Black Sabbath Reflect On "Surreal" Live Aid Performance

Guitarist Tony Iommi looks back...

*Black Sabbath* have looked back on their "surreal" role in the Live Aid concerts.

The metal icons reformed to play the charity concert, hitting the Philadelphia leg on July 14th.

The brief re-union marked the first time that the band's classic line up - Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, and Ozzy Osbourne - had appeared together since 1978, when their mercurial frontman departed.

Chatting to SiriusXM for Live Aid Look Back: 35 Years Later, guitarist Tony Iommi labelled the wired performance "surreal" and claimed Black Sabbath only rehearsed for an hour beforehand.

He said: "It was great. It was great being with the guys again. It was a bit surreal, to be honest, because, basically, I had been in the studio working. It was an unusual thing for me to come from the studio, and then suddenly, here we are, in the next couple of days, on stage in front of all the people."

Black Sabbath only got 60 minutes to rehearse, with the resulting performance containing a ragged energy. Iommi continues: “We’d never really done that before. We’d always sort of rehearsed for a proper show for a while...”

“But this was a quick rehearsal for an hour or whatever it was, and then the next day, of course, on stage. So it was a bit nerving, because you don’t know how things are gonna go with the equipment and all this stuff. We hadn’t been on stage together for so long. You have to sort of suck it and see what’s gonna happen.”

Watch an archive performance of Black Sabbath performing 'Paranoid' at Live Aid below.

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