In a recent interview with The NFR Podcast, Anthrax’s Scott Ian talked about touring with Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi in the ’80s.
Here’s what the guitarist said:
“Anthrax went off to tour ‘Spreading the Disease’ in 1986, so most of ’86 we were touring ‘Spreading.’ We started that tour in arenas opening for Black Sabbath and W.A.S.P.”
Asked: ‘‘Who was the singer of Black Sabbath at that point?”, Ian replied:
“It was Glenn Hughes. And while we were on those dates, he was canned, and they brought in a guy named Ray Gillen, who was just kind of hanging around, waiting on the dates.
“It was a very weird time. Obviously, not being a member of Black Sabbath, just an outsider looking in, and as a Black Sabbath fan, it was a very weird time for what they actually called on that record.
“I believe it was ‘Tony Iommi’s Black Sabbath,’ or ‘Black Sabbath Featuring Tony Iommi,’ or something weird, because he was the only dude.
“But then Geezer, I think, was there for a minute… No, he wasn’t there, because [classic Anthrax guitarist] Danny Spitz’s [older] brother Dave was playing bass.
“We were just happy we were in arenas. Tony was very nice to us, and Glenn was amazing to us – Glenn Hughes, I mean, he’d be the first to tell you, he was in the depths of his substance abuse problems at that time.” […]
When asked about the Black Sabbath tour with Van Halen, Scott said:
“My first time seeing them was on [1978’s]’ Never Say Die!’ with Van Halen opening, and it’s all true.
“I don’t even like that Sabbath record, really, in that period Van Halen was the best band on the planet, opening for Sabbath on their way out of the Ozzy era, so I mean, come on…
“Yes, and I stayed and watched Sabbath, and you never saw a band get destroyed as badly… Maybe when Dokken went on after Metallica on the ‘Monsters of Rock’ thing, that’s similar, and I’m comparing Sabbath to Dokken…
“Van Halen was insane. Everybody at Madison Square Garden was there, waiting, for the first time we were going to see Van Halen.”