Tony Iommi has revealed that he felt Eddie Van Halen was close to dying by the way he had written his last email to him.
The Black Sabbath guitarist had been friends with Van Halen ever since their bands first toured together many years ago. Eddie Van Halen sadly passed away from cancer in October 2020.
“I really miss him”
“Well, I knew it was a matter of time”, Iommi said in a recent interview.
The guitarist also added, “But he did contact me. And I could tell. The last email was just before he went into hospital the last time and it was really… You know, some of the words were mixed up, he was obviously sedated or something. But that was the last one I had from him. I really miss him”.
Tony Iommi also revealed that whenever the opportunity presented itself, he and Van Halen often dined together. He also revealed that the pair would regularly complain about respective band mates.
“He’d be going on about Dave Roth, and I’d be going on around about (whoever),” he said. “We’d talk about music and talk about different things. P**s and moan about stuff, you know”.
Iommi also said that Eddie “idolised” his son Wolfgang, who according to Tony was also a regular topic of conversation.
“Eddie idolized him,” he revealed. Adding, “You know, he really did. We used to talk about Wolfie quite a lot. And when we played in L.A. last time, they all came. Wolfie and Alex and Eddie and the wives. I got some great photos with us all. It was brilliant”.
“What he did was just brilliant”
Iommi paid further tribute to his friend, saying that he could never play guitar in the virtuoso style of Eddie.
“No, in a word! I mean, he was so good, And he got absolutely amazing at that stuff.”
Iommi said, when asked did he ever play the guitar in the virtuoso style of Van Halen.
He also added, “But again, when somebody’s done it, to me, I don’t want to be going around doing it; ‘Oh, Eddie Van Halen already does it.’ But I couldn’t actually do it. To be honest, it just wasn’t my style of playing. What he did was just brilliant”.
Tony Iommi had also recently expressed his frustration over the band’s release of “Slapback”, a demo recorded by the band when they were fronted by Ronnie James-Dio in 1979.
You can read more about that here.
