Tony Iommi

All Music Guide:

Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi is one of only two guitarists (the other being Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page) that can take full credit for pioneering the mammoth riffs of heavy metal. Born on February 19, 1948, in Birmingham, England, Iommi picked up the guitar after being inspired by the likes of Hank Marvin & the Shadows as a teenager. By 1967, Iommi had played with several blues-based rock bands, and formed a group (Earth) with three old acquaintances from his school days -- bassist Terry "Geezer" Butler, drummer Bill Ward, and signer John "Ozzy" Osbourne. But Iommi's musical career was nearly derailed prematurely when he suffered a horrible accident at a sheet metal factory, when a machine sliced off the tips of the fingers on his right hand. Depressed and figuring that his guitar playing days were behind him, a friend turned him onto gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt (who lost use of two fingers in a Gypsy caravan campfire accident), inspiring Iommi to give the six-string another go, with soft plastic tips attached to the ends of his fingers. Shortly thereafter, Iommi received a tempting offer to join Jethro Tull's band in 1968, which he reluctantly accepted. After only a single performance with Tull (playing the track "Song for Jeffrey" on the Rolling Stones' never-aired TV special "Rock & Roll Circus"), Iommi split from Tull to return back to his pals in Earth.

With another band already playing around England by the name of Earth, Iommi & co. were forced to change their name, taking "Black Sabbath" from the classic horror movie. With the name switch came a change in musical direction -- the band would explore dark lyrical subjects, while the music would be repetitive, plodding, and H-E-A-V-Y. In the process, Sabbath created the blueprint for heavy metal with such incredibly influential, all-time classic releases as their 1969 self-titled debut, 1971's Paranoid and Master of Reality, 1972's Vol. 4, and 1973's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, becoming one of the world's top hard rock bands in the process. Iommi's guitar playing propelled such metal standards as "Black Sabbath," "N.I.B.," "Paranoid," "Iron Man," "War Pigs," "Into the Void," and "Children of the Grave," which boast some of the most recognizable guitar riffs in rock history. But by the mid- to late '70s, constant touring and drug abuse began to fracture the band, resulting in several uninspired albums and Osbourne's exit by 1979, which led to a revolving door of singers coming and going over the years (with sometimes Iommi being the only original member remaining).

After keeping the Sabbath name alive with several inspired non-Osbourne releases (1980's Heaven & Hell, 1981's The Mob Rules), and more than a few missteps, the original Sabbath lineup reunited for several highly successful tours in the late '90s, making new Sabbath fans out of a whole legion of people too young to have caught the band in their '70s heyday. And although a few Sabbath albums from the '80s and '90s could have arguably been considered Tony Iommi solo albums (1986's Seventh Star was labeled a Sabbath album at the last moment by Warner Bros.), he issued his first true solo release in the form of 2000's Iommi. The ten-track disc featured many of rock's top names lending their vocal talents (Henry Rollins, Dave Grohl, Billy Corgan, Phil Anselmo, and even Osbourne, among others), receiving favorable reviews upon release. While Sabbath's 1999 world tour was supposed to be their swan song, the group announced to the delight of their fans that they would be headlining the 2001 edition of Ozzfest.

Wikipedia:

Anthony Frank "Tony" Iommi (born 19 February 1948) is an English guitarist and songwriter. Best known as a founder member of the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, he is the group's sole continual member.

Born in Birmingham, England, Iommi worked at a factory where he lost the tips of two of his fingers in an accident. The first major band he played in was Jethro Tull, after which he co-founded Black Sabbath. In 2000, he released his first solo album Iommi, followed by 2005's Fused, which featured his former bandmate Glenn Hughes. After releasing Fused, he joined Heaven & Hell, which disbanded after Ronnie James Dio's death in 2010.

Iommi is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential rock guitarists of all time. A prolific riff-maker, he was ranked number 25 in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".

In 2011, he published an autobiographic work, titled Iron Man: My Journey through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath.

Childhood [edit]

Anthony Frank Iommi was born on 19 February 1948, the only child to Anthony Frank and Sylvia Maria Iommi (née Velenti). Born and raised in Handsworth, Birmingham, Tony Iommi initially wanted to play the drums, but due to the noise they produce he picked up the guitar as a teenager, after being inspired by the likes of Hank Marvin and The Shadows. He plays guitar left-handed. In an industrial accident at the age of 17 on his last day of work in a sheet metal factory, he lost the tips of the middle and ring finger of his right hand.

