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Reflections Of Tony Martin And His TimeWith Black Sabbath And Beyond

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TINAS Guest Writer– January 6, 2013Posted in: Interviews, Music

Tags: Black Sabbath, Dario Mollo, Geoff Nicholls, Glenn Hughes, Ian Gillian, Ice-T, Interview, Iron Man,

Led Zeppelin, Motorhead, Orion, Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James Dio, Silver Horses, The Alliance, Tony

"The Cat Martin, Tony Iommi, Tony Martin, Twisted Sister

Interview by Dan Swinhoe.

I have a confession to make. My first Black Sabbath album wasn’t “Paranoid”, or “Vol.4″, nor even

“Heaven & Hell” or “The Mob Rules”. It wasn’t even “Born Again”. It was a contract-fulfilling compilationalbum called” The Sabbath Stones”. It featured no Ozzy, but tracks from all over he band’s eighties and

early nineties output. It featured the likes of Dio, Glenn Hughes and Ian Gillian on vocals, but the man

who impressed the most was a little known Englishman called Tony ‘The Cat’ Martin.

‘When Death Calls’ and ‘The Headless Cross’ were simply blinding. Here was a man who had a massive

vocal range, and was writing the kind of gothic fantasy lyrics that just sounded so incredibly cool to a 14-

year-old me. At his best he was every bit as good as Dio, and that’s not a thing to be said lightly.

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So, why have you never heard of him? Could be one of many reasons. Sabbath were at their lowest ebbwhen Tony joined the band, with Grunge and Hair Metal making what was a 20-year-old band look verydated. Their label at the time, IRS, was tiny, and has since folded, so getting hold of the records is astruggle at best. But most of all it might be because Black Sabbath have seemingly ignored the entiredecade he was with the band, seemingly making an effort to expunge him from their history.

Anyone aware of Sabbath‘s history will know they weren’t exactly a stable line-up post-Ozzy. “TheSabbath Stones” covers eight albums, and features five bassists, five drummers, and four vocalists. In fact,only guitarist Tony Iommi and keyboardist Geoff Nichols (the unofficial but near-permanent fifth memberof Black Sabbath) ever maintained a steady presence. Tony joined Sabbath in 1987, released five albumswith the band. “Being in Sabbath was a complete drama!” Tony explains, “I never really had the chance tosettle into it because I was constantly learning the ropes or reading between the lines.”

In the run up to Tony joining the band, things were a bit of a mess. Singers were coming and going, joiningtours, demoing, all the while other members of the band were rotating just as frequently. At one point to fillin on bass for a music video they took a random guitar in off the street, and after filming he auditioned butaccording to Tony, he didn’t cut it. Tony was a singer with a band called The Alliance, and the story goeshis manager at the time simply took him for a drive and pulled up at Iommi‘s house without saying who theywere there to see, rang the doorbell and Tony joined the band soon after.

FromYoutube, some pre-Sabbath Tony Martin music:

What followed was a period of relative stability for Black Sabbath. Three quality albums were released,“The Eternal Idol” (1987) “Headless Cross” (1989) and “TYR” (1990), and for the first time in almost tenyears, things were on the up for the band. Despite all this, in 1990 Iommi was talked into ditching Tonyand bringing back Dio for “Dehumanizer”. By all accounts making the album was fraught with difficulties(Iommi claims it cost a million dollars to record), and after some success, Dio quit again because herefused to open for Ozzy‘s solo band.

Suddenly left without a singer again, the band brought Tony back, who had been working on his first soloalbum “Back Where I Belong”. Two more records followed, but by then the momentum they built before“Dehumanizer” had gone. It wasn’t just personal problems Sabbath were suffering with, the musical

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landscape of the mid-nineties was having a negative impact on the creativity side of things too. 1996′s“Forbidden” is widely accepted as the band’s worst effort, a fact readily accepted by Martin in an

interview he did with Gibson in 2011. But when Ice-T is involved and words like ‘Rap Sabbath’ are beingbandied about by the label, alarm bells should’ve been ringing. “I never met Ice-T, they did that sessionafter I left the studio”. Eventually Black Sabbath petered out and Tony‘s time in the band ended. No big

arguments, no fistfights, nothing.

Though Ozzy is now the defacto front man of the band once again, technically Tony was never fired. “Thephone stopped ringing 16 years ago and they haven’t spoken to me since. I saw Iommi very briefly for a

few hours in Russia a few years ago and he was very complimentary about me but after that I heardnothing.” Despite the lack of open hostility, in Iommi‘s 2011 autobiography, Iron Man, the guitarist accusesMartin of being ‘unprofessional’ and having ‘no stage presence’. Having never read the book, Tony‘s

reply when told in an interview with Uberrock was justifiably bemused when told;

“It surprises me. They never said anything to me. Surely, if you’ve got a problem, the firstperson you should say something to is the person that’s in the band with you, you don’t wait

ten years. More fool them for not saying anything because we could have fixed it. I said tothem, endlessly, that if there was anything they wanted changed, done differently, just to sayand we could fix it, but clearly they hadn’t got the guts to, obviously, and to write about it in a

book afterwards seems a bit daft to me. I’m not bitter about it, but it is surprising.”

