“During recording,” laughs Tony lommi, shaking his head, “you sometimes get these brainwaves. ‘Oh, yes, let’s do that.' We once decided to have bagpipes on an album,” he laughs. Bagpipes? This is not Stuart Adamson we’re talking to, but Tony lommi of Black Sabbath. The guy with the trademarked long black hair and mustache continues. “We wanted this drone on a track, and I bought some bagpipes. I had this Scottish guy send them out. I started puffing on them, and couldn’t get a thing out of them. Nothing. So I sent them back, and said they were broke. He sent them back and said that they were OK. I tried again. Nothing. I even got to the stage where I was going to hook them up to a vaccum cleaner, to see if it had got the wind. It was disastrous. They sit in the cupboard now.”

The bagpipes have some company on the shelf. Also cluttering the lommi closets are the sitar, the 18th century harp, and the banjo that all seemed like really good ideas in the recording studio.