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In their early days, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin maintained a friendly rivalry, with six of the eight musicians familiar with each other through the Birmingham music scene. Zeppelin drummer John Bonham even jammed with Sabbath at a few of their early shows, much to the chagrin of Sabs sticksman Bill Ward.
When Zeppelin took off, Bonham swiftly garnered a reputation as a wildman, but that didn’t stop Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi – who himself had no compunctions about getting into scuffles with journalists who badmouthed Sabbath in the press – from asking the drummer to be best man at his wedding to Susan Snowdon, a wannabe singer and a relative of the British royal photographer, Lord Snowdon, in November 1973. It was, perhaps, asking for trouble.
“I think it worried everybody, though my wife was fine about it,” Iommi told Classic Rock in 2014. “Of course, the night before my wedding we went out in Birmingham for my stag. It was getting on for two o’clock, and we went to this one last club. We go in there and John orders 12 bottles of champagne. I thought he was going to treat everybody in the club, but he turned to me and said, ‘Go on, drink it – that’s yours.’
"I said, ‘I won’t be fucking get married if I drink all that!’ So he went along the bar and drank 12 glasses, one from each bottle. Within 30 minutes, he was gone – absolutely gone. I eventually got him home and put him in the hallway, up against the radiator. I said, ‘You’re not going to turn up tomorrow, are you?’ And he just slurred and stuck his thumb up.
"The next day, he turned up alright, his suit on, his top hat and tails. I’d literally just got out of bed. Of course, he had some coke on him. He said, ‘Here you are – have one of these.’ And that’s how the day went. The embarrassing thing was when we were in the church. My wife’s family were quite well-to-do.
"And on my side there was our band and other musicians. And they’re all nipping out of the church, three or four of them at a time. My wife’s mother said, ‘What’s the matter with your friends, all coming and going all the time?’ They were behind the church doing coke…"
Despite the snowblind element in the congregation, Iommi and Snowden's ceremony passed without further incident, with the guitarist's rather lovely acoustic instrumental Fluff playing as the bride walked down the aisle. The track was named in tribute to British DJ Alan "Fluff" Freeman, one of the few UK broadcasters to champion the band, who used another Sabbath instrumental, Laguna Sunrise, as the intro music for his BBC show.
Unfortunately, the union lasted only three years, despite Snowdon's wealthy father inviting the newlyweds to move into the plush surroundings of Kilworth House in North Kilworth, Leicestershire, a 19th century mansion originally built for the county's High Sheriff.
It was here that Iommi read several books by the occult writer Lobsang Rampa (an Englishman who claimed to be the reincarnation of a Tibetan monk) and learned to astrally project. But that's another story.
On this day in 1973 - John Bonham at Tony Iommi's first wedding, where he attended as his best man. from r/ledzeppelin
