Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi remembered his brief tenure with Jethro Tull back in 1968, saying at this year’s Whitley Bay Film Festival :
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“We weren’t [called] Sabbath [yet], we were called Earth. And I went with Jethro Tull. It was just a short stay and it wasn’t right for me. And I came back and we got the band back together again, with Ozzy and Bill and Geezer.
“And we realized then that we need to do something that is different to what a lot of other people were doing. And that’s sort of where it started, jamming around.
“The first one was ‘Wicked World,’ and the second song we did was ‘Black Sabbath’ [subsequently released on the 1970 album ‘Black Sabbath’ by the band Black Sabbath]. And that was the benchmark of where we went from. As soon as we’ve done that – that’s it, this is where it’s gonna go from here.”
Did you learn anything from [frontman] Ian Anderson from time in Jethro Tull in terms of putting the band together?
“Yes, I did actually. I learned the way they work and it was very different from the way we worked. It was – nine o’clock in the morning, rehearsal. Well, we didn’t know what nine o’clock was…
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“So I come back going to the others, ‘Nine o’clock, we’re gonna start work.’ And I was the only one that could drive then, so I had to pick everybody up to go to the rehearsal. Which was… I cut my own throat there.
“So that’s what we did. We got into this regime and they were willing to do it. Because I’ve been with Jethro Tull, they knew I had that offer and turned it down.”