BLACK SABBATH’s TONY IOMMI Says He Has ‘Four Or Five Hundred’ Unused Riffs

Tony Iommi

In a new interview with Planet RockBLACK SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi was asked if there is a chance of some new music from him being released in the not-too-distant future.

“[There’s] a good chance. I enjoy doing this. I’ve got so much stuff, I just wanna get started on getting it together now,” Iommi responded. “Because my phone, there’s four or five hundred riffs on it. And I’ve gotta get ’em off. It’s getting around to doing it — that’s the thing. It’s just an abundance of all this stuff that I need to… ‘Cause the pandemic put a bit of a block on it, really.

“And I was working it out and the engineer was coming over and we were getting through some things. But then when that happened and you couldn’t have anybody in the house or in the studio, it put the kibosh on that for a bit. And then I started getting involved in other stuff. And it’s just kicking back on again. I’ve gotta get back into getting these things down properly.”

After Jones pointed out to Iommi that METALLICA guitarist Kirk Hammett lost a phone with more than 300 pieces of music on it during the creative process for the band’s latest studio album, Hardwired… To Self-DestructTony said: “I heard that. That must be awful. Somebody will nick my phone now. [Laughs] It’s on my other phone. [Laughs]”