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Tony Iommi

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Tony Iommi is an English guitarist who founded Black Sabbath in 1968. He was born in 1948 in Birmingham, the child of Italian immigrants, and went to school with the future singer Ozzy Osbourne. He chose guitar after being inspired by Hank Marvin of The Shadows. On his last day of work at a sheet-metal factory, at the age of seventeen, he lost the tips of two fingers of his right hand, his fretting hand, because he plays left-handed. A colleague let him hear a record by Django Reinhardt, who also played with two fingers. Iommi then made fingertip prostheses out of plastic and kept playing.

Music and breakthrough

The accident shaped his sound. He tuned his guitar lower, used light strings and many power chords, and sought out the tritone interval, the devil's interval, for a heavier and darker sound. On Master of Reality from 1971 he tuned up to three semitones below standard, as in Children of the Grave. The bassist Geezer Butler followed his example. In this way he combined bluesy solos, dark riffs in the minor and a heavily distorted sound. Songs such as Paranoid, War Pigs and The Wizard are regarded as examples of his riffs. Black Sabbath was one of the first groups to use low tunings, a technique that became commonplace in heavy metal.

Influence

Iommi played on all of Black Sabbath's records, even when the singers changed: Ronnie James Dio replaced Osbourne in 1979. His first real solo album Iommi appeared in 2000. He is known as the Godfather of Heavy Metal.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Children of the Grave from Master of Reality and notice how low and heavy the guitar sounds. Try to hear how the riff keeps returning.

Discography

Studio albums

Categories: Artists