Tony Iommi explains why Black Sabbath had to be “big and powerful”
Nobody has mastered the art of the guitar riff quite like Tony Iommi. Thanks to his five decades as the sole consistent presence in heavy metal originators Black Sabbath, Iommi’s riffs, solos, and guitar lines became the urtext that all metal guitar players would follow. Whether it was detuning his strings to get a heavier sound or leaning on ear-splitting amplification to make the band’s loudness as impactful as possible, Iommi perfected the art of heavy metal before anybody else got a chance.
It was immediate too. Black Sabbath’s first two albums Black Sabbath and Paranoid, showed the band almost fully formed. Very few traces of their past life as the blues band Earth remained by the time they entered Regent Sound Studios in October of 1969. By the following June, the group had perfected their hard-and-heavy sound, rooted in the signature Gibson SG riffs of Iommi and the insistent thump of bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward.
While sitting down for the British programme Classic Albums, Iommi explained how Black Sabbath arrived at heaviness by necessity. “All the riffs I’ve done, I’ve always tried to make them big and powerful because we were only a three-piece musically,” Iommi said. “Ozzy had never played an instrument, so we had to make it as big as we could. That was it, really. That was the approach on all the songs. On songs like ‘War Pigs’, I had to let the bottom note ring to make it bigger.”
When it came to solos, Iommi always wanted to keep it simple. “My approach to solos is I would go, sit down and play, and try to capture them in so many [passes], otherwise it gets worse,” Iommi added. “It very rarely gets better, but I try to do it so many. [I] just listen to it and start playing and try to get the feel of it, without getting to working stuff out.”
According to Iommi, thinking too hard about a solo tends to ruin the spontaneity and excitement of the part. “I’ve never been one to sit down and work out a solo,” Iommi shared. “I can’t do that. I’ve never been able to do that properly. So I just tend to go in and just sort of jam, really, and if I’m playing a part – say I’m doing six takes and there’s a part I like – then I’ll keep that and then try another one.”
“Songs like ‘War Pigs’, the solo became part of the theme,” he continued. “So you’d end up keeping that because it was part of the song. But some of the others would be just be try[ing] different thing. ‘Paranoid’ tended to be one of the solos I kept and done it more or less the same.”
Check out Iommi discussing his solos in ‘War Pigs’ and ‘Paranoid’ down below.
