Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi reckons that the band’s dark image was great for getting publicity in their early days - but it could have cost him his life.
In an interview with Classic Rock, Iommi recalled how Sabbath’s heavy music and the references to Satan in their signature song Black Sabbath created a powerful mystique around the band.
“The image was good and bad, really,” Iommi said. “It created this thing, this kind of aura, and people wanted to come and see what we were like.
“So I think in one way it helped us. At one point we weren’t doing any interviews, so nobody knew much about us. I heard stories about people being frightened to meet us!”
Iommi said that he and the band’s bassist Geezer Butler had a keen interest in the occult.
“We were young and learning and trying to experience things,” he said. “So we were really interested in the occult, Geezer and I. Very interested in what it was like on the other side of life.
“I think in those days we were open to a lot of stuff. We tried a Ouija board and frightened each other!”
But as Iommi admitted, this dark image was - almost literally - a double-edged sword.
“With a name like Black Sabbath, we had all sorts of weird people coming to the gigs in America – witches and all sorts,” he said.
“There would be people coming to our hotel with black cloaks on, lighting candles. It was something that grew out of proportion.
“You never know what people will do. You didn’t know what sort of people would be around. Some of those religious weirdos were as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan.
“And the most disturbing thing I ever had was when one person came on stage with a dagger to stab me. Very disturbing to say the least!
“We were playing this open-air show, and when we got to the venue, somebody had painted a cross on a door in red….
“We didn’t think much else of it. But later on we found out this bloke had cut his hand and drawn the cross in his blood.
“He was some religious freak.”
Iommi revealed that he had no idea how much danger he had been in that night.
“During that show, my amps were playing up and I really got pissed off,” he said. “I lost my temper and kicked my stack over and walked off. And as I’m walking off, this bloke’s behind me.
“He’d got past security but somebody managed to jump on him. I didn’t know what was happening. I was still moaning about my gear.
“It was only afterwards that I found out this bloke had a dagger and was trying to bump one of us off!”
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