Tony Iommi has described the making of Black Sabbath's last album, 13, as an awkward process in which the producer would only speak to one member of the band.
"Rick wouldn't talk to the others," he told Ian Danter of Planet Rock. "He talked to me and I'd have to tell them. I don't know what happened there."
The example he gives is a weekend off in Los Angeles. Rick Rubin phoned on the Friday asking for a song like "Planet Caravan" to record on the Monday. Iommi wrote one. "But nobody else in Black Sabbath knew. So, we got in there Monday, and Rick said, we're going to put this song down. Geezer went, what song? Tony's done a song here. We're going to put that down. Geezer went, I don't even know what it is. I don't know what key is."
They recorded it anyway. 13 came out in 2013, the first album in thirty five years with Iommi, Geezer Butler and Ozzy Osbourne on it, and it went to number one in Britain and America. Iommi's account explains something about why a record that sold like that has never quite been loved.