Let’s get this straight: Black Sabbath don’t bite. Sure, their music is all about the horrors of the dark side and that, but when they walk into the room, it actually lights up.
Heavy metal godfathers Ozzy Osbourne (with wife Sharon in tow, happy to stop for signatures and selfies), Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler — all founding members of Black Sabbath — arrived at the presidential suite of the Shangri-La hotel in Abu Dhabi for a press conference on Wednesday afternoon dressed aptly in all-black, save for Osbourne’s grey blazer, a studded gold necklace and his signature bulky rings and jangly bracelets. We can’t forget the iconic circular sunnies and perfectly painted nails to prove he was no imposter, of course.
“C’mon!” he urged, bulging his eyes out at the quiet room. “After that intro, no one wants to speak?”
Ice effectively broken after a round of giggles, the questions poured in — but the boys had their dry British humour on hand, making the media work for it.
“I never realised that the Middle East liked our kind of music,” Osbourne said when asked why it took them so long to play a gig here. He added it would be interesting to see what the reaction to their du Arena performance on Thursday would be.
“If it starts going downhill, we’ll do a short set,” he joked.
“Or a long drum solo,” Butler agreed.
Even though the three have been performing together on-and-off since 1968, they admitted to nerves when facing a new crowd or starting a new tour.
“It’s always nerve-wracking before you get on stage,” said Iommi. But once you’re on, Osbourne added, it’s like magic.
Any pre-show rituals, then? “Go to the toilet about 40 times,” Butler quipped.
As for what the boys have been up to in the couple days since they arrived the UAE, they shook their heads incredulously at the idea of riding the roller coaster at Yas Island — “My life’s been a roller coaster,” Osbourne reasoned — or getting into any race cars. Osbourne mumbled about how his broken neck from a few years ago wouldn’t be conducive to any fast car rides. Instead, they’ve been “sleeping, waking, sleeping, waking. Staying indoors. It’s so [expletive] hot here.”
Though age — enough age to produce nineteen studio albums together — has certainly tamed the band, their sense of humour is still perfectly intact.
An innocuous question about how they stay young and fit as rock stars — Butler said he just stays in bed all day — turned into Osbourne cheekily discussing his measures — unprintable in a family newspaper — that rendered the room useless as everyone succumbed to another bout of laughter.
And asked his advice for heavy metal artists in the Middle East struggling to make it, Iommi had one simple solution: “Move to LA.”
“Next!” Osbourne exclaimed, clearly in agreement.
But that’s not to say the band came off as arrogant or stand-offish. Quite the opposite, actually. Fielding a question and some praise from their regional opening act, Anuyrzm, they were nothing but gracious and supportive, Butler telling them to “have a good gig”.
As for their own show and whether they were ready for the heat, they all gave a resounding “no!”
“I’ll never complain about being cold again,” Osbourne said, and all were in agreement.
