Iron Man (35 page)

We got a rehearsal room for one or two days in Phoenix, where Rob lived, and we went through a new set to play on this show. We did some Ronnie-era songs and Rob even suggested doing some of the Tony Martin stuff. We also rehearsed some of the old Sabbath songs that we knew Ozzy would never do, like ‘Symptom Of The Universe'. Rob still had the range to be able to do that. In the end we had a tight set of eleven songs. It was one after the other, bang, bang, bang.

We had managed to find a singer for the Costa Mesa gigs, but then somebody else threw a spanner in the works. Two nights before it was all supposed to happen, I suddenly found myself in jail.

We had finished a gig in Sacramento. I came off stage, got into the tour bus and somebody knocked on the door: ‘Is Mr Iommi on board?'

‘Who wants to know?'

‘We're with the District Attorney's office and we've got a warrant for his arrest.'

I thought, oh, no! What the fuck is this about?

They said: ‘Can we come on board and take Mr Iommi?'

‘No.'

‘Well, we can either come on board now, or keep the bus here until the proper papers arrive and come on board then and take him.'

So I said: ‘Just let them come on.'

My ex-wife Melinda had tried to do me for child support. She had claimed that I wasn't paying it. Instead of checking that first, they just came out to arrest me. You're immediately guilty until you've proven your innocence. They pulled cars behind and in front of the bus and that was it. They took me off the bus and said: ‘We're not going to handcuff you now. We'll take you in a car and we'll go out around a corner where there're no fans.'

As soon as we were out of view they handcuffed me and put chains on my legs. I was sitting in the back of this car and we travelled for an hour to Modesto. That's where Melinda lived, so that's where they were going to put me in jail. I was wondering what the hell was going on.

They put me in the holding cell with a guy with no shirt on, who kept saying: ‘You don't want to be in this jail, man, they'll kill you.'

I was in Modesto County Jail all night and I couldn't sleep because of the noise and the worry. I probably lost about ten pounds overnight. I kept thinking, does anybody even know I'm in here? I'm very grateful to Gloria Butler, because she kept phoning the cops up every fifteen minutes, saying: ‘Don't put him in a cell with anybody else, you've got to put him on his own!'

Eventually they did, they put me in a cell by myself. The guy next door to me was convinced I had come to kill him. He said: ‘I know you want to kill me, but I'm going to get you in the shower. I know Satan sent you!'

Fucking hell.

It was a Thursday night and they wanted bail money the next day, otherwise I would be in there over the weekend, until
Monday. I had to get out to do a gig in Oakland the next night and the Costa Mesa thing with Ozzy the day after. They set bail at $75,000, an enormous sum of money because not paying child support was a big thing there. I had paid, it was all rubbish, but I didn't have a leg to stand on. Eventually a lawyer came in with a briefcase with seventy-five grand in cash. Gloria had phoned Ralph Baker and Ernest Chapman and they had provided the money.

I had to go in front of the judge all shackled and I felt as if I had committed a murder. As soon as I entered the jail, it got around like wildfire. A guy who was serving the coffee to everybody, through the bars in tin mugs, knew who I was and so pretty soon all the prisoners knew. The guards were walking me down to this chamber to see the judge and there were all these guys in these cells that I passed, going: ‘Hey! Tony! What's up!'

The governor of the jail, in his suit and tie, said: ‘I'm telling you now: we don't want a John Lennon incident here. We are going to walk on each side of you, you'll have one person behind you and one person in front of you, and you keep up pace with them.'

It was unreal. Me with my handcuffs on and with these shackles around my legs, just trying to walk, and in the meantime all these kids shouting all this stuff.

Unbelievable.

It was on the front page of the papers of course: ‘Arrested!'

I got out on bail but they took my passport off me, as I wasn't allowed to leave America. The lawyer recommended I get out of California. He said: ‘Go somewhere nice and just sit tight.'

