Brian May joins Tony Iommi to perform Black Sabbath hit
The Queen guitarist Brian May joined Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi for a performance of ‘Paranoid’ in a newly uploaded video clip.
The two legendary rock guitarists met to discuss the classic Black Sabbath hit from the like-titled album of 1970 as part of the new Sky Arts documentary, Greatest Guitar Riffs.
“I’m sitting down with my mate, Brian, to talk riffs,” Iommi announces at the beginning of the video, posted on social media. “We first met in the early ’70s, and we’ve been best friends ever since.”
May and Iommi then recalled a Black Sabbath rehearsal, during which May turned up and jammed with Iommi for hours after the band was finished. “We were jamming away, and gradually as we were playing, all the gear’s getting taken away apart from our two amps,” Iommi said. “Everyone got bored and left,” May laughs.
Later, May asks Iommi how he came up with such bold, iconic riffs. “I don’t know, I think it’s within,” Iommi offers. “Normally, we jam around and play something, and then Ozzy [Osbourne] will go, ‘What the fuck’s that?’ It just feels right.”
Continuing, Iommi revealed that, although ‘Paranoid’ was the title track for the second Black Sabbath album, it was a last-minute addition. “We didn’t have enough songs to fill the album, so the producer said, ‘We need another song’,” he said. “[He said], ‘It can’t be any more than two and a half minutes.’ We’ve never written anything less than bloody five minutes!”
The pair concludes the segment by jamming to ‘Paranoid’. “I’m gonna commit sacrilege by joining in,” May says as Iommi begins the main riff. At the end of the jam, May calls the riff “good” and jovially adds that he thinks it “will go far”.
Watch Tony Iommi and Brian May jam below.
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