“I don’t remember where we first played ‘Black Sabbath’, but I can sure as hell remember the audience’s reaction: all the girls ran out of the venue, screaming.”

“I don’t think we [Black Sabbath] ever got a good review for anything we did. Which is why I never bother with reviews.”

“No record mogul had created Black Sabbath, so no record mogul could tell Black Sabbath what to do.”

“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.”

“I don’t have anything bad to say about the guy they hired to replace me, Ronnie James Dio, who’d previously been with Rainbow. He’s a great singer. Then again, he ain’t me, and I ain’t him. So I just wish they’d called the band Black Sabbath II.”

“We’d recorded Black Sabbath in one day. Sabotage took about four thousand years.”

“They said I would never write this book.Well, f**k ’em – ’cos here it is.All I have to do now is remember something...Bollocks. I can’t remember anything.”