Iron Man

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Nonfiction 

Kggg ... as you do   

IRON MAN:
My Journey through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath
By Tony Iommi with T. J. Lammers
416 pp. Da Capo Press

Reviewed by Alan Goodman

Tony Iommi, one of the founders of Black Sabbath, has performed as lead guitarist of the heavy metal rock band since its inception in the late 1960s.

The world has seen many influential guitarists. If there is any field that boasts tens of hundreds of “influential” and/or “famous” musicians, guitarists would reign supreme. Iommi surely has been influential in advocating a heavy metal rock style that, in its essence, filled a need for provocative lyrics, ultra-loud amplification, and overly animated onstage gyrations. However, the claim made on the book jacket placing Iommi “among the most influential guitarists of all time” seems a stretch of hyperbole, considering the long and glorious list of six-stringed practitioners of the art.

Yet, one might expect a read equal in excitement to the heavy metal performance experience of Black Sabbath. Sadly, the book is a letdown. What one might anticipate reading about Iommi's life in terms of excitement is missing in action. This is unfortunate as the particulars of Iommi's life are eventful and unusual enough to make a potentially exciting read. Iommi's fans have every expectation of following his numerous adventures and misadventures glued to the page by revelations of life in the fast lane of rock superstardom. One yearns to share vicariously the successes, failures, misadventures, and peccadilloes of Iommi through the years of his ever-growing fame. Iommi certainly does his part in revealing an endless parade of moments that should keep one turning pages at a furious pace.

Unfortunately, the successive pages turned ever slower. Could the scribbling of your local CPA provide any less excitement than does the narrative of this book? The writing renders everything to gray dullness -- turning heavy metal into a Louis XIV court minuet with its ritualized series of nods and winks. This fault rests upon the shoulders of Lammers, who one assumes is the professional writer and would be the major influence in writing style. For it is the writing, not the life described, that provides us with a curiously uninteresting accounting of this life experience.

Heavy-metal fans might well plod through this autobiography (I would describe it as such since Iommi shares the writing credit) through an intense interest in one of their idols. But for those who might like good writing, as well as good experiences to report, some inordinate amount of disappointment should be anticipated.

Here is a food fight in Sydney, Australia:

We were eating this exquisite food using all this nice silverware and everything, and then somebody flicked a pea at somebody else... He then flicked one back. Then it was something else, a potato ... At the end it was just ridiculous. The dinner was flying everywhere. Everybody was ordering: 'Can I have another salad, please, with loads of oil and vinegar?' ... 'Kggg,' on somebody's head... Bill [the drummer], of course, him being the one who always gets it, was absolutely covered: cake, olive oil, sauce and chocolate all over his face and all down his clothes. He was an absolute mess. We all looked pretty bad. Ozzy had yellow trousers on, we got hold of them and, 'kggg,' ripped the legs all the way up the hip. The owner of the restaurant was absolutely in bits ... [after an offer of money] the owner was alright then, going: 'Ah, carry on, carry on! ... We then got the waiters involved even more: 'Go on, give me a big cream cake under the table!'

Iommi is big on sound effects in his speech. In his recall of conversation long after the fact, these effects ring hollow. It's as if he is remembering the way a conversation might reasonably have sounded, speaking for both parties, and jacking the recall with sound effects for a feel of authenticity. A favorite phrase, “As you do,” appears more often than I bothered to count and is apparently intended to substitute for recalling some activity Iommi either does not fully recall or does not care to describe in detail.

“I'd see Eddie [Van Halen] a lot. I always had a bit of coke and he'd come around to my room and we'd talk till the death. As you do ...” The dismissal of any further detail with this phrase for this reader becomes tiresome. Whenever things are about to become interesting, Iommi ends with, “As you do.”

There is no denying that Iommi has led an interesting and unusual life, one that can boast numerous successes. From a troubled childhood, through several debilitating injuries, he persevered until his talent won out. By the end of the book I had developed a liking and empathy for Iommi. I just wish that the recounting of his life experience had done him the justice of a more exciting and interesting retelling.

The book, I fear, reads as “quiet” as Iommi's music plays “loud” ... as you do.