Bev Bevan on voicing ex-Black Sabbath bandmate Tony Iommi’s autobiography: ‘We’ve had some great fun’

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The narrator for the audio version of Black Sabbath co-founder Tony Iommi’s autobiography will be familiar to longtime fans: It’s by old friend and former bandmate Bev Bevan, who rose to fame with the Move and Electric Light Orchestra.

Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven & Hell With Black Sabbath has already been updated through its paperback edition to include Iommi’s recent cancer battle. The tale now stretches to some 11 hours and 31 minutes in recorded form.

Bevan, however, says he had a ball. The drummer met Iommi around 1970 — when Bevan was still in his pre-ELO band the Move — and bonded over their love of “fast cars, loud music and beautiful girls,” he says, in an interview streamed via Bravewords.

Some 13 years later, Bevan was on the tail end of a multi-platinum run with Jeff Lynne in the Electric Light Orchestra, while Iommi was trying to rebuild Black Sabbath with bassist Geezer Butler and frontman Ian Gillan, of Deep Purple fame. When Iommi asked Bevan to join their tour, “it took me all of 30 seconds to say: ‘Yes,'” Bevan says. “That was a unique lineup. It was a great little band, and we had some real adventures, too.”

Bevan toured in support of 1983’s Top 40 album hit Born Again, and then headlined the legendary Reading Festival. He also appeared in a pair of Black Sabbath videos, “Trashed” and “Zero the Hero.”

That mutual history made Bevan an easy choice to do the voice work for Iommi’s autobiography.

“He wanted me to do it, rather than some actor,” Bevan says, “as I knew virtually every character in the book. It’s taken weeks to record it, and we’ve had some great fun doing it — especially taking off on all of those different accents. I just love the book.”

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