Mum’s the word from Tony Iommi on Lita Ford’s abuse allegations
Mum’s the word from Tony Iommi on Lita Ford’s abuse allegations
In her memoir entitled Living Like A Runaway – A Memoir, Lita Ford makes allegations of physical abuse at the hands of Black Sabbath‘s guitarist Tony Iommi.
In an interview with The Village Voice on April 27, 2016, Ford was asked whether she had any regrets about what she revealed in her memoir to which Ford responded, “There were some difficult hurdles. I wanted to talk about [Black Sabbath guitarist] Tony Iommi but I didn’t want to upset fans. Although I was one of those fans, one of those people who worshipped the ground he walked on, and when I found out what I was dealing with, and what kind of person he was…I don’t know if he still is like that, I doubt it, because he’s sick [Iommi was diagnosed with cancer in 2012] and older. Hopefully he’s not like he was back then. People are mad at me for speaking out, but I was the victim in this case…nobody was more upset than I was. Nobody.”
Ford was also asked whether she’s in touch with Iommi to which she replied, “I tried to contact his camp, HarperCollins tried, and we got no response. So no one’s heard from him, even after publication.”
You can read the full interview at The Village Voice.
Back in February 2016, Sleaze Roxx reported on an interview that Ford did with the New York Post on February 14, 2016 where she provided details of her relationship with Iommi and the abuse that she suffered from him:
Years later, Ford’s rock life came full circle when she got to open for Black Sabbath, and spent time after with her idol, Iommi. “He seemed so charming, confident and handsome,” she writes. “I would later find out that looks are deceiving.”
They “fooled around a bit” that night, but “that’s as far as he was able to get because he was so high,” she writes, having noted the copious amounts of cocaine present.
“He was impotent from his constant drug use, and he was very embarrassed. I felt bad for him and didn’t really know what to do. Eventually, I got him off.”
They stayed in touch, the relationship progressed and she was thrilled when Iommi invited her to England to meet his “mum.”
The couple were on the plane, and as soon as it started moving, Iommi, “out of nowhere . . . hauled off and punched me in the eye.”
She was now stranded on a 10-hour flight with a man who had just mysteriously transitioned from lover to abuser, and spent the entire 10 hours in the flight attendants’ station. She planned to fly right back to LA when they landed, but Iommi acted like nothing had happened, and she decided to stay, she writes, “like a moron.”
Iommi’s mother saw her black eye, and Ford learned that abuse ran in the family, as the guitarist’s father used to do the same.
She and Iommi were eventually engaged, and he would go on to physically abuse her four or five times during their relationship. The worst came shortly after he gave her the ring.
“After snorting tons of blow, he got angry and choked me unconscious,” she writes. “When I woke up, I saw him holding a chair above my head. It was a big, heavy leather chair with studs around the arms, and he was about to smash it over my face. I rolled over, and luckily I moved fast enough that he missed me and the chair smashed into the ground.”