HEAVEN & HELL: 'Rockline' Appearance Available For Streaming

May 1, 2009

HEAVEN & HELL — the band featuring BLACK SABBATH members Tony Iommi (guitar),Ronnie James Dio (vocals),Geezer Butler (bass) and Vinny Appice (drums) — were the featured guests on the April 29 edition of the nationally syndicated radio show "Rockline" with host Bob Coburn. The program is now available for streaming at this location.

Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi have both said some less than kind things about working with singer Ozzy Osbourne in a new interview with Decibel magazine. The pair recently completed a new studio album as HEAVEN & HELL, the post-Ozzy version of SABBATH featuring vocalist Ronnie James Dio, and Butler said that working with Dio was much easier than Osbourne. He explained, "Ronnie's a songwriter in his own right — he's got tons of ideas. Whereas Ozzy . . . in the old days, he'd come up with a vocal line and I'd write the lyrics. Ronnie is 100 percent involved in both the musical side and the vocal side, and he writes his own lyrics as well."

Butler added that Osbourne didn't take him seriously as a songwriter, saying, "If we were with Ozzy and I came in with the killer riff of all time, Ozzy wouldn't even think of doing it because I'm not the guitarist and that's the way he thinks . . . That's why it was so bloody hard to write anything."

Butler said about HEAVEN & HELL's upcoming CD, "The Devil You Know", "If we'd written this album with Ozzy, we'd still be working on the first track."

Iommi added that there was a sharp difference between the singers live as well, saying, "It was great being with Ozzy on the road . . . but with Ronnie it's a lot different, because we go out and we know exactly what we're gonna be doing. With Ozzy, we didn't really know. It was touch and go sometimes on some of those early shows, whether he was gonna turn up, if he'd be able to sing, if his voice was gone, or what. We'd have to cancel shows, which Geezer and myself really hated. But with Ronnie, we've never canceled a show."

HEAVEN & HELL will tour South America and Europe this spring and summer, with North American dates likely for the fall.

Ozzy Osbourne is currently working on his next solo album.

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