Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi says Hard Rock Café won’t let him have his favourite guitar back

nme.com:

Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has claimed that the Hard Rock Café won’t let him have one of his favourite guitars back, despite agreeing that they would.The metal legend has told Guitar World that his beloved 1964 Gibson ‘Monkey’ SG Special, which he played on the early Sabbath albums, has been in possession of the restaurant chain, and now they are reluctant to let him have it back.“The guy who used to buy memorabilia for the Hard Rock came to England and visited me,” Iommi explained. “He wanted to buy some stuff and I said it should be fine.

I’d retired the Monkey SG because it was too valuable to me; I didn’t want to take it on the road and risk it getting damaged.”“He offered to buy it and it seemed like a good idea because the guitar could be displayed for people to see and kept safe, instead of sitting in a case somewhere in my storage.

But the deal was if I ever wanted it back, I could let him know and buy it back for the same price. It seemed fair enough, a good deal.”However, the musician revealed that the individual in question has since passed away, and the deal he made is now seemingly lost. “We tried to get in touch with Hard Rock to get it back and they knew nothing about the deal,” he added.The Hard Rock did, however, commission a run of replicas of the Monkey SG in 2021, including a limited edition batch that included the knicks and stickers of the original model.Elsewhere, Iommi and Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward shared a photo of themselves together in September, while at the Lord Mayor’s reception for International Birmingham Day.That apparently impromptu meeting came amid rumours of the possibility of a one-off reunion of the legendary heavy metal band.