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With our Black Sabbath – The Ballet performances underway, here we revisit a conversation with Tony Iommi, co-founder and band member of Black Sabbath. ClassicRock's Dave Ling interviewed Tony earlier this year, where he shared his thoughts on the ballet and initial reaction to its creation.
On paper, the two forces couldn’t be any more different. At one extreme, Black Sabbath: hairy, earthy and noisy, the volume-charged progenitors of hard rock and heavy metal. And at t’other, Birmingham Royal Ballet: sophisticated, elegant, refined and the very definition of gracefulness. They simply shouldn’t go together, but amazingly they do.
Just like the rest of the world, when informed of plans to create a ballet based around the music of his band and its story, Tony Iommi was deeply sceptical. However, he was inquisitive enough to attend a meeting with BRB’s Director, Carlos Acosta, to sound out the proposal.
‘I don’t think of myself as a man of culture,’ admits the 77-year-old, Sabbath’s co-founder, lead guitarist and primary songwriter. ‘I’d never attended a ballet and I knew absolutely nothing about it. I had no inkling of how it could be pulled off but, goodness me, Carlos was so driven to make it happen, and that’s exactly what he did.
‘Now I’m absolutely hooked,’ Iommi continues. ‘I love it. Birmingham Royal Ballet lets me know when they’ve got something on, and I go along.’
Birmingham’s own Black Sabbath was formed in 1968 and, over the next glorious decade, the four-piece band recorded eight albums that made them stars across the world.
Meanwhile, in Havana, Cuba, Carlos Acosta was among the millions to fall under the band’s spell. When Iommi and Acosta first met there was a sense of mutual trust. Tony agreed that with the blessing of singer Ozzy Osbourne, bassist Terry ‘Geezer’ Butler and drummer Bill Ward, the possibility could be explored. Things further solidified in the summer of 2022 when Iommi, by then the project’s Music Consultant, sat down with the composer and orchestral expert, Christopher Austin.
‘It was an exciting process,’ Iommi enthuses. ‘The songs were presented to me. I wasn’t part of the selection process but I was really impressed by the choices that had been made.’
Despite Sabbath’s thunderous music, Iommi had always hankered after the band’s formulating some sort of symphonic project. It never happened, and the band ceased touring in 2017.
The ballet allowed him to indulge those ambitions in a slightly different way, and the guitarist talks fondly of the ‘softened’ new arrangements, including the rather wonderful treatment of the 1970 classic Iron Man, that feature in the production. ‘They’re really, really good,’ he smiles.
As well as the nine songs in the show, Black Sabbath – The Ballet tells the band’s tale in the form of interpretative dance, including Iommi losing the tips of the fingers of his right hand – the one used on the fret of a guitar – in an industrial accident at the age of 17.
‘The writers and production team take the credit for setting the Black Sabbath story to music,’ Tony comments, adding: ‘You really must see the ballet to understand just how well it has been done’.
On the production’s opening night, 23 September 2023, and with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Electric Light Orchestra’s Bev Bevan in the crowd, Iommi put his money where his mouth was by joining the cast onstage, playing guitar to the band’s classic song Paranoid.
‘It was a unique experience – so, so different from anything I’m used to,’ he recalls. ‘I play in front of a wall of amplifiers, but they wanted me to use in-ear monitors to hear myself. We pulled it off and it was great, but it was the dancers who did all of the work.’
Rave reviews and ‘full house’ signs followed, and in the wake of performances in Norfolk Virginia and Washington DC’s Kennedy Center over the summer, Black Sabbath – The Ballet tours across the UK this autumn.
It has become arguably the most popular production in BRB’s history, bringing Carlos Acosta the Outstanding Creative Contribution award at the National Dance Awards in 2024. Pirouettes and Paranoid do belong together!
‘I’m amazed at the way Black Sabbath – The Ballet has been accepted,’ Iommi marvels. ‘It’s been a huge success. Carlos really deserved his award.’
For Iommi, and for Sabbath, Black Sabbath – The Ballet represents another form of validation from the city that birthed them. Black Sabbath embraced by the establishment…whatever next?
‘We’ve got the Black Sabbath bridge and Ozzy has a bull named after him,’ grins Iommi, referring to the mechanical ‘creature’ from Birmingham’s 2022 Commonwealth Games, now located in the city’s New Street Station. ‘We – Sabbath – also have our farewell gig at Villa Park on 5 July. I’m waiting to become the Mayor now.’
Funnier things have happened…
