For Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi, one thing stands out about the creative process of putting together the band's final album.
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Featuring a reunion of Black Sabbath's founding members, 13 was produced by Rick Rubin.
Although Rubin has had immense success with artists like the Beastie Boys, Aerosmith, Jay-Z, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and System of a Down, among others, Iommi described his partnership with Black Sabbath as "awkward."
Speaking to Planet Rock's Ian Dunter, Iommi recalled, "On our last Sabbath album we did with Rick Rubin, we didn't have time to absorb what we'd done. Because Rick wouldn't talk to the others. He talked to me and I'd have to tell them. I don't know what happened there."
Iommi recalled a bizarre incident in Los Angeles, in which Rubin unexpectedly asked him to write a song and didn't inform other band members of the last-minute song's creation.
"We were in Los Angeles, and I came back for the weekend off. Rick phoned me on the Friday and said, 'Oh, could you come up with a song like Planet Caravan to record on Monday?' I went, 'What?!' [He said] 'You come up with a song. [I went], 'Blimey!'
"So, I worked on this idea, and he said, 'We can record it Monday.' But nobody else [in the band] knew. So, we got in there Monday, and Rick said, 'We're going to put this song down'. Geezer went, 'What song?!' [Rubin said], 'Well, Tony's done a song here. We're going to put that down.' Geezer: 'I don't even know what it is. I don't know what the key is.' And that's sort of what happened, and we ended up putting it down. But it was such an awkward situation."
Perhaps there was method to the madness, as 13 debuted at No. 1 on the US Billboard 200 Chart. The 2013 album was the first Black Sabbath album to top the Billboard charts.
Despite its success, band members have not been publicly enthusiastic about the album.
In 2022, the late Ozzy Osbourne said of the album: "I didn't really get a charge from the album. Although Rick Rubin is a good friend of mine, I wasn't really... I was just singing. It was like stepping back in time, but it wasn't a glorious period. Though Geezer did a lot of lyric writing for me, which he's very, very good at. It wasn't an earth-shattering experience for me."
