“There was a cinema called The Orient outside the community centre where we rehearsed in Six Ways, and whenever it showed a horror film the queue would go all the way down the street and around the corner. ‘Isn’t it strange how people will pay money to frighten themselves?’ I remember Tony [Iommi] saying one day. ‘Maybe we should stop doing blues and write scary music instead.’”

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

“I remember saying to Tony [Iommi], ‘Did you hear how heavy that Led Zeppelin album sounded?’Without missing a beat, he replied, ‘We’ll be heavier.’”

“’Welcome to New York,’ said the sign. [...] We got our luggage from the carousel and went to queue in the taxi rank outside the arrivals hall. [...] As we waited, this massive yellow car drove by. It must have had nineteen or twenty doors on it.‘I knew the cars here were big,’ I slurred, ‘but not that big!’‘It’s a limousine, you idiot,’ said Tony [Iommi].”

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

“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 have the greatest respect for Tony Iommi.”