Tony Iommi: the man who made Black Sabbath legendary
When talking about the great titans of heavy metal, all roads lead back to Black Sabbath. The band have spent years carving out their place as one of the darkest hard rock acts to come out of England, and even if Ozzy Osbourne has turned into a loveable dad in the eyes of the public, there’s still something intimidating when he dons all back and rocks his trademark shades to sing ‘Iron Man’ or ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’. But with Osbourne closing its doors for good in 2025 with their final show, it should be known that the band’s identity exists inside Tony Iommi rather than ‘The Prince of Darkness’.
That’s not to say that Osbourne hasn’t done some impressive feats on his own. A lot of what he had done with Sabbath helped lay the blueprint for how metal singers were going to sound, and he could still go for the highest notes that anyone had ever attempted. If the pummelling riffs were unstoppable, the massive screams in ‘Hole In The Sky’ might as well have been the blueprint for how Chris Cornell was going to sound in the 1990s.
But even if Osbourne was doing justice to Geezer Butler’s lyrics on the early Sabbath albums, it all revolved around what was coming out of Iommi’s guitar. Although he had honed his rock and roll chops by admiring bands like The Shadows from back in the day, it wasn’t until he started adding some darker notes to the traditional blues scale that the first birthing pains of heavy metal started.
All you need to look at is ‘Paranoid’ from the band’s second album to see what they were going to become. A lot of it may have been a blatant retread of ‘Communication Breakdown’ from Led Zeppelin’s first album, but listening to Iommi’s guitar tone and the fuzzy guitar solo that accompanies everything, it was clear that everyone who jumped on the Sabbath bandwagon was looking to hear something than anything Jimmy Page had to offer.
And while Iommi didn’t work on any specific vocal melodies, any one of his riffs had the potential to launch an entire genre of music. Master of Reality? That’s basically the world’s first taste of stoner rock. ‘Fairies Wear Boots?’ Ladies and gentlemen, that is the moment blues rock morphed into metal. ‘Symptom of the Universe?’ That’s simply Iommi casually inventing thrash metal.
That’s only scratching the surface of what he did during the Ozzy era of the group. When Ronnie James Dio took over, Iommi was the one delivering riffs that launched them into the 1980s with style. Osbourne had a different guitar genius with him in Randy Rhoads, but Iommi took songs like ‘Heaven and Hell’ and ‘Mob Rules’ into the stratosphere and proved to the Judas Priests of the world that they were still one of the biggest names in hard rock for a reason.
Even without a star frontman behind him, Iommi was the one who was proud to fly the Sabbath flag throughout every era. His work with Glenn Hughes is still one of the biggest undiscovered gems from the Sabbath era, Born Again is a fine hard rock record excluding some production problems, and with Tony Martin, Iommi could turn the band into the best power metal outfit the old guard could ask for.
That’s before getting other legendary guitarists next to him as well. ‘When Death Calls’ is still an Olympian-level feat for any guitarist to go through, but even when standing next to Brian May, Iommi manages to walk away with the victory in that friendly guitar duel, crafting something that’s far more aggressive even with those layers of guitar harmonies spinning around in May’s head.
So, while many people have had the age-old debate as to which singer is best for Sabbath, it’s important to realise that any question of who’s singing is irrelevant half the time. Whether it’s Osbourne, Dio, Martin, or even Ice-T in the mix, Black Sabbath will always be Tony Iommi’s band, and if Osbourne played a handful of Sabbath songs during his solo years, none of the guitar geniuses he had in tow was ever going to attempt to touch the ground Iommi covered.