Even today Martin‘s legacy in Sabbath has been almost whitewashed from the history books. You’ll behard pressed to find much info on the his time with the band on the official site. And despite the general

trend for reissuing old albums, including all the Sabbath releases up to “Born Again”, only one of Martin‘s,his debut “Eternal Idol” is the only one to be given the treatment, and even then he had no input. “I was not

a writer on Eternal Idol, I was just a session singer for that album,” Tony says, referring to the fact he wasbrought in to re-record the album after Ray Gillen‘s departure. The songs and lyrics were all finished, “So Iwould not be included in the release [process] of that.”

But despite everything, and being the nice guy that he his, Tony M has never been bitter. “I am 10 yearsyounger than those guys and our circles didn’t really cross, so it was a bit isolating.” But in all his interviewshe’s never anything but nice about his bandmates and speaks fondly of his time in the band. “It doesn’t

mean I hated the experience, I was just completely inexperienced and they didn’t have the time or theinclination to really accommodate that,”he says. “It felt like they just wanted my voice and writing ability.”

Today Tony‘s time with the band still has a strong fanbase, testament to that is the all the praise that fills up

his Facebook page. And since leaving Sabbath, he’s been a busy man. Featuring on well over a dozenalbums and guesting on many more, most of Tony‘s work is on equal footing to any Iommi, Dio orHeaven & Hell releases, it’s just a shame he can’t afford the same marketing team. When asked what he

thinks of his former bandmate’s work outside of Sabbath, Tony takes the high ground. “Erm, they arewhat they are really, all different and valid. In a different time some of them could have been quite big Ithink.”

Even Today Tony still has an active music career. This year saw the release of “The Third Cage”, anongoing collaboration between Tony and Italian guitarist Dario Mollo. t’s a decent slab of 80s inspired

metal, and was well received by fans and the press. 2012 also saw him return to the live stage with theTony Martin‘s Headless Cross tour. Featuring Geoff Nicholls (formerly of Black Sabbath), Dario

Mollo, Magnus Rosen (ex-HammerFall) and Danny Needham (Venom), their shows included a

triumphant night in Birmingham. “It was wonderful, the band was fantastic and the crowd were great,” hesays. “The last show before that was 5 years ago!” Not playing for so long would no doubt leave anyone

rusty, and no longer as young as he used to be, obviously as time goes on singing isn’t as easy as it once

was. “I damaged my voice years ago and it is harder to keep it going but it still works,” he admits. “I haveto exercise my voice a lot these days to keep it running.”

Wicked World, from Martin’s latest album “The Third Cage” with Dario Mollo:

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As well as being a singer, Tony is a talented musician. Able to play a wide variety of instruments, includingbass, drums, violin, keyboards, harmonica, and even the bagpipes and panpipes. He takes the term ‘solo’artist seriously, playing most of the parts on his solo albums. His latest effort, “Book Of Shadows”, is

around 2/3 done, but is currently on ice. “Book of shadows got put on hold of course because it’s a soloalbum and solo albums are the worst because you are too close to it and its never perfect,” Tony says. “Butapart from that you still have to pay the bills and so I do other projects too and that takes me away from

the solo album. But I do intend to have all those re recorded and released.”

The other project fans had been waiting for was Silver Horses. Tony has said in interviews it consisted of‘beautiful bluesy stuff, a kind of Led Zeppelin thing’ and we could expect it in 2013, but plans seem to

have stalled. “Silver Horses is dead in the water right now. It turned nasty because they tried to release itwithout having the rights and contracts in place and we are fighting over the way forward,” he explains,adding how much of a shame it is. “As things are we don’t have a release, but we are still working on it and

maybe we can recover it, but it doesn’t feel the same now.” [Since the interview Tony got in touch sayingthere may be a way forward, but nothing in the way of definites.]

While that must be annoying, it probably doesn’t compare to the fact that most of Tony‘s back catalogue

just isn’t available anymore. “It is very frustrating that all my songs are out of print now. I’m verydisappointed of course.” As mentioned before, only one of Tony‘s album form his time in Sabbath isavailable, and much of his other material is equally scarce. In today’s climate, self-releasing has become

popular, is that something Tony‘s considered to get his previous work out there? “I have talked to variouspeople about releasing it again and there is some interest but I think the moment has passed now.”

So, despite all the ups and downs, there seems to be little in the way of regrets. “I cant imagine what I

could change, unless I knew then what I know now.Then I could have changed a few things but I guess itwould otherwise be the same.” In this writer’s opinion, if Sabbath had worked under a different name,perhaps just as the Iommi band, Tony‘s legacy might be more well known. “I don’t know what would

have happened if the band was not called Black Sabbath, no idea.” Seemingly not interested in playing thewhat if game, Tony is far more focused on himself. ”I am very much an independent artist and I have manythings I wish to do still, so in the next few years there should be a lot of Tony Martin related things

happening.”

So all in all, Tony is a happy man doing his own thing. But there’s still one question that needs answering;why were you known as ‘The Cat’? When I was in a band called Orion we played Wrexham festival with

Motörhead and Twisted Sister, and a review in Melody Maker said that band was pretty good but had asinger that looks like Catweasle…”

Tony Martin – Facebook Page

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