The Metal Voice recently interviewed Body Count's guitarist, producer about the bands new album Merciless and he also spoke about his time producing Black Sabbath's Forbidden album (1995).
When asked about producing Black Sabbath's Forbidden and today's new remix of the album:
"Yeah it's pretty good actually. (Remix) I like it. I like it. BTW I'm on that (cover) my picture is coming out of the grave there with the hat. I'm right there with a hat turned backwards. So the band (Black Sabbath) didn't bring me in (to produce) Miles Copeland brought me in to do the record. So I went over there when I was between 20- 30 years old or something. I was like I'm going to bring Black Sabbath's sound up to date, they're gonna sound like Nirvana. Cozy Powell was the drummer and he came in with four drum sets and he played on each one for an hour. So he did this whole thing and I mixed the drums the way it was going to sound and he came in and he had a stopwatch. He was timing himself with a stopwatch. He said like Ernie I'm off right there. I'm like really? That's some interesting stuff I had never seen before, I'm from South Central so we didn't have stopwatches. (Laughs). So anyway we go through the whole thing and he listens to his drums and he hands me a tape and says. (You know I had his drums dried up a little bit and it wasn't the big massive sound that he had.) He (Cozy) says tomorrow make my drum sound like this, like okay I gotta figure this out now. (laughs) They wanted to change but they didn't want to change, they wanted to stay far from the course. So I wanted to change it a little more."
When asked how did he produce a legend like Tony Iommi?
"You don't, you just let him play. You get like Brian May (Queen) and Jeff Beck popping in the studio and you're saying to yourself why am I here? (laughs). He (Iommi) was a great guy. He was really nice to me and everything like that but the music didn't work out the way we wanted it to. But it was a good experience. It made me say to myself okay I'm accepted kind of in rock and roll. He was kind of in a place where they were kind of settled in what they were. So what I had the engineer put on the record and I played all through the record every song, I played guitar all the way through it. Then Tony came in the next day and said who played that last night? I said, I did. He said well I'm going to play my parts on it now, so it got him motivated to play more. So I thought that was kind of cool. Also he and Ozzy didn't get along (back then). I said you know you should do something with Ozzy cuz you guys are what it is. And after that he played OzzFest. Also at the studio (Producing the album) I got a cease and desist letter from Sharon (Osbourne) Tony (Iommi) said don't worry about that, she does that to everyone, she's just trying to scare you. I'm like well she's doing a damn good job. (Laughs)."
When asked about producing Tony Martin's vocals:
"Tony was good but you know the thing that Tony had to live with” He had to go against Ozzy and Dio and so he had to step into those shoes. So he had a thing. Tony would say well Dio would sung it like that. I'm like why are you gonna say that?
"When asked about his overall thoughts on Forbidden:
"It was a good record. If it wasn't Black Sabbath it would have been a great record but because it was Black Sabbath they had high expectations, it wasn't the record they expected. When people say it was a bad album whatever... I always say how many Black Sabbath records have you produced?"
Forbidden is the eighteenth studio album by Black Sabbath, released on June 5th, 1995. This recording saw the reunion of Black Sabbath's Tyr-era line-up from 1990, with the return of Neil Murray and Cozy Powell. It was the last album to feature Tony Martin on vocals and Geoff Nicholls on keyboards
The opening track, "The Illusion of Power", features Body Count member Ice-T delivering a spoken word part during the bridge
On March 22nd, 2024, the box set Anno Domini 1989–1995 was announced, collecting the four albums recorded with Tony Martin released under IRS Records. The box set, which was released on May 31st 2024, contains a full remix of Forbidden by Tony Iommi.
