{"id":385614,"date":"2026-01-23T06:37:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T06:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/385614\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T06:37:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T06:37:10","slug":"the-one-singer-tony-iommi-always-wanted-to-work-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/385614\/","title":{"rendered":"The one singer Tony Iommi always wanted to work with"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tony<\/p>\n

(Credits: TIDAL)<\/p>\n

Fri 23 January 2026 4:00, UK <\/p>\n

Back in 2000, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi<\/a> released what, at the time, felt like the biggest single statement he\u2019d made as an artist. <\/p>\n

Titled simply IOMMI, it was his first-ever solo album, five years in the making and chock-full of younger musicians who\u2019d grown up admiring his work, including Billy Corgan, Dave Grohl, and Serj Tankian. The finished product could be accused of having a few too many cooks in the kitchen, as Iommi was sharing songwriting duties with many of his guests, but it was still a worthy listen; unfortunately, the record-buying public didn\u2019t get the memo, and IOMMI topped out at number 129 on the US Billboard chart.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo embarrassing things that I didn\u2019t go for,\u201d Iommi told Guitarist magazine when looking back on the album 20 years later, \u201cwas where they said, \u2018This chap wants to do something [with you]: Eminem\u2019. \u2018Who the bloody hell is Eminem?\u2019 I didn\u2019t know, and I went, \u2018Oh, no\u2019. And Kid Rock\u2026 So I turned a few people down that became quite big later, but I hadn\u2019t the faintest idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having turn-of-the-century Eminem<\/a> and Kid Rock on IOMMI certainly would have improved its mainstream visibility at the time, but presuming any good songs would have come out of those collaborations is a whole other issue. <\/p>\n

Oversights aside, Iommi has usually been quite receptive to jamming with his acolytes, but he still has heroes of his own that he\u2019s never had the chance to record with. Specifically, when you\u2019ve already been in a band with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James Dio, and Ian Gillan, there\u2019s really only arguable rung left to go on that ladder: Robert Anthony Plant. <\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a>Robert Plant in 2025 on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. (Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d tried to do [a project] before with Planty and a few others,\u201d Iommi said in 2020, \u201cBut it was so hard because of management and all that\u201d. <\/p>\n

While Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath are often viewed as the cornerstone bands of hard rock and metal, they also seem to occupy their own narrative spaces, existing as parallel lines in the 1970s rather than some sort of joint force for good (or evil), but as Iommi often said, relations between the two bands were quite good.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlack Sabbath used to jam with Led Zeppelin all the time,\u201d he told Sirius Radio in the 2000s. \u201cWe\u2019d be trying to rehearse, and they\u2019d come interrupt us. I\u2019ve got some tapes floating around the house\u201d.<\/p>\n

On one specific occasion, Iommi recounted to Classic Rock, \u201cWe were recording in Morgan Studios in London, and John [Bonham] came down to see us. He brought Planty and John Paul Jones\u2014Jimmy Page was the only one who wasn\u2019t there. They came in, and John\u2019s going, \u2018Let\u2019s play \u2018Supernaut\u2019,\u2019 \u2019cause he loved that song. So he sat behind the kit, and we started to play it. Of course, he didn\u2019t play it right, but we just carried on and went into a jam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iommi\u2019s respect for Led Zeppelin and Plant never faded, such that in 2025, he personally reached out to Plant and invited him to perform at the Black Sabbath farewell concert in Birmingham, but he politely declined<\/a>, later telling Mojo magazine his rationale: \u201cI said, \u2018Tony, I\u2019d love to come, but I can\u2019t come. I just can\u2019t. I\u2019m not saying that I\u2019d rather hang out with Peter Gabriel or Youssou N\u2019Dour, but I don\u2019t know anything about what\u2019s going on in that world now, at all\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

This presumably doesn\u2019t bode well for the long-awaited Iommi-Plant collaboration, unless Tony is willing to convert to country-folk.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: TIDAL) Fri 23 January 2026 4:00, UK Back in 2000, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi released what,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2775,96,128,23837,17958,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-385614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-black-sabbath","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-robert-plant","12":"tag-tony-iommi","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=385614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}