After the injury Iommi contemplated abandoning the guitar. However, his manager encouraged him to pursue music by playing a recording of famous jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. As Iommi would later write:

My friend said, "Listen to this guy play," and I went, "No way! Listening to someone play the guitar is the very last thing I want to do right now!" But he kept insisting and he ended up playing the record for me. I told him I thought it was really good and then he said, "You know, the guy's only playing with two fingers on his fretboard hand because of an injury he sustained in a terrible fire." I was totally knocked back by this revelation and was so impressed by what I had just heard that I suddenly became inspired to start trying to play again.

To compensate for his injury Iommi attempted to learn to play right-handed, but eventually returned to left-handed playing and strung his guitars with lighter strings and made thimbles to extend his fingers.

Musical career [edit]

Pre-Black Sabbath [edit]

Iommi had played in several blues/rock bands, the earliest of which was the Rockin' Chevrolets from 1964 to 1965. The band had regular bookings and when they were offered work in Germany, Iommi decided to leave his factory job to take up the opportunity. From 1966 to 1967 Iommi played in a band named The Rest. This was the first time Iommi played with future Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward.

From January 1968 until July 1968 Iommi was guitarist in Mythology, with Ward joining a month later in mid-February. In May 1968 police raided the group's practice flat and found cannabis resin, which resulted in a £15 fine and a two-year conditional discharge for Iommi, Ward, Smith and Marshall. Mythology split up after a gig in Silloth on 13 July 1968.

In August 1968 at the same time as the breakup of Mythology, a band called Rare Breed also broke up. Rare Breed vocalist John "Ozzy" Osbourne and rhythm guitarist Terry "Geezer" Butler joined with Iommi and Ward from Mythology and also slide guitarist Jimmy Phillips and saxophonist Alan "Aker" Clarke. The six-piece band, now with Butler as bassist, were named the Polka Tulk Blues Company. After just two gigs (the last of which was at the Banklands Youth Club in Workington), Phillips and Clarke were dismissed from the band, which soon after shortened its name to Polka Tulk.

Earth and Jethro Tull [edit]

Iommi, Butler, Ward and Osbourne renamed the band Earth in September 1968. They carried on under this moniker until December 1968 when Iommi briefly departed to join Jethro Tull. However after only one performance (an appearance on "The Rolling Stones Rock & Roll Circus" in which the band mimed "A Song for Jeffrey", which Ian Anderson sang live), Iommi was back with Earth once more.

Iommi on his brief working relationship with Jethro Tull vocalist Ian Anderson:

I learned quite a lot from him, I must say. I learned that you have got to work at it. You have to rehearse. When I came back and I got the band (Earth) back together, I made sure that everybody was up early in the morning and rehearsing. I used to go and pick them up. I was the only one at the time that could drive. I used to have to drive the bloody van and get them up at quarter to nine every morning; which was, believe me, early for us then. I said to them, "This is how we have got to do it because this is how Jethro Tull did it." They had a schedule and they knew that they were going to work from this time till that time. I tried that with our band and we got into doing it. It worked. Instead of just strolling in at any hour, it made it more like we were saying, "Let’s do it!"

Black Sabbath [edit]

In August 1969, following the confusion with another group named Earth (who had minor success in England), the group renamed themselves Black Sabbath. His aforementioned factory accident affected the Black Sabbath sound later on, as by 1970 Iommi had detuned his guitar from E to D# (a minor second down), and from 1971's Master of Reality album, had detuned it further to C# (a minor third down), in order to ease the tension on his fingers. Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler did the same to match Iommi. Sabbath were among the first bands to detune, and the technique became a mainstay of heavy metal music. Iommi combined blues-like guitar solos and dark, minor-key riffing with a revolutionary high-gain, heavily distorted tone with his use of a modified treble-boosting effect-pedal and a Gibson SG, as well as plugging his guitar into his amp's bass input.

By the mid-1970s, incessant drug usage, managerial problems and constant touring had taken its toll on the band and Ozzy Osbourne was fired in 1979. Osbourne was replaced with Ronnie James Dio, the former vocalist for Rainbow. With Dio, Black Sabbath produced Heaven and Hell, prior to replacing Bill Ward with Vinny Appice. With Iommi and Geezer Butler the only original members, this line-up produced Mob Rules. During the '80s and '90s Iommi rebuilt the band with many lineup changes with vocalists including Ian Gillan (formerly of Deep Purple), Glenn Hughes, Tony Martin and Ray Gillen. After Ian Gillan departed the band in 1984 Iommi recorded his first solo album, entitled Seventh Star. The album featured Glenn Hughes (formerly of Deep Purple) on vocals, but due to label pressures, it was billed as a release by "Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi."

