Django Reinhardt: the guitarist that saved Tony Iommi
There has never been a singular guitarist in rock and roll quite like Tony Iommi. While he may have had his blues influences in the early days of working with Black Sabbath, Iommi’s way of infusing a bit of menace into every track he played was unmatched by any metal guitarist both then and now. If time had worked out differently, though, Iommi would have been left without the fingers to play his guitar.
When working labour jobs before focusing on music, Iommi took a position in a sheet metal factory, where he worked on various presses. Since Iommi knew it would be his last day, he decided to go back home during lunch before his mother convinced him to go back and finish the job correctly.
After being put on a different machine, Iommi left his hand in the press for too long when the blade went down on his hand, cutting off the tips of two of his fingers. As he stayed in his bed to recuperate, it looked like his days of playing any type of rock guitar would be gone for good.
However, Iommi wasn’t the only guitarist who suffered from finger affliction. In the jazz world, Django Reinhardt had been working with two severely burned fingers on his left hand, which left him unable to play his signature guitar runs. Not to be deterred, Reinhardt decided to put his afflicted fingers to use playing the chords while he would use his still-dexterous fingers to play the smooth jazz licks that he could.
As he lay in the hospital, Iommi first became aware of Reinhardt’s style when the factory manager came to see him, telling Classic Albums, “He brought me an EP and told me to play it. And I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to listen to it’. Then I did, and it was Django Reinhardt. I thought his playing was great, and he said, ‘Well, he’s had an accident in another form and has lost two fingers’. And it really got me going, like ‘wow, somebody’s done it”.
While Iommi wouldn’t be able to get the tips of his fingers back, his way of using various prosthetics on his hand would make for a different attack when he played the guitar, becoming a foundation of Sabbath’s sound. Since the physical strain of the wound strings took its toll on Iommi’s hand, his choice to tune his guitar down would become a game-changer, with tracks like ‘Sweet Leaf’ from Master of Reality benefiting from the lower register.
Though Iommi’s love for Reinhardt didn’t exactly fit in with the band’s hard rock style, he did occasionally get the chance to flex his musical chops on the group’s slower songs. Between the massive sonic juggernauts on Paranoid, the mellow ‘Planet Caravan’ contains bits and pieces of Iommi playing a jazzy solo influenced by Reinhardt’s playing.
That kind of experimentation never left Sabbath over the years, either. Throughout records like Sabotage and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Iommi would continue working outside the confines of what was acceptable in the genre, adding various keyboard parts to songs as well as making strides on instrumentals as well. Iommi could have thrown in the towel after losing his fingers, but the lesson from Reinhardt taught him never to be deterred by life’s limitations.