So after doing Costa Mesa I went to Florida, as far away from California as possible without leaving the country. But I developed a complex about going out in the streets. Every time I saw a policeman, I felt guilty.

‘Where's your passport?'

‘I haven't got it. They took it off me.'

All I did was sit tight and keep in contact with the lawyer. That set me back a bit, as he was expensive, a top guy coming to get me out. Eventually it all got sorted out and I got my passport back and I went home. But I don't think I ever got the $75,000 back.

It was a right mess, that whole thing.

They got me out of jail in time to do the show that night in Oakland. It was Friday the 13th and it would be Ronnie's last gig with us. We broke up after that. It never actually came to a ‘That's it!' We just parted company. Ronnie refused to do the Costa Mesa gig and said: ‘If you go and do it, you'll be doing it without me.'

Those were the terms under which we did it, and so we did it.

The first of the two Costa Mesa nights, Rob was nervous. He walked on stage way too early and he started the song too early as well. It's bloody tough to learn somebody else's songs that quick, and then to go on and actually do them with the band, but Rob did great. He really is a great professional.

The second and last night we did the thing with Ozzy. We came off stage after our set with Rob, and then later we came on again, me and Geezer and Bill Ward, who'd joined us for the occasion as well, and we did ‘Black Sabbath', ‘Fairies Wear Boots', ‘Iron Man' and ‘Paranoid' with Ozzy. Doing those few songs together brought back a nice vibe and the crowd was great. They were in awe; they couldn't believe we were on stage together after all these years. It was a great gig.

Of course after that there were rumours all over the place about the old line-up getting together again. Everybody assumed, oh, they'll probably do it. Well, it may have come up, but we didn't do anything at all about it at that time. It was a great thing to do, but after the show we were left with nothing. We had a big finale and that was it. We didn't have a band any more.

I sat in Florida for six weeks, waiting for my passport, dying to go home.

I returned home and my first thought was to get a band together again. We auditioned some British drummers, but none of them worked out. At a certain point Bobby Rondinelli, who had played with Rainbow, called me. He wanted to do it. I suppose it's the old thing: if you don't call, you don't get anywhere. Fair dues to him, he got in touch and it got him the job. He flew over and as soon as he started playing, that was it. He was a similar drummer to Vinny, very precise. He fitted in personality-wise as well.

We didn't look around for other singers, we simply asked Tony Martin back again. He got screwed around so many times by us really, but he was good enough to hang in there. As soon as Bobby came in we started writing the songs for our next album,
Cross Purposes
. So it was me, Tony, Geezer, Bobby and Geoff, and it went really well. We finished writing the new songs in the summer of 1993.

Leif Mases helping us out with ‘Time Machine' for the
Wayne's World
soundtrack had been a good experience, so this time we asked him to produce the whole of
Cross Purposes
. He was good to work with and the recording went smoothly. Songs like ‘Virtual Death', a heavy, powerful riff, and ‘The Hand That Rocks The
Cradle' were joint efforts between me and Geezer, who came up with more and more ideas. And ‘Cardinal Sin' was a song about a Catholic priest from Ireland, who hid his love child for twenty-one years. That would be a very topical song now, with all the stuff that's been going on quite recently.

‘Evil Eye' was a track we were working on when Van Halen were playing the NEC in Birmingham. Eddie got in touch with me and I said: ‘We're rehearsing. We're writing a new album.'

He wanted to get together, so I picked him up from the hotel in Birmingham and we drove down to Henley-in-Arden where we rehearsed. We got him a guitar from the music shop, one of his models, had a jam and he played on ‘Evil Eye'. I played the riff and he played a great solo over it. Unfortunately we didn't record it properly on our little tape player so I never got a chance to hear it!

That was a funny day. Eddie said: ‘Don't you want any beers? Can I pick some beers up?'

I couldn't drink because I had to drive him back to the hotel, but we picked up a case of beer, got to the rehearsal place and he was legless by the time we left. But it was great to see him, and it was great he came over to have a play. Having a jam with Eddie and letting go a bit, it gave everybody a boost.

