The band Tony Iommi accused of ripping off Black Sabbath: “They watched us almost every night”
Any heavy rock act that has emerged since the 1970s borrowed from the textbook of Black Sabbath. While they may not have written the manual on heavy metal, Tony Iommi was responsible for turning the standard blues tropes into something far more sinister, taking the basics of rock and roll and making a style attuned to the darker side of spiritualism. Although Iommi has seen a fair bit of creative borrowing in his time, he thought one band was pulling from his playbook a bit too much.
Then again, if Iommi wanted to make a case for artists ripping him off, he was probably better off starting with every metal band that came after him. Despite being one of the leading forces in the world of hard rock, nearly every metal outfit copied his guitar tone, making something guttural compared to the typical blues scales.
As metal started to carve out its own identity with the arrival of artists like Judas Priest, though, the new wave of British heavy metal began sweeping across the land, bringing with it acts that were heavier than before, like Saxon and Diamond Head. While Sabbath fit right in among the new stars with their album Heaven and Hell, another brand of metal erupted from the Sunset Strip around the same time.
Starting with the first Van Halen album, Eddie Van Halen was hitting on a style that few were able to duplicate in the music industry. Playing with both hands on the fretboard, Eddie would create trademark licks that he practically invented, using the same flourishes he heard from his favourite metal records.
Of course, both Black Sabbath and Van Halen were legendary rock bands, but they represented different eras and styles of heavy music. Sabbath were pioneers of heavy metal, laying the genre’s foundation in the 1970s with dark, ominous riffs and themes of doom and gloom. Van Halen, emerging in the late 1970s, brought a little more flamboyant, technically dazzling, and party-fuelled approach to rock music.
When taking Van Halen out on the road with them, though, Iommi thought there were more than a few times when the newcomers were taking liberties with their favourite licks. Discussing the first handful of times he heard their music, Iommi thought that Van Halen had been copying his signature licks, saying, “They watched us almost every night from the side of the stage, and they’d pick things up from us, seeing what worked, and what got the crowd going. But it was just a bit awkward when we’d come on stage, and it felt like we were just doing what they were doing. One night, I said to Eddie, ‘Hey, Eddie, are you gonna play a couple of tracks off our new album tomorrow?’”.
While Iommi made his feelings clear, accounts from the tour suggest that the older, more established Sabbath members, including Iommi, may have felt upstaged by the younger, fiery Van Halen. Of course, there are anecdotes of Eddie picking the big bloody bear, too, being dismissive of Sabbath, reportedly calling their live shows lacklustre compared to his band’s performances. This led to underlying resentment, especially from Iommi, who was not known for tolerating perceived disrespect.
Even though there may have been a bit of passive aggression when on the road, Iommi and Eddie would quickly become the best of friends when away from the touring circuit, swapping stories about working with their various lead singers and discussing gear. However, when looking at both players, their styles have more than a few similarities.
Like Iommi, Eddie was known to favour blues scales more than anything else, only adding different sonic colours when the song called for it. Across albums like Women and Children First, though, Eddie did wear a few too many licks on his sleeve, especially with the dark sounds of the segue track ‘Tora Tora’, which could practically be a Sabbath song if it were fleshed out beyond just a minute. Iommi may have his voice on the guitar, but that voice helped teach Eddie a new musical vocabulary beyond the blues tropes.
Taking things into consideration with the beauty of hindsight, it’s clear that issues between Tony Iommi and Van Halen were not rooted in a direct feud but were likely amplified by professional competition, generational differences, and the dynamics of that nightmare 1978 tour. Iommi’s doom-filled, riff-heavy legacy and Eddie Van Halen’s exuberant, technically dazzling approach symbolised two very different chapters of rock music. While the tension may not have escalated into outright hostility, their contrasting trajectories highlighted the evolution of hard rock and metal across decades.
