Frank Skinner has shared what Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath’s connections to Birmingham have meant to him.
The Room 101 comedy legend is a known metalhead – fun fact, he was spotted cutting about 2000trees just weeks ago – and was on hand to chat to Tony Iommi at the press conference in Birmingham where he announced his new solo album, From The Dark.
Kerrang! caught up with Frank after the press conference to share what the Sabbath legacy and Tony’s enduring work in music means to him.
“In ‘68, when Sabbath started, I was 11. I saw them in the early days, I saw him around the millennium and I interviewed Ozzy a couple of times over the years,” he says. “I was even the voice of Ozzy’s audio book.
“I think if you’re from Birmingham, it’s a different thing altogether. There aren’t that many band – I mean, Oasis Manchester, Beatles Liverpool – but there aren’t many bands that have got their cities so intrinsically tied onto them as Sabbath has. I don’t know if it’s true that the heavy metal sound came from working in factories and stuff. But I used to work on a thing called the drop forging with five-ton hammers, and I could identify with Tony because everyone had three fingers and was deaf and there was no health and safety there!
“It was a very loud, hot, fiery existence. I like the poetry of that being where heavy metal came from. There aren’t many people [like Tony] who are so universally lauded as the beginning of it all. People always argue about the OG but I just think it’s generally accepted that he found that guitar sound and it kind of changed the world.”
Asked what makes Tony’s artistic survival across decades distinctively Brummie, Frank adds: “I think [it]s] a work ethic, It’d is a bit like he’s in the music factory, still banging it out.
“I’m 69, I could afford to retire, but I’m in Edinburgh for the whole festival this year. I’m doing stand up. I’m doing an improvised show. I just think it’s really really important, and as he says, he not a man who has big thoughts about [it]; he just carries on, and I love that about him.
“And it is a very Birmingham thing. That thing where he lost his fingertips would have broken a lot of people. He just said, ‘I’ll get a Fairy liquid bottle and make some new fingers.’ It’s great. But the fact that Tony’s still producing a new album now, original stuff with a new band, it is great.
“My mum and dad retired when they were 65 and both died before they were 70. I think there is something about losing your purpose and losing your focus. If you’ve got the best job in the world, which me and Tony could probably both argue that we were up there, don’t let it go. The fact he’s doing new stuff, I think, is awesome.”
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