Tony Iommi’s profound inspiration: “The Shadows were the only band that really appealed to me”
While Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin are classed as the unholy triumvirate that brought to life the dark, esoteric world of metal, these bands knew that they weren’t the first to put an all-encompassing and, in some cases, chilling spin on guitar music. Just ask Tony Iommi, and like his other peers from this era, he was acutely aware that he wasn’t the first to make guitar music spooky.
Although Led Zeppelin leader and guitar hero Jimmy Page had the explicit idea of making psychedelic rock ominous when playing in The Yardbirds circa 1966, it’s safe to say that this wasn’t a wholly original idea. He did push this angle to new heights, though, with him popularising it to the point it had a transformative effect on guitar music.
Ironically, Page’s concept even opened the eyes of later peers such as future Deep Purple maestro Ritchie Blackmore – in tandem with the incidental heaviness of Jimi Hendrix – and it would permeate hard rock at the end of the 1960s. In this period, the likes of Vanilla Fudge, Mountain, and, of course, Iron Butterfly with ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ all delved deep into this new obsession with darkness before the definitive metal pioneers rose as a more substantial force and enacted a total sea change.
Page clearly drew inspiration from others, as there had already been a host of musicians who had introduced a darker edge to music, appealing to young people, who are always drawn to intrigue, regardless of the era. This musical fascination with sinister sounds can be traced back to the rock ‘n’ roll period, with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins standing out as a key figure. His ghoulish 1956 hit, ‘I Put a Spell on You’, was by far the darkest song anyone had heard at that time.
For Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, the man who popularised the heavy, de-tuned electric guitar sound—akin to the sonic equivalent of an apparition enveloping you in the middle of the night—it wasn’t Screamin’ Jay Hawkins who first introduced dark rock music, but rather The Shadows. It wasn’t just their name that suggested something sinister; it was the “demonic”, reverb-drenched wobbles of their strings. Reflecting on this, Iommi told Total Guitar in 2022 that in the early 1960s, The Shadows were “the only band that appealed to me.”
He said: “The Shadows were the only band that really appealed to me [in the early ’60s]. There was rock ’n’ roll, but I liked the idea of an instrumental band, and they had a real sort of demonic sound in some ways – Frightened City and stuff like that had an eerie feeling to it.”
Listening to tracks such as ‘Frightened City’ gave Iommi a spiritual inroad to dark music. Together, he and future Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward would work on their respective instruments by jamming The Shadows’ songs, demonstrating this inextricable connection. They knew they wanted a raw sound, and from there they got into blues and jazz, which then opened the gates to their sinister metal formula being born at the end of the decade.
In light of emerging very much from the rock ‘n’ roll tradition, Iommi had some resistance to the metal tag in the early days. He admitted that he only stopped fighting it due to fans persisting in characterising them as such. Privately, though, Black Sabbath have always just been heavy rock to him.
