Tony Iommi
Born Anthony Frank Iommi, 19 February 1948, Birmingham, England. A blues/jazz-influenced guitarist, Iommi was eager to escape the mundanity of industrial Birmingham and his job repairing typewriters. A number of small-time bands, including Polka Tulk and Earth, gradually led to the formation of Black Sabbathin 1969, with Iommi on guitar, Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Terry "Geezer" Butler (bass) and Bill Ward(drums). It was with Black Sabbath that Iommi established his international reputation as a guitarist of skill and invention. The Black Sabbath sound was built on his devastating riffing, delivered with a fuzzy, distorted guitar tone that became his trademark. He was, and still is, the godfather of the heavy metal riff. Iommi has a unique soloing and rhythm style, and sports an unusual set of plastic finger extensions on his right hand as a result of an accident (he is left-handed). A tall, dark, moustachioed man, he is also famed for his lack of movement on stage. Personal differences between Iommi and Osbourne contributed to the latter's departure from Black Sabbath in January 1979, to be replaced by American Ronnie James Di0. After Dio's own departure in 1982, Black Sabbath entered a highly unstable phase, and it was Iommi who held the band together and kept the Black Sabbath name alive. In 1986, Seventh Star was released under the heading "Black Sabbath Featuring Tony Iommi", according to record company wishes. Iommi, however, had intended it to be a solo effort, giving the songs a different emphasis to those from a pure Black Sabbath album. The guitarist finally got to release his own solo album almost fifteen years later. It was a suitably star-studded affair, with younger devotees such as Billy Corgan, Henry Rollins, Billy Idol and Dave Grohl contributing and performing their own material.
(Another brief Biography:)
Anthony Iommi…a.k.a. Tony Iommi, is the man responsible for the riffs that form the very backbone of that mighty metal entity we all know and love as Black Sabbath.
Ironically, the first notable "milestone" in Tony's guitar playing life was actually a pretty dark one. It happened when he was 18 and the band he played in had just landed a tour of Germany. This meant he could finally kiss his dreary factory job goodbye and pursue his dreams of becoming a professional musician. It should've been one of the greatest moments of his young life but then, out of the blue, disaster struck. On Tony's very last day at work, he caught his right hand in a machine press and cut off the ends of his middle and ring fingers.
"I literally pulled them off," he recalls with an understandable grimace. "I instinctively pulled my hand away from the machine and that ripped the ends off the two fingers that were caught in it. To make it even worse, I wasn't even going to go to work that day! My mum made me go, she told me it was the 'right' thing to do."
After trying unsuccessfully to play right-handed, Tony came up with the rather brilliant idea of making himself "thimbles" for the tips of his two damaged fingers. He made them by melting down plastic Fairy Liquid (an English brand of washing-up liquid) bottles, shaping them and then putting leather ends on them so he could grip the strings better. Then, despite not being able to feel the ends of his "thimble" wearing fingers, Tony set about relearning how to play and, in view of the massively influential body of work he went on to produce.
The next important milestone in Tony's life was hooking up with Geezer Butler (bass), Bill Ward (drums) and Ozzy Osbourne (vocals) in 1968. Ironically, at the time, Ozzy and Tony were hardly the best of friends as they were both in different street gangs in the Birmingham suburb of Aston.
When the foursome first joined forces they were a jazz/blues outfit performing under the rather odd moniker of the Polka Tulk Blues Band. The band's name soon changed to Earth but its music didn't really start to change until Tony had left the fold for a while and then returned. Tony was a member of Jethro Tull for a short while and can be seen playing with Ian Anderson and Co. on The Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus. Before long though, Tony returned to Earth.
Earth soon found out that there was another band of the same name so they changed their moniker to Black Sabbath after seeing a poster for a Boris Karloff movie bearing that title. Then, along with their new, gloomier name came music that matched - one of the first songs being the eponymously titled, "Black Sabbath."
In addition to all his recent Sabbath related activities, Tony has also been keeping himself extremely busy elsewhere. He' just completed his first ever solo LP and has had two "Tony Iommi Signature" guitar products released on the market - a Laney amp (the GHT100TI) and a Gibson pickup. The latter is particularly notable, as it's the first time Gibson has ever done a signature pickup. And, as if all that's not enough, the amiable axeman has somehow found time in his hectic schedule to pen a highly popular monthly column entitled "Heaven & Hell" for the world's best-selling guitar magazine, Guitar World.
As founding member of Black Sabbath and architect of such classic riffs as Black Sabbath, Paranoid, War Pigs, Iron Man and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Tony
Iommi was - and is - the acknowledged progenitor of heavy rock guitar. His unique style and much copied sound have had a profound influence on succeeding generations of guitarists, and many of the leading bands of today owe more than a passing allegiance to the Black Sabbath sound as defined by Tony Iommi.
Were he to never pick up a guitar again, Tony Iommi's enduring musical legacy and rock legend status would still be secure. Fortunately, this issue is moot, as his contributions to the art and industry of music continue unabated. But there is much more to Tony Iommi - the man and the musician - than may ever be revealed when the story of Black Sabbath is told.
This, then, is Iommi.com - a communal resource for creators and consumers of music who share an appreciation for, or have been influenced in some way by, Tony Iommi.
Transcript of Tony in an interview with Mel Bradman
of the U.K.'s Times Online (2006)
BLACK SABBATH INTERVIEWS (audio/mp3)
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