To us, poor mortals, to receive this would be the one-of-a-kind proposal, but to master Ian Gillan, it was just another day in paradise. Read it here what he told to SiriusXM:
“How it started was – we got drunk together one night. I went for a drink with Tony [Iommi, guitar] and Geezer [Butler, bass], and we ended up under the table. And I can’t remember much more that happened.
“But I got a call from my manager the next day saying, ‘Don’t you think you should call me if you’re gonna make decisions like this?’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He said, ‘Well, apparently you… I just got a call. You agreed to join Sabbath.’ So that’s how it happened.
“I was at a kind of loose end anyway, having just finished with my own band and Purple not really being anything viable at the time. So we set a one-year plan, and it was to do an album and a tour.
“Nobody knew what was gonna happen, so we pitched up and I pitched my tent, literally, at the old manor in Oxfordshire. And we made an album.
“I didn’t see much of ’em. They were night people, so they slept all day and worked all night. I got up in the morning, cooked my breakfast, went to the studio to hear what they had recorded the night before and write a song over it. That’s how the album was made.”
Describing the creative process as “a challenge for me,” Ian added:
“It was a bit like doing [Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1970 rock opera] ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ or singing with Pavarotti; it’s just something completely different.”
“But Tony is such a great writer. You know what to expect with Tony. There’s no multi-directional approach. He is the father of everything that came out of Seattle, I believe. He’s just very direct, and that’s how he evolved from the early days.”
“I found it very easy to sing and write songs with [Tony]. And we had a couple of good ones. There was always a narrative. My favorite song from that album is ‘Trashed,’ which was a true story about a racetrack and too much drink and spinning a car and crashing it and going upside down. It was exciting times.”
