My first news story of the year is one that talks about a not fun subject at all. Tony Iommi’s cancer.
While I’ve been seeing a lot of posts and requests (and even DEMANDS, if you can believe that) for Tony to record, tour, basically do the same thing as he’s always done.. This update should do as a reminder to people that the days of mega touring are likely over for Tony & Black Sabbath. That’s not to say they’ll never tour again, that’s not to say they won’t play live, but expecting super mega huge, play 150 gigs in 12 months kind of scenario is probably never happening again.
Tony Iommi has cancer. Just because he got well, did the 13 tour and all that doesn’t mean he won’t still have to deal with it. A lot of fan responses I’ve seen seem to gloss over this, that he’s “fine”. Yes, he’s done quite well in recovering to the point that the 13 tour was a success, but as I’ve said before, I have a family member who has the same cancer, so I know what he’s going through. I think the way to look at this is to take whatever happens as a great gift, not to EXPECT there to be another anything. We should have more realistic demands on our “heroes”. They’re not Gods, they’re just people like you and me, and Tony has cancer. We have to remember that.
Having said all that, I’m looking forward to new material as much as any of you reading this. Bring it on, Tony! Just take a nap or three, eh?
More seriously, this all comes from an article on the Mirror today where Tony talks in detail about various things relative to his treatment. How it affected the “13” recording, and whatnot. There’s some funny stories in there, like the one about Ozzy and getting Tony some tea. That made me chuckle. But go ahead and read it. I’m not going to bug you with selected quotes from the article, you can just read the article to get that. But you really should read it. And if you’re so inclined, pray for Tony. He’s given us so much, we can at least do that for him.
