Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has revealed that he was the one who turned down producer Andrew Watt’s proposal to record a final Black Sabbath album with the band’s original lineup. The offer was pitched as a follow-up to the band’s 2013 album, “13.”
Iommi explained his reservations about working with Watt on such a project, touching on both the producer’s approach and his own feelings about revisiting the band’s original chemistry after “13.”
“I’d met Andrew Watt when he was producing Ozzy,” Iommi said. “He was very keen and a bit too excited. He also didn’t know what it was like working with the original Sabbath, working with Bill [drummer Bill Ward]. Also, we’d done 13, and I didn’t like the idea of: ‘Now here’s another album.'”
The reasoning behind Iommi’s decision becomes clearer when placed against the backdrop of Watt’s history with Ozzy Osbourne and the complicated legacy of Black Sabbath’s original lineup in the studio.
Watt built his relationship with Osbourne through two solo albums, “Ordinary Man” in 2020 and “Patient Number 9” in 2022, the latter of which went on to win a Grammy for Best Rock Album. That connection is what led him to approach Iommi in the early 2020s about the idea of a final Black Sabbath record featuring the band’s original members.
The proposal, however, ran into the same complications that had already made “13” a difficult project. Drummer Bill Ward was absent from that 2013 album after a contract dispute, leaving Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler to record with session drummer Brad Wilk instead. Iommi’s comments make clear that he had no appetite for wading through similar issues a second time. In his words, the producer didn’t fully grasp what it meant to work with Ward and the rest of the original band.
Iommi’s hesitation also reflected a broader reluctance to treat another Black Sabbath album as an inevitable next step. He had already delivered “13” as what many considered a fitting capstone to the band’s studio output. He was unwilling to revisit that chapter simply because a producer was eager to make it happen.
Notably, Iommi and Watt did not remain at odds professionally. Watt’s production work connected him closely enough to the Sabbath camp that Iommi himself later appeared on Osbourne’s “Patient Number 9,” marking the guitarist’s first appearance on one of Osbourne’s solo records. That collaboration stands in contrast to the shelved band project. It underscores that Iommi’s objection was specific to reviving Black Sabbath as a full unit rather than a rejection of working with Watt altogether.
