Tony Iommi explained how he had to fire Ozzy Osbourne from Black Sabbath back in 1979 for the sake of the band.

The musician candidly stated that the band was “falling apart” at that time, detailing how the members would spend more time apart. Iommi confessed to lying to the record label about how much work had actually been done.

“I think the major problem started from drugs,” he recently told Raised on Radio. “We’d been about for a while at that point and done a lot of touring. … And off we go to Los Angeles to do another album. And we had a house in L.A. … We were there for 11 months to rehearse in the house. We’d never done anything, basically. We came up with a lot of riffs and stuff, but we’d never actually done much as far as putting songs together.”

“I can say Ozzy was the first one to have to go, but it was hard,” he admitted.

Listen to the interview below.