“During recording,” laughs Tony lommi, shaking his head, “you sometimes get these brainwaves. ‘Oh, yes, let’s do that.' We once decided to have bagpipes on an album,” he laughs. Bagpipes? This is not Stuart Adamson we’re talking to, but Tony lommi of Black Sabbath. The guy with the trademarked long black hair and mustache continues. “We wanted this drone on a track, and I bought some bagpipes. I had this Scottish guy send them out. I started puffing on them, and couldn’t get a thing out of them. Nothing. So I sent them back, and said they were broke. He sent them back and said that they were OK. I tried again. Nothing. I even got to the stage where I was going to hook them up to a vaccum cleaner, to see if it had got the wind. It was disastrous. They sit in the cupboard now.”

The bagpipes have some company on the shelf. Also cluttering the lommi closets are the sitar, the 18th century harp, and the banjo that all seemed like really good ideas in the recording studio.

But it’s those little inspirations (some may say abominations) that over the years have combined to make Black Sabbath a little different, and certainly more interesting than the average metal band. It’s also partly why, when most bands have about the same lifespan as a car battery, Black Sabbath has survived for more than 19 years. Over the last two decades. Black Sabbath has managed to do the unusual: keep it interesting.

Sure, things haven’t exactly been hunky-dory, and the band was in hibernation for a long time, but that’s all over now. After a three year absence. Black Sabbath is back with Seventh Star. The record sounds a lot like the old Black Sab, full of fat guitars and tight, heavy rhythm—but there’s a big difference. The days when Black Sabbath was another way of saying Ozzy Osbourne. Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward and lommi have been gone for years.

In the recent past, the band’s roster has rivaled that of the L.A. Raiders for number of players and seasonal changes. Not so anymore, insists lommi. Presently (and lommi hopes, for a while), the group consists of vocalist Glenn Hughes, drummer Eric Singer, keyboardist Geoff Nichols and bassist Dave Spitz.

What? You’ve never heard of them? That’s exactly the point.

“It’s all very intentional,” says lommi flatly. “Dealing with superstars is a pain in the ass. I didn’t want to go through all of that contractual stuff again. Every time you let somebody in with any kind of a name, it’s do this, do that. I just wanted to get out on the road and play. By the time you get through all of the legal stuff, you forgot what you were supposed to be here for. That was what was happening to Black Sabbath. I wanted to do a Black Sabbath thing properly. I wanted to just go out and do it. We tried to get the old band back, and it just never seemed to work. I felt, if we were going to go out on the road, everything had to be spot on, where we’re going to really enjoy ourselves, and do it. The last time we went on tour, there were so many problems going on. So much added spice, I didn’t really want to do that anymore. I wanted to get fresh blood and really get cracking. Have a good go, and really work hard.”

He certainly has the new blood. Some of these guys are young enough to be the missing lommi heirs. And they all grew up listening to Black Sabbath. None of them are exactly novices, though...Geoff and Eric came from the band of lommi’s, er, friend, Lita Ford. Still, they had not done anything on the scope and with the attended responsibilities of Black Sabbath. (It’s not just a job, it’s a shrine.) So they had something to prove, and were raring to go.

“I like the situation now,” Tony laughs. “I’m seeing fresh minds come into it. They’re really energetic. It makes me feel bloody old! I have to let them play for two hours before I turn on. Wear ’em down a bit! I much prefer working with somebody when they just want to play. They don’t have anything in terms of money or a reputation, they just really want something. It’s great. It’s great to give ’em a chance to prove that they actually can go out and prove something. The so-called ‘experienced’ people have forgotten how to do it. It’s exciting.”

lommi may be excited, but he’s no fool. After the past few years, when he’s spent as much time in court straightening legal matters as he has onstage, the make-up of the Sab has changed. It’s still a band, but it’s lommi’s show.

He explains, “That’s because when it was a band, it was all members, and if something goes wrong—say if you want to play in the Hollywood Bowl, or whatever—then the manager has to call everybody up, and then we had to call each other and ask, ‘Do you want to do the show?’ By the time you ve decided to do the show, it’s already gone. It’s the same with everything. That’s why everything took so long. Whenever we wanted to do an album, it was one thing or another happehing. It gets lazy and rot sets in. The whole thing gets really dismal. ‘Are you going to rehearse tomorrow? Well, no, can’t we leave that to the next day?’ It gets like that, it really does. And that’s bad for a band. Now I have a real positive attitude. ‘Yes, we’re going to rehearse tomorrow.’ Now if I say ‘Yes, I like it,’ we all do it. You don’t really have to keep saying, ‘What do you think of it?’ Things get done really quick, and it gets cracking a lot quicker.”

