and offered him a professional gig over in Germany, so Tony decided to quit his job in the factory. He thought he’d made it.
Then it all went wrong.
On Tony’s last day in the workshop, the bloke who was supposed to press and cut the metal before it was welded didn’t show up. So Tony had to do it. I still don’t know exactly what happened—if Tony didn’t know how to use the machine properly, or if it was broken, or whatever—but this fucking massive metal press ended up ripping off the tips of the middle and ring fingers on his right hand. Tony is left handed, so they were his fretboard fingers. It makes me shiver just to think about it, even now. You can’t imagine what a bad scene it must have been, with all the blood and the howling and the scrambling around on the floor trying to find the tips of his fingers, and then Tony being told by the doctors in the emergency room that he’d never be able to play again. He saw dozens of specialists over the next few months, and they all told him the same thing: ‘Son, your days in a rock ’n’ roll band are finished, end of fucking story, find something else to do.’ He must have thought it was all over. It would have been like me getting shot in the throat.
Tony suffered from terrible depression for a long time after the accident. I don’t know how he even got out of bed in the morning. Then, one day, his old shop foreman brought him a record by Django Reinhardt, the Belgian Gypsy jazz guitarist who played all his solos using just two fingers on his fretting hand because he’d burned the others in a fire.
And Tony thought, Well, if old Django can do it, so can I.
At first he tried playing right-handed, but that didn’t work. So he went back to left-handed, trying to play the fretboard with just two fingers, but he didn’t like that, either. Finally he figured out what to do. He made a couple of thimbles for his injured fingers out of a melted-down Fairy Liquid bottle, sanded them down until they were roughly the same size as his old fingertips, and then glued these little leather pads on the ends to improve his grip on the strings. He loosened the strings a bit too, so he wouldn’t have to put so much pressure on them.
Then he just learned to play the guitar again from scratch, even though he had no feeling in two fingers. To this day, I’ve no idea how he does it. Everywhere he goes, he carries around a bag full of homemade thimbles and leather patches, and he always keeps a soldering iron on hand to make adjustments. Every time I see him play, it hits me how much he had to over-come. I have so much awe and respect for Tony Iommi because of that. Also, in a strange way, I suppose the accident helped him, because when he learned to play again he developed a unique style that no one has ever been able to copy. And fucking hell, man, they’ve tried.
After the accident Tony played in a band called the Rest. But his heart wasn’t in it. He thought all the hype about ‘Brumbeat’ was bollocks and he wanted out, so when he was offered an audition with a band called Mythology up in Carlisle, you couldn’t see him for dust.
He even convinced the Rest’s singer to go up there with him. Once the guys in Mythology had heard the two of them in action, they couldn’t sign them up fast enough. Then, a couple of months later, Mythology’s drummer quit. So Tony called up his old mate Bill Ward from Aston, who was only too happy to take the job.
I never went to a Mythology gig, but I’m told they brought the house down wherever they went: they had this dirty, swampy, heavy blues sound, and they’d cover songs by bands like Buffalo Springfield, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers—whose new guitarist at the time was Eric Clapton, who’d just quit the Yardbirds, giving Jimmy Page his big break. It was a classic era for rock ’n’ roll, and it was all going gangbusters for Mythology. The band quickly built a massive following in Cumberland, playing sold-out shows all over the place, supporting acts like Gary Walker, of the Walker Brothers. But then they started to run into trouble with the law. That’s what happened in those days if you had long hair and moustaches and tight leather trousers. From what I heard, the first time they got done was for using the label from a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale in place of a tax disc on their tour van. The next time was a lot more heavy-duty, though, and it finished them off. Their dope dealer—a student from Leeds, I think—got busted. Then the cops drew up a list of the guy’s clients, got a search warrant, and raided Mythology’s flat at Compton House in Carlisle.
It was bad news, man.