In 1992 Iommi appeared at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, playing four songs with the remaining members of Queen and other guest artists. In the following year Iommi teamed up with fellow Black Country band Diamond Head and co-wrote the song "Starcrossed (Lovers in the Night)" for their 1993 Death and Progress album. At Ozzy's "farewell" concert at Costa Mesa in 1992, Dio refused to perform and abruptly left the band. As a result Rob Halford was recruited to perform as the vocalist for two gigs (Halford also sang at one of the dates on the 2004 Ozzfest tour, when Ozzy couldn't perform due to bronchitis). Following Osbourne's solo set, the show concluded with Ozzy bringing out the other members of the original Black Sabbath line-up for a 4-song reunion.

Black Sabbath went on to record two further albums with Tony Martin before the original line-up reunited as a touring band in 1997. While Bill Ward played at the two initial reunion shows at Birmingham NEC in December 1997, he was not present for the following two reunion tours, his second absence due to a heart attack. Ward was replaced by Mike Bordin and then Vinny Appice.

Rob Halford, vocalist for Judas Priest, when filling in for Ozzy Osbourne during an August 2004 concert in Philadelphia, introduced Tony Iommi to the audience as "The man who invented the heavy metal riff".

On 11 November 2011, the original band members announced that they were reuniting and recording a new album.

Solo career [edit]

In 2000, Iommi released his first legitimate solo album, titled Iommi. The album featured several guest vocalists including Ian Astbury, Henry Rollins, Serj Tankian, Dave Grohl, Billy Corgan, Phil Anselmo, Peter Steele and Ozzy Osbourne. Also in the vocal mix was Skin (of Skunk Anansie). In late 2004 Iommi's second solo album was released, entitled The 1996 DEP Sessions. This album was originally recorded in 1996 but was never officially released. However, a copy with a drum track by Dave Holland was available as a bootleg called Eighth Star. Glenn Hughes performed vocals on the album and he furthered his collaboration with Hughes with the release of his third solo album, Fused. Released on 12 July 2005, John Mellencamp drummer Kenny Aronoff completed the trio on the album.

Iommi has signed with Mike Fleiss's movie production company Next Films to score a series of horror films entitled Black Sabbath.

Heaven & Hell [edit]

In October 2006 it was reported that Iommi would tour with Ronnie James Dio, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward again, but under the moniker Heaven & Hell. Later it was announced that Ward had decided not to participate and Vinny Appice was hired as his replacement. Rhino Records released "The Dio Years" (under the 'Black Sabbath' moniker) album on 3 April 2007. The album showcased older tracks with Dio and also included three brand new songs recorded with Dio and Appice.

The band started an American tour in April 2007 with Megadeth and Down as opening acts. The tour finished in November in England with the prospect of an album to follow in 2008. During this period the band's show at the New York Radio City Music Hall was released as both a live DVD and CD with a vinyl release in the UK in 2008. During the summer of 2008 the band embarked on the Metal Masters Tour along with Judas Priest, Motörhead and Testament. The band's first and only studio album, The Devil You Know, was released on 28 April 2009.

In November 2008 Iommi had a star revealed on the Birmingham Walk of Stars. Dio died of stomach cancer in May 2010 and on 14 June 2010, Iommi announced that Heaven & Hell would perform a one-off tribute to Ronnie James Dio at the High Voltage Festival, London on 24 July 2010. This was the band's last performance under the name.

Eurovision Song Contest [edit]

Iommi wrote the song "Lonely Planet", to be sung by Gor Sujyan for Armenia in the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest, which will be watched by an estimated 120 million people. Iommi is very proud of this song and is hoping that it will be very successful, though is worried that it will be "slagged [off], like everything else does". The song will compete in the second semi-final on 16 May in Malmö (Sweden) for a place in the final on 18 May, where it will compete against the likes of Germany's Cascada and the United Kingdom's Bonnie Tyler, among many others.

Personal life [edit]

Iommi has been married four times.

During the mid-1980s Iommi was romantically involved with, and briefly engaged to, Lita Ford. He co-produced her album The Bride Wore Black, which to date remains unreleased. Ford said in a 1989 Kerrang! interview, "there's a certain amount of bad blood between Tony Iommi and I."

Iommi, along with fellow Sabbath members Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler, is a passionate supporter of Aston Villa, his home town football club.

Illness [edit]

In early 2012, Iommi was diagnosed with early stages of lymphoma, for which he has undergone successful treatment as of January 2013. Black Sabbath's 2013 tour dates have been arranged so that Iommi is free to return to the UK once every six weeks to have an antibody administered.

