Tony Iommi feels Ronnie James Dio was able to put the old Ozzy era Black Sabbath songs over in his way

Tony Iommi feels Ronnie James Dio was able to put the old Ozzy era Black Sabbath songs over in his way

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi was recently interviewed by Eddie Trunk on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation. Black Sabbath recently released a 4oth Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition of their live album Live Evil, which was originally released in 1982 and which included Ronnie James Dio singing some Ozzy Osbourne era Black Sabbath songs.

With respect to Ronnie James Dio‘s time in Black Sabbath, Iommi indicated: “Ronnie, as you know, he always gave it all, and he’d always do his best. And he was really particularly concerned that he would, you know, give it everything he got. And he always did. He’s never, ever failed. He was absolutely a star, you know, tremendous singer. And he put these, the old songs over in his way. It was very difficult to come in and follow Ozzy and be able to sing them, you know, here we are with a new singer and Ronnie’s, I mean, to sing these, the old songs, but he was bloody good.”

In terms of whether Ronnie James Dio‘s confidence increased live and on the road after having two Black Sabbath studio albums — Heaven and Hell (1980) and Mob Rules (1981) — under his belt, Iommi opined: “Absolutely, definitely. I mean, once we’d recorded and released Heaven and Hell, we knew we loved it. It was different. It was something that we were offering that was, I thought was great. And it took the next album really for Ronnie. Ronnie was seeing it on tour. He was seeing, he was getting more and more taken, but, you know, our fans were accepting him more and it didn’t take that long before we had a, you know, all the audience back again. I mean, obviously you are always gonna get some that don’t agree with it because that’s the way it is. But we managed to maintain a lot of our original fans and they really took to Ronnie, and certainly the Mob Rules album when that came out, Ronnie was very confident in that because he’d already sort of been able to establish himself with Heaven and Hell and the Mob Rules came out and there it was.”

Audio clip of interview with Tony Iommi courtesy of SiriusXM‘s Trunk Nation:

Black Sabbath‘s Live Evil album (remastered from 2008):