Black Sabbath Tours Around Iommi’s Treatments

Like many people with lymphoma, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi will likely have to undergo treatment for the rest of his life.

He says, "When I'd finished the chemo and the radiotherapy, I went to see the doctor again for my regular blood tests. I said, 'So it's gone now?' And he said, 'No, it's not going to go. You're not going to get rid of it. But we can treat it and work with it'... He said there was a 30 percent chance of it going away, but I was probably going to have this for life. Now I get treatments to keep it from spreading... It takes a few hours, and it makes you feel a bit crap inside and a bit sick. But a couple weeks after, I start perking up again. So that's how we are working it with the shows. I go out, then come back and go into the hospital for more treatment, more blood tests and all the rest of the rubbish. And then we do it all over again."

Sabbath release 13, their reunion album with Ozzy Osbourne, on June 11th. Their North American tour starts on June 25th in suburban Houston.