The 1970s saw serious rock and roll excess, with many of the top bands at the time indulging heavily in alcohol and hard drugs. One of these bands was Black Sabbath…

But they weren’t the only ones. Apparently, when Sabbath and Eagles were recording their respective albums, Technical Ecstasy and Hotel California at adjacent studios at Miami’s Criteria in 1976, Sabbath entered the Eagles recording room to find the faders “so clogged with cocaine they wouldn’t move”.

And in a recent interview with Classic Rock, Tony Iommi explains how the drug habit of those around him didn’t cease even on certain special days…

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Sabbath’s drug habits reportedly escalated when they headed to America in the early ‘70s. The band reportedly racked up a £55,000 cocaine bill while recording their fourth album, Vol. 4 in 1972.

But those habits came home with them, and were evident when Tony Iommi married his first wife, Susan, in November 1973.

As the story goes, his mother-in-law-to-be began to wonder why Iommi’s friends kept disappearing from the church during the wedding day.

“They were round the back sniffing and snorting!” Iommi laughs. “America changed us.”

In other news, Tony Iommi recently revealed the gruesome truth of what happens if he plays guitar without his prosthetic fingertips, which he wears after an accident decades ago which saw him lose the tops of two of his fingers.

“One time, years ago, when it did come off, I fretted a string and it sliced right through my finger. There was blood all over the place!” he recalled.

Tony Iommi is set to release his first solo album in 21 years, From the Dark, later this month. Check out its lead single, World Alone, below:

Sam is the Associate News Editor for Guitar.com and MusicTech. Thoroughly immersed in music culture for the majority of his life, Sam has played guitar for 20 years, studied music technology and production at university, and also written for the likes of Guitar World, Total Guitar, Metal Hammer and MusicRadar.