Comprehensive information and links about Tony Iommi

Tony Iommi (born February 19, 1948Tony Iommi is a guitarist from Birmingham, England, who is best known as a member of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath.

He picked up the guitar as a teenager, after being inspired by the likes of Hank Marvin and The Shadows. In an industrial accident in his youth on his last day of work in a factory, he lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his right hand - which, being left-handed, he uses to fret the strings of a guitar. At first he thought his days of playing guitar were over. However, his boss, who knew of his "night job" as a pub band guitar player, paid him a visit during his recovery. During the visit, his boss encouraged him to reconsider. He played a Django Reinhardt record which inspired Tony to pick up the guitar again (Reinhardt lost mobility in the third and fourth fingers of his fretting hand in a fire). After trying to learn to play right-handed, he instead strung his guitars with extra-light strings (which he created himself by intertwining banjo strings) and wore plastic covers that were made from bottles over those two fingers (which he covered with leather, so as he could grip the strings properly). His accident also had an impact on the Black Sabbath sound, after some time Tony detuned his guitar from E to C# (1 and 12 steps down) in order to ease the tension on his fingers, making Sabbath one of first bands to detune, now a mainstay of heavy metal music. Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler also tuned his guitar down to match Iommi's.

In 1967, Iommi had played in several bluesrock bands, and founded a new one named the Polka Tulk Blues Band with bassist Terry "Geezer" Butler, drummer Bill Ward (whom Iommi had been in bands with previously, for example Mythology), and the infamous John "Ozzy" Osbourne (whom Iommi had hit at school at least once). In August 1968 the band renamed themselves Earth and Iommi briefly left to play in Jethro Tull, however after only one performance Iommi (an appearance on "The Rolling Stones Rock'n'Roll Circus" the band mimed 'A Song For Jeffrey', but vocalist Ian Anderson sang to provide a more intelligable mix than that on the record 'This Was') was back with Earth once more. After confusion with another group named Earth that had some minor success in England the group renamed themselves to Black Sabbath.

Tony Iommi says about his working-relation with Ian Anderson, which maybe contributed to the success of Black Sabbath:

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 (Black Sabbath) back together, I made sure that every 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 of 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!"

It may be argued that Tony Iommi was a pioneer of heavy metal riffing due to his guitar playing on now famous tracks such as "Paranoid", "War Pigs", "Iron Man", and "Into The Void". He combined blues-like guitar solos and dark, minor-key riffing with a revolutionary high-gain, heavily distorted tone with his use of a treble-boosting effect-pedal and a Gibson SG guitar.

By the mid 1970s, incessant drug usage had taken its toll on the band, and Ozzy Osbourne was eventually fired in 1979. Osbourne was replaced with Ronnie James Dio, the vocalist for Rainbow, a band formed by former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore. With Dio, Black Sabbath produced Heaven and Hell and then the drummer Bill Ward was replaced by Vinny Appice. With this lineup they produced The Mob Rules, leaving Iommi and Geezer Buttler the only original members. Iommi rebuilt the band with constant lineup changes, including vocalists like Ronnie James Dio, Ian Gillan (formerly of Deep Purple), Glenn Hughes, Tony Martin, and also Rob Halford, former Judas Priest singer, as guest vocalist for just two gigs after Ronnie James Dio refused to perform at Ozzy's 'farewell' at Costa Mesa in 1992 and another one on the 2004 Ozzfest tour, when Ozzy couldn´t perform due to bronchitis. The 'new Sabbath' although still being amazingly talented and producing great music, did not chart as high as the original Ozzy-era Sabbath. The original Black Sabbath reunited for tours in the late nineties (although Bill Ward was not present for the first two reunion tours, the second being due to a heart attack, Ward was replaced by Vinny Appice on this tour).

After Ian Gillan left in 1984, Iommi recorded his first solo album, entitled . 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 2000, he finally released his first proper solo album, titled simply featured several guest vocalists, including Henry Rollins, Serj Tankian, Dave Grohl, Billy Corgan, Phil Anselmo, and Ozzy Osbourne. In late 2004, Tony's second solo album was released, entitled . This album was originally recorded in 1996, but was never officially released. However, a copy with a drum track by Dave Holland (many fans agree that it was right to remove Holland from the album because of his current personal stature and also because the drum track he recorded was considered inferior) was available as a bootleg called . The vocalist on this album was again Glenn Hughes. Tony released his third solo album, Fused on July 12, 2005, also with Glenn Hughes on vocals and Kenny Aronoff on drums.

Over the years Iommi has become synonymous with Gibson SG guitars as he performs with them almost exclusively. He has also been quite an innovator in the world of guitar, thanks to him the 24 fret guitar became common and he also designed a guitar with interchangable pickups for recording. Iron Man, Into the Void, War Pigs and Black Sabbath (song) are considered some of his best guitar peices.

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