While working on his new project, ‘Black Sabbath: The Ballet,’ with Carlos Acosta, Tony Iommi gave an interview to Evening Standard and recalled the public reaction to the band’s performances in its early years:
“You name it, we had it come to the shows. The church were outside with banners, Satanists, witches; God knows what else. There are some right nutters out there. One night, we got to the dressing room, and there was a cross on the door in red. Never thought anymore of it. Turns out this bloke had cut his hand and done a cross in blood on the dressing room door.”
Mentioning almost getting stabbed on stage, he went on:
“Anyway, we go on stage, and I was having problems with my amp, so I turned to walk away from it, and there was a guy behind me with a dagger, a religious sort of person that thought we were Satanists. Security grabbed him and got him on the floor. This is in the early days. They’d just shoot us now.”
In addition to the backlash from religious crowds, Black Sabbath dealt with skinhead culture in the ’60s and ’70s. In one incident, after a performance at the Winter Gardens Pavilion, Geezer Butler found himself surrounded by a group of skinheads while making a call in a phone box.
The group shouted, ‘Get the hippy!’ causing the bassist to run away, and Iommi recalled what happened next during a chat with Kerrang in 2020:
“They frightened him half to death! Geezer’s normally Mr. Peaceful and not one to go looking for trouble. He got out of the phone box and came running back in to tell us what was going on.”
About the band’s response to the situation, he added:
“It felt as if a member of our gang had been threatened, so we all headed out front to sort it out. That’s when Ozzy grabbed the hammer, but, to be fair, they had all sorts of weapons too. They were yobs, and they were ready for a proper fight.”
After a ‘vicious fight,’ the Black Sabbath members made their way to their homes in Birmingham. Iommi, who was still living with his parents at the time, referred to the rest of the story by saying:
“I’m not quite sure how we managed it, to be honest, but we just about got out of there in one piece. I remember getting home and my mum shouting up the stairs, saying, ‘How did it all go?’ I replied, ‘Oh, yeah, really good, thanks!’ as I was looking at myself in the mirror with a black eye and blood everywhere…”
You can read Tony Iommi’s full interview about the Black Sabbath ballet show here.
