couldn't explain. I can't explain how I came up with those riffs initially, because it was something, at that time, that was very different. Nothing like that existed. We really got a lot of attacks in the early days, 'Oh, what is this music?' because it wasn't liked by a lot of the press in those days. Because we were doing something, (even) we didn't understand what it was. We just liked what we were doing."
Heaven and Hell
With Alice Cooper and Queensrÿche
• When: 6:30 p.m.next Thursday.
• Where: Casino del Sol's AVA, 5655 W. Valencia Road.
• Cost: $40 to $95.
• For more info: Go to casinodelsol.ticketforce.com.
