Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal by Jon Wiederhorn Page B

discovered through the most unlikely source.
TONY IOMMI: To be honest, it was Sharon [Osbourne, née Arden] that told me about Ronnie; of course, that was before she was managing Ozzy. I met Ronnie at a party and I was talking to him there and I thought, “Well, he’s a nice enough guy.” Not doing anything [with Ozzy] was getting frustrating, so I talked to Ronnie about doing a side-project album together, but it didn’t materialize. Then I called him about joining Sabbath.
RONNIE JAMES DIO: I liked the music they were doing so much. I liked writing with them and I liked them, too. And that took away a lot of the intimidation factor of joining Black Sabbath. But even then, we went through a lot of traumas. The band had to deal with Warner Bros. The label didn’t want this band without Ozzy, and that could have been a disaster.
TONY IOMMI: We were arguing with management as well because they said, “Look, it’s gotta work with Ozzy. Make it work.” We said, “Well, it just can’t.” Ozzy was too out of it and we weren’t far behind him, going down and down into the drugs and booze.
RONNIE JAMES DIO: Suddenly, we seemed to have no support, and it came down to us making the record with our own money. Luckily, Tony and Bill had some friends at Warner Bros., and they said they’d listen to the record but they didn’t want to bankroll it. The lads spent some of their money, I spent some of mine. It just wasn’t the kind of freewheeling experience we were both used to. To make matters more complicated, we went down there without Geezer because he was having some personal problems.
TONY IOMMI: Geezer had to sort his life out. Ronnie and myself put the tracks together with Bill. At one point Ronnie played bass so we could come up with the ideas for “Heaven and Hell” and one or two other songs.
RONNIE JAMES DIO: We eventually had to move to Florida to a city called Criteria because we didn’t have enough money to stay where we were. We lived together in a house on Biscayne Bay. After overcoming those initial obstacles, it just worked. The songs were memorable. It was great to bond in the face of that kind of pressure. We tested out the songs by taking them to a local strip bar. We’d have them play it and see if the dancers liked to dance to it. And oh, they loved “Heaven and Hell.” That was my favorite Sabbath record because it was a good time that wrested its way out of a bad time.
TONY IOMMI: We managed to have fun, I suppose. Bill used to have this fascination with Nazi Germany. One night he got pissed and wanted to dress up as Hitler. So we got this gaffer tape and taped all his hair down and put a little moustache on him and a swastika on his shirt. It was great until he wanted to take the gaffer tape off. We couldn’t get it off of his head. We had to cut all around under the gaffer tape to get his hair out. Oh, he looked a right mess after we were done. When he woke up in the morning, he looked in the mirror and said, “Oh, my God, what happened last night?” Another time, I set Bill on fire. We had this little party prank that started one night in a club. The waiter came up and I said, “Excuse me, do you have a lighter?” Bill had a big beard at the time, and I lit his beard and it went straight up his face and he breathed in all the smoke and went, “Mmm, 1948.” And the guy went, “Wow, man, that really freaked me out!” It started at that and just got worse as it went along. I’d tip rubbing alcohol over him in the studio and light him, and, of course, it used to burn off. But this one time, we had producer Martin Birch in the studio, and I said, “Hey, Bill, can I set you on fire?” He said, “Oh, not just yet, I’m a bit busy.” And he came over to me two hours later and said, “I’m going home now Tone, do you want to set me on fire or what?” This was in front of Martin, who had never seen us do this. I said, “Yeah.” So I tipped a big, full bottle over him and it all