Which doesn’t mean that lommi wouldn’t have liked the original Black Sabbath to have been around for Seventh Star. It almost happened. Last year there were rumors flying that a reunion was imminent—even Ozzy, long a hold-out since his solo career was flying—had agreed. The various lawyers, accountants and astrologists had all been consulted, and agreed it was worth a shot. The BSO (No, not the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Black Sabbath Originals) did get it together for one show, which if not for its circumstances would have been wholly unmemorable: Live Aid. The Live Aid gig was planned as a dry run for the group, to see if they could work together. They found that time hadn’t changed much. They’d grown older, but not feistier.

“The last time we were all together was for the Live Aid thing,” recalls lommi with a smile. “Which was great. It was really good fun. It was disastrous for the band really, because we didn’t have a check or anything, and we didn’t know what we were doing. Couldn’t hear the monitor, so that was bad. But the event was great. It was good for us to get back together.

“It was quite funny. We started rehearsing, and originally we were going to have two nights of rehearsal. That’s all. The first night ended up being talk night. We just sat there and talked about old times. It was quite funny, really, it was good to do, but even then we started having problems. During those two days, it was like going back 10 years. We have all become things in our own right. When we came together again, it was like ‘Rippp!’ It could work. We could make it work. If we wanted to. But we don’t—I mean Ozzy’s got his own thing, so does Dave. And Bill, the only way he’d get back onstage is in Black Sabbath, and Geezer is just going to do his solo projects.

“If we ever did get together, it would be quite awkward at first. As' we know, just from Live Aid, that there’s just so much involved to put the band together. Just legally. Because we split, now we’re all individuals, signed to different companies. It’s so involved, and to make it work, you have to really want it to work. That’s what’s so nice about these guys. They are really keen and eager. It’s like looking back 15 years. I think if we’d put the old band back together, it wouldn’t have had it live, ’cause everybody is too...” he looks decidely uncomfortable and adds, “...mellow.”

The BSO agree that they can’t relive the past. Now if only someone could convince the outside world. People refuse to give up trying to get the old gang back. According to lommi, the group has been offered literal millions simply to do a short tour. Which—after some consideration— they have turned down.

“It’s tempting,” he admits, “in one way. But in the other way, when you actually get together you realize it was a good idea, but not that good an idea. We had an offer, if we did a tour, of 20 million. Which,” he snickers, “is quite a bit. But we’d all be suing each other. The money would go there. It’s like on some tours, one’s got his attorney, one’s got his accountant, and they end up having 50 people on the road, and they’re all attorneys and accountants. It’s bloody ridiculous.

I much prefer it this way.”

It makes sense; Black Sabbath ’86 has much more in common with Sab circa 1973 than 1983. ’Course, there is the old saying that what goes around comes around. With Black Sabbath that seems to be true. Like with the recent attacks on metal, lommi doesn’t take the Washington wives and the" PMRC attacks on heavy metal too seriously. He probably should; they are sure to put Seventh Star on the top of their list for the little ditty called “In For The Kill.” But lommi’s attitude? He’s been there before.

“I thjnk if we said ‘We’re not going to write anything like that, we’re going to write something totally different, with nothing against anybody or anything,’ they’d still knock us for our name. So somewhere along the line they try to pound you down. We’ve had it since the first album came out. It was ridiculous. People called us satanists. In fact, with the Paranoid album, it was supposed to be called War Pigs, which is why the cover has nothing to do with the name. But they wouldn’t allow it. So it’s been the same for us since the very beginning. But I don’t think about it much, someone’s always going to be rating something.”

So he’s not losing any sleep over not being allowed to play San Antonio. The balm is that he’s going to be on tour long enough to hit practically everywhere else. He can’t wait.

• • •

(Editor’s Note: At presstime, it appears that Sabbath vocalist Glenn Hughes is now former Sabbath vocalist Glenn Hughes, That’s right, those wily Sabs have done it to us again! Stick around, you might be singing for them on their next album.

In any case, this all means that everything you’ve, just read is “historically interesting, ” if you catch our occasional drift. Only in METAL! Only on page seven this issue! We love ya!)