BLACK SABBATH's TONY IOMMI Is Happy To Be Playing Longer Set On HEAVEN AND HELL Tour

Mike Daniel of DallasNews.com recently conducted an interview with legendary heavy metal guitarist Tony Iommi (BLACK SABBATH, HEAVEN AND HELL). A few excerpts follow:

On being limited to BLACK SABBATH's classic 1970s material since original frontman Ozzy Osbourne re-entered the fold in 1997:

"With Ozzy, we tried to do more of the old songs, the classic BLACK SABBATH, of course. But he'd want to put one of those to bed one night, and take another off the list the next, and before we knew it, we were back to the old faithfuls. Which is a shame, because I'm sure the fans would like to hear some of the other songs."

On writing and recording two new tracks to embellish a Dio-era SABBATH retrospective CD and HEAVEN AND HELL's future plans:

"It was really refreshing; the ideas were just flowing. There's always a possibility that we'll record more; you never can discount that. But we haven't planned anything yet beyond the tour ... to commit to that, we really can't do that."

On his relationship with Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne:

"We haven't fallen out with them. There's no animosity. That whole thing is a separate operation, and there are plans with that operation, things in the works with Ozzy."

On HEAVEN AND HELL's live show:

"With Ozzy, we'd usually play one night, take a night off, play again, take two more nights off, and so on. With this lineup, we're doing three shows, then a day off, then playing three shows again. I like to get it rolling, and this definitely fits how I like to pace things better.

"It's the Dio years, and we have some great material from those years. If we'd gone out under BLACK SABBATH for this tour, then the fans would expect 'Iron Man', 'War Pigs' and those songs again. But we've been playing that stuff for years with Ozzy, and we wanted to bring more of this out."