“Bands like The Move, Traffic and The Moody Blues were proving that you didn’t have to be from Liverpool to be successful.”

“As far as we were concerned, we were just a blues band that had decided to write some scary music.”

“Officially, we didn’t have a band leader.Unofficially, we all knew it was Tony [Iommi].”

“If you don’t have a sense of humour when you’re in a band, you end up like f**king Emerson, Lake and Palmer, making eight-disc LPs so you can all have your own three-hour f**king solos.And who wants to listen to that bollocks?”

“I’d always wanted to play an instrument myself, but my folks didn’t have the dough to buy me one, and I didn’t have the patience to learn anyway.My attention span was five seconds.”

“But the thing with us was, we didn’t really need anyone to make us world famous – we were already halfway there.”

“We set up our gear for the tune-up and Tony [Iommi] launched into the opening riff of ‘Black Sabbath’ – doh, doh, doooohnnnn – but before I’d got through the first line of lyrics the manager had run on to the stage, red in the face, and was shouting, ‘STOP, STOP, STOP! Are you f**king serious? This isn’t Top-Forty pop covers! Who are you people?’‘Earth,’ said Tony, shrugging. ‘You booked us, remember?’‘I didn’t book this. I thought you were going to play “Mellow Yellow” and “California Dream-in’”.’‘Who – us?’ laughed Tony.‘That’s what your manager told me!’‘Jim Simpson told you that?’‘Who the hell’s Jim Simpson?’‘Ah,’ said Tony, finally working out what had happened. He turned to us and said, ‘Lads, I think we might not be the only band called Earth.’He was right: there was another Earth on the C-list gig circuit. But they didn’t play satanic music. They played pop and Motown covers.”