TOM WILLS PRODUCTIONS: No. 228: Sabbra Cadabra (Tony Iommi)

You've got to be positive about it, and I try as much as I can. Sometimes I start going downhill a little bit, and then I perk back up. I got so many nice letters and messages from fans saying, 'You'll be okay. Just hang in there!'
Read more at http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/black-sabbath-s-tony-iommi-how-i-found-out-i-had-cancer/#IDZTFkBwQjTSAPDk.99

"The Player: Tony Iommi" by Tom Wills, December 2013

"You've got to be positive about it, and I try as much as I can. Sometimes I start going downhill a little bit, and then I perk back up. I got so many nice messages and letters from fans saying, "You'll be OK, just hang in there.'"

Not exactly gloom and doom, coming from a guy who brought us "Paraniod," "Children of the Grave," "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" and "The Mob Rules," among many other deep and dark tracks.

No. 228, my study of Tony Iommi, Black Sabbath's guitarist and main man, is related to another face and hand study done this year, No. 223, Lou Reed. ( http://tomwillsproductions.blogspot.com/2013/11/no-223-shades-of-gray-lou-reed.html ) You can see a similar approach to the folds of the face, the hand in the foreground and, even, the guitar neck. Lou took more than a week; Tony took three days, drawn as if I were, um, possessed.

Black Sabbath's music, at least for me, has never been about Ozzy Osbourne's helium voice.
For me, it's always been Tony Iommi's unique and bottom-of-the-well tone. Heavy metal? This guy is the godfather. Look no further than Black Sabbath Vol. 4 for proof of that. Iommi lays down a wall of volume, throws in heavy riffs and then tastes it up with melodic flourishes. It's so sick, it's gorgeous.

Now, it's not like I pace around in the Man Cave playing heavy metal, doom rock, sludge music. Nor do I worship demons, I'm not a disbeliever (never "Sold My Soul For Rock'n'Roll") and I have never dismembered a bat. But every now and then I need music that pummels my soul.

That brings me to this drawing and No. 13, the Black Sabbath reunion record that came out earlier this year.
You see, I was checking out at Geo's Music in Youngstown with used copies of Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, about to blow $10. That's when I saw a new, sealed collector's copy of No. 13 on the shelf and blew $28. It's two heavy slabs of thick vinyl and the reviews say the pressings make mincemeat out of the over-compressed CD version. It certainly is heavy and, while not a classic like Vol. 4, it is a fitting end to the band, should they decide to end it now.

Tony Iommi, much like Lou Reed, has had to face mortality. He endured rounds of chemotherapy during the making of No. 13 and the subsequent tour this year. A guy who has loved his sound since the seventh grade wishes him well.
But these old rockers are tough bastards. Here's what Iommi had to say about it to Guitar World magazine:

"When I’d finished the chemo and the radiotherapy, I went to see the doctor again for my regular blood tests. I said, ‘So it’s gone now?’ And he said, ‘No, it’s not going to go. You’re not going to get rid of it. But we can treat it and work with it.’ I got all dismal, because I thought it was gone. He said there was a 30 percent chance of it going away, but I was probably going to have this for life. Now I get treatments to keep it from spreading. So every six weeks I go in for an infusion of Rituximab, which is one of the four ingredients when they give you the chemo. It takes a few hours, and it makes you feel a bit crap inside and a bit sick. But a couple weeks after, I start perking up again. So that’s how we are working it with the shows. I go out, then come back and go into the hospital for more treatment, more blood tests and all the rest of the rubbish. And then we do it all over again."