All four members of the band were done for possession of marijuana. That might not sound like such a big deal now, but in those days it was fucking horrendous. Not so much because of the punishment—they all pleaded guilty and were fined just fifteen quid each—but because of the stigma. No one would book a band that had been done for drugs, ’cos they thought you were a bad crowd. And no one wanted any trouble with the law, not when they had licences that could be revoked. By the summer of 1968, Mythology’s gigs had dried up to the point where they were all flat broke. They could barely even afford food. Tony and Bill had two choices: give up full-time music and get proper jobs in Carlisle like their bandmates were planning to do; or fuck off back to Aston, where they could live at their folks’ places while they tried to save their careers. They chose Aston, which is how they ended up on my doorstep.
I’ve no idea what I said to Tony outside my house that night to make him change his mind and give me a chance. The fact that I had a PA system probably helped. And maybe he realised that it had been five years since school, and that we’d both grown up a lot since then.
Well, perhaps I hadn’t grown up too much, but at least I knew I never wanted to go back to prison or work in a factory again. I think Tony felt the same way after his drugs bust and his accident at the metalworks. And although his folks made a decent living—they owned a little corner shop on Park Lane—he’d left Birchfield Road with a no-hope future just like mine.
Without music, we were both fucked.
Bill also helped to calm Tony down. He’s the nicest bloke you’ll ever meet, Bill. A phenomenal drummer—as I would soon find out—but also a solid, down-to-earth guy. You could tell that by the way he dressed: he was the anti-Geezer when it came to fashion. If you didn’t know better, you’d think he was living in a cardboard box on the hard shoulder of the M6. In all the time I’ve known him, he’s never changed, either. Years later, I went on Concorde for the first time with Bill. He was late, and I was sitting on board thinking, Where the fuck is he?
Eventually he strolled into the cabin wearing an old man’s over-coat and carrying two Tesco bags full of cans of cider. I looked him up and down and said, ‘Bill, you do know that they provide drinks on Concorde, don’t you? You don’t have to bring your own Tesco cider?’ He replied, ‘Oh, I don’t want to put them to any trouble.’
That’s Bill Ward for you.
After Tony had warmed up a bit, we spent the rest of the night sitting in the back of the van, smoking fags, telling stories about prison and Carlisle and drugs busts and severed fingers and Mr Jones from school and how to slaughter cows with a bolt gun and what blues records we’d been listening to lately. Then we started to plot our next move.
‘Before we do anything else, we’re going to need a name and a bass player,’ said Tony.
‘I don’t know any bass players,’ I said. ‘But I know a bloke called Geezer who plays rhythm guitar.’
Tony and Bill looked at me. Then at each other. ‘Geezer Butler?’ they said in unison.
‘Yeah.’
‘That bloke’s crazy,’ said Bill. ‘Last time I saw him he was off his nut in Midnight City.’
‘That’s because Geezer’s already a rock star in his own head,’ I said. ‘Which is a good thing. And he doesn’t eat meat, so it’ll save us money on the road. And he’s a qualified accountant.’
‘Ozzy’s right.’ Tony nodded. ‘Geezer’s a good bloke.’
‘I’ll go round his house tomorrow and ask him if he wants to do the honours,’ I said. ‘He’ll need some time to learn to play the bass, but how hard can it be, eh? There’s only four fucking strings.’
‘And what about a name?’ said Tony.
The three of us looked at each other.
‘We should all take a couple of days to think about it,’ I said. ‘I dunno about you two, but I’ve got a special place where I go to get ideas for important stuff like this. It’s never failed me yet.’
Forty-eight hours later I blurted out: ‘I’ve got it!’
‘Must have been that dodgy bird you poked the other night,’ said Geezer. ‘Has your whelk turned green yet?’
Tony and Bill snickered into their plates of egg and chips. We were sitting in a greasy spoon caff in Aston. So far, everyone was getting along famously.
‘Very funny, Geezer,’ I said, waving an eggy fork at him. ‘I mean the name for our band.’
The snickering died down.
‘Go on then,’ said Tony.
