During a recent interview with Spin’s Katherine Turman, Black Sabbath’s lead guitarist and also the co-founder Tony Iommi opened up his first meeting with late legend Eddie Van Halen as well as what he’s doing during the self-quarantine days.
As you may know, Tony Iommi has released the deluxe editions of two legendary Black Sabbath albums, ‘The Heaven & Hell’ and ‘Mob Rules’ last week 2CD/2LP Deluxe formats. In addition to that, back in January, ‘Black Sabbath Vol.4’ has been remastered and will be on sale alongside 20 never-released-before studio and live recordings.
In his latest interview with Katherine Turman, he recalled the first-ever time he saw Eddie Van Halen playing. While sharing his admiration for Eddie himself, he also stated that Eddie was a close friend of him and revealed that Eddie was playing some songs of Black Sabbath before founding Van Halen.
Here is what he said:
“Eddie was a really close friend of mine. We stayed in touch since the first tour, since 1978. They came on their first World Tour with Sabbath. They were all itching, all ready to go. I really liked him. I’d never heard anything like it, the way he played, I was, ‘Wow, this is really different.’ We got to know each other; they were out with us, for I think, eight months. We used to get together certain nights after the gig or a day off.
He’d come around to my room, and we’d play a bit and chat; he was really interested because they were all new to it. He’d be, ‘tell me what happened after this, and where did you do that?’ He was really interested in stories. He used to sing some of the Sabbath songs when he was in the band before [Van Halen]. We had some great times. And we stayed in touch.”
He continued:
“We lost contact for a while. I saw him again and we exchanged numbers again. I used to meet up with him when I was in LA, him and his wife, myself and Maria. We’d go out to dinners. He really did stay in touch with me a lot. You know, he sent me some great emails.”
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