Tony Iommi has been talking about mortality. The Black Sabbath guitarist, who is seventy eight, told The Telegraph that Ozzy Osbourne's death in July has left him thinking about how long he has and about what the band leaves behind, and Chaoszine reports the interview.
The two of them were at school together in Aston before any of this existed, which is the part that makes his reckoning different from an outsider's. He is not assessing a catalogue. He is the last of the four still working, and the person who was there when the first riff was written is now the person being asked what it all added up to.
Both of the things we have written about Sabbath this autumn sit behind this interview. The film of the last show reaches cinemas on 28 October, shot seventeen days before Osbourne died, and three of the four had said yes to one more album, which came to nothing.
Iommi has outlived a cancer diagnosis, a band that ended twice and now the singer he started with. He does not appear to be winding down: the interview is a man taking stock rather than stopping.