Legacy and influence [edit]

Tony Iommi is widely considered to be one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 25 in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" Joel McIver ranked him the greatest metal guitarist of all time. In 2012, readers of Guitar World ranked Iommi the 7th-greatest rock guitarist of all time. Editors of the same magazine ranked him the greatest heavy metal guitarist of all time.

Equipment [edit]

Iommi's deep and heavy sound was partly born out of necessity—his "revolutionary signature sound" being the result of the accident and the subsequent downtuning by three semi-tones. He said that his "extreme volume" was likewise necessary, "because we were fed up with people talking over us while we were playing."

Guitars [edit]

"It was the same with 24-fret necks. I put money into a company because I couldn't get guitars built the way I wanted them. I had to prove it to the manufacturers. So I put money into John Birch guitars, and he built my guitars. I had to prove it worked. All of this was done by experimenting and trial and error. I paid for that myself in the early days to show it could be done. And I paid for all these companies to get the benefits nowadays. Back then they all said it couldn't be done. I also used locking nuts years and years ago without a tremolo, before locking nuts were the norm."

Built in Birmingham by luthier John Diggins sometime between 1975 and 1978, the guitar was first used for overdubs on the 'Heaven and Hell' album and later became one of Iommi's main guitars. The guitar is equipped with a 24 fret neck with custom cross inlays, four control knobs (three of which are functional), a disconnected second output jack, a hole for a master volume knob on the pick guard covered up with a black stopper and a highly distressed finish. He had two more built for him. One was made to the same specifications of his first Jaydee SG with a red finish. Another one was made and used during the Born Again era, which can be seen on the music videos for "Trashed" and "Zero the Hero." The differences are the finish, headstock, use of a stoptail bridge, and use of rail humbuckers, as opposed to the 18-pole humbuckers on his two other versions.

A 1965 Gibson SG Special in red finish fitted with a Gibson P-90 pickup in the bridge position and a custom-wound John Birch Simplux, a P-90 style single coil in the neck position. The guitar became Iommi's main instrument after his white Stratocaster's neck pickup failed during the recording of Black Sabbath's self-titled album.

The guitar was built by the Gibson Custom Shop in Nashville after Iommi's specifications and finished in 1997. The guitar is one of two made as prototypes for the Gibson Custom Shop Limited Edition Iommi Special SG. The guitar features a neck with 24 frets and four control knobs, of which only two are active (much like his old Jaydee Custom guitar).

On August 11, 2010, Iommi announced on his website that this guitar was stolen from the RJD tribute show that Heaven & Hell performed at High Voltage on July 24, 2010. He is asking that anyone with information or leads let them know. He is offering a reward for its safe return.

A stock Epiphone SG signature model in black finish fitted with P-94 pickups which is a version of the Gibson P-90 pickup designed to fit into existing humbucker housings.

A regular left-handed version of the SG fitted with two extra frets to give Iommi the full two octaves which he prefers. The guitar is equipped with his signature pickup. Iommi was the first guitarist to have a signature pickup designed and built by Gibson. He also has another model fitted with a Floyd Rose floating tremolo.

"I also came up with a guitar with interchangeable pickups you could slot in from the back. It was a John Birch guitar. We only sold one, and Roy Orbison bought it. I came up with that years ago and the first one was made for me to use in the studio. At the time I had a lot of problems tuning guitars because of the neck and the light strings on the Gibson. I decided to come up with a guitar that I could use in the studio with different sounds so that I didn't have to keep changing guitars. You could slot a pickup in it and get a Fender sound, then slot a different pickup in it and get a Gibson sound. That was the idea. I did use it for a while, but they were too expensive to mass-produce."

Iommi played a Fender Stratocaster that was spraypainted white by Iommi and his father during the early days with Black Sabbath. However, the pickup malfunctioned during the recording of their first album so Iommi quickly turned to his backup Gibson SG to finish the record. Currently Iommi owns two Stratocasters, one of which has been modified with his signature pickup in the bridge position.

Custom built for Iommi by BC Rich. Features include Dimarzio pickups, two built-in preamps, scalloped fretboard and Iommi's trademark cross inlays. This guitar can be seen in Tony's Star Licks Video, for Star Licks Productions along with a left handed BC Rich mockingbird.

A rare left-handed version of the jazz guitarist Barney Kessel artist model, built sometime in the first half of the 1960s.

Originally a regular right-handed version in red finish that was converted by Epiphone to a left-handed version to fit Iommi.

Effects [edit]

Amplifiers [edit]