The album was released in the beginning of 1994. In the sleeve notes I gave a big thanks to ‘all at the Modesto County Jail for the kind hospitality and making me realize that there's no place like home'.

Even though
Cross Purposes
wasn't a huge seller, it did all right. For once I.R.S. were getting behind it; they were even doing advertisements for it on MTV. It was with renewed confidence that we embarked on another world tour.

Motörhead supported us in America. Their singer, Lemmy, is a real character.

Of course, there's no food on their rider at all, only booze. You walk past their dressing room and there's nothing to eat, but there
is all this wine and Jack Daniel's and beer. They are the epitome of rock 'n' roll. It just goes on and on and on with them. I'll never forget seeing their guitar player, Phil Campbell, at the side of the stage once. He threw up, and the next minute he was on stage, playing away. Cor blimey, how do they do that? How do they cope with that? Their bodies must be indestructible.

Lemmy is probably going to die on stage. I certainly don't see him settling down in some old people's home. He used to go on their tour bus and he'd get off in the same clothes the next day, on stage as well, come off . . . Motörhead, they just live like gypsies really.

One funny story I heard about Lemmy: he was playing away and he said to his monitor guy: ‘Can you hear this horrible sound coming out of my monitors?'

The bloke said: ‘No.'

And Lemmy went: ‘Neither can I. Turn me up!'

The last tour we did with Dio, we had them on one of the shows with us. Lemmy came up to me and said: ‘How are you enjoying the tour?'

I said: ‘Oh, I really like it. It's great that we've all known each other so long and we're all around the same age.'

And he said: ‘Yeah, and we all know the same dead people as well.'

I was thinking, he's hit it on the head. Blimey, he's right!

Tony Martin had a fabulous voice, but we were always on to him about his performance. He was very amateurish as far as that was concerned. Overnight he went from working only local little venues in Birmingham to big stages everywhere. It was a difficult position to be in, to have to front a band that everybody knows from great performers like Ozzy and Ronnie. It was a bit much for him and, just like Ray Gillen when he joined us, Tony got carried away with it. His head got a bit bigger. We were playing in Europe somewhere and Tony had this portable video player. He was at the
bar of the hotel showing these people a video of himself performing with us: ‘Look, that's me up there!'

Very unprofessional: you just don't do stuff like that. Albert Chapman, who was managing him at the time, was livid. He said: ‘Put that fucking thing away!'

And then he suddenly started going under the name of Tony ‘Cat' Martin. Where did this ‘Cat' come from all of a sudden? He did these things that were just off the wall.

One time in America during the Cross Purposes tour, his lack of stage presence or star quality, or whatever you want to call it, became painfully clear. Right in the middle of the show Tony decided to run along the audience between the stage and the barriers holding the people back in the front. He jumped off the stage to start his run and this security guy grabbed him and tossed him out because he thought he was a fan.

‘But I'm the singer!'

‘Yeah, right.'

Things like that would never happen to Ozzy or Ronnie. But you couldn't complain about Tony's voice. That was just great. He'd get on and do the job, and he never missed a show. Tony was a nice guy as well and he stuck with it for ten years.

In April and May we did the UK and Europe with Cathedral and Godspeed. Those two bands travelled together, but they were always fighting. It got worse as the tour went on. You'd see them first with sticking plaster here and there, and next you'd see the bandages come out and one had his arm in a sling. Really peculiar.

In April our gig at the Hammersmith Odeon was recorded and filmed for a video and CD package called
Cross Purposes Live
, which was released about a year later. I once heard somebody describe it as the most underpromoted release of all time. That's probably very true, because even I can only vaguely remember it being released.

The final European show turned out to be Bobby Rondinelli's
last gig, because we finished the tour again with a couple of shows in South America and I was talking to Bill and I said: ‘We're doing South America next.'

He went: ‘I'd love to play South America!'