The story of Rowan Robertson and his brief tenure with metal heavyweights Dio is pure Hollywood.

An unknown 17-year-old whose gigs have mostly been in pubs sends a Hail Mary, shred-heavy audition tape to the fan club of one of the greatest metal frontmen of all time, Ronnie James Dio; it gets passed along, he gets an audition, and the rest is history.

The Dio job was multi-faceted – in addition to the band's beloved catalog, he also had to get his hands around material from the singer's two previous gigs, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow and Black Sabbath.

Despite his age, Dio had the utmost confidence in his new guitarist. In a new interview with Guitar World, Robertson reflected, for instance, on a moment of insecurity he had during the writing process for what became the guitarist's only album with the band, 1990's Lock Up the Wolves.

“‘I don’t know if I can do this…’” he says he told Dio. “But he said to me, ‘Trust me; you can.’”

Along those lines, Dio wasn't a micromanager when it came to Robertson's replication of the guitar parts laid down by Blackmore, Sabbath riff-lord Tony Iommi, and his two predecessors in the band – Vivian Campbell and Craig Goldy.

“Ronnie told me, ‘Watch out, there will probably be people at the gigs who will not like you for replacing Viv’, but I barely ever saw that,” Robertson recalled to Guitar World. “As for replicating the songs live, the ones that sat most easily with me were the Ritchie Blackmore ones.

“Ronnie only ever said one thing to me about sounding like anyone he’d played with before. And that was, ‘Tony used to vibrate the chords with his left hand.’”

Unfortunately, it was Iommi and Sabbath that led to the premature end of Robertson's time with Dio, as the singer regrouped with the heavy metal forefathers in 1992, and hired a new guitarist, Tracy G, upon Dio's re-formation a year later.

Robertson had no hard feelings, though he does wish he had another opportunity to play with the fiery frontman, who died of stomach cancer in 2010.

“When Wendy [Ronnie James Dio's wife] told me the news, I don’t remember feeling much of anything,” he told Guitar World, “but in hindsight, as I explored musically over the years, I would have loved to play for him on another recording – [I felt I] could have brought so much more of interest to him at that time.”

Look out for our full interview with Robertson in the coming weeks.

Does the choice of gear alone determine a player’s tone? Tony Iommi gives his two cents on the highly debated topic, and, well, according to the Black Sabbath legend, it all – or largely – comes down to the player.

His proof of concept? Brian May, who once wrote and performed a solo on the 1989 Sabbath track, When Death Calls.

“I remember years ago when Brian May jumped with us a long, long time ago, and he plugged into a… I think we might have been in the studio, and he got the same sound,” he says in conversation with long-time friend and collaborator, Laney Amplification founder Lyndon Laney, who recently passed away.

“It’s way he played, and it wasn't his gear. It wasn't his guitar. He used a Gibson. I had a white standard Gibson that he played, and it sounded very similar.”

Lyndon goes on to comment, “It's not just the amplifier – it's everything. It's the lead, the guitar, the amplifier, the speaker, the position, yeah, the sweet spot you've got. And most of all, it's the technique and talent.”

Many guitarists have weighed in on the debate over the years. Nuno Bettencourt previously recalled the time he used Eddie Van Halen’s rig, only to realize that, “It’s all about your fingers,” while John Petrucci had the same epiphany when he tried Joe Satriani’s rig.

Steve Lukather once simply summed it up as, “There’s no magic guitar, no magic amp, there’s just magic people.”

In more recent news, Iommi revealed why he shunned the heavy metal tag during the band's early days.

Billy Corgan doesn’t often get a chance to talk guitar tone. But capturing that elusive sound in his head has driven him throughout his career. He’s spent his life in pursuit of it. “I don’t know if I ever have found my sound,” he says. “That’s the funny part. I’m always chasing something.”

The Smashing Pumpkins leader has never suffered fools and never been afraid to speak his mind. Accordingly, we’ve heard plenty about the band’s ’90s heyday and the interpersonal dramas that ensued. When I mention that I sent off an audition for the band, Corgan laughs. “Oh, wow. You might have dodged a bullet there!”

His quest for tonal refinement is as much a part of the Pumpkins story as the combative studio sessions and era-defining songwriting. It was Corgan’s discovery of the op amp Big Muff that propelled Siamese Dream to new high-gain planes. The explosive riffs of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness were shaped by his tireless preamp and power amp matching, tube swapping, Lace Sensor pickup switching.

And he hasn’t stopped – not just to satisfy his own desires, but also to be part of the changing face of guitars in modern rock.

“The midrange became the focus for guitar music in the 21st century,” he says. “I grew up listening to Hetfield and the scooped tone, and I love that sound. But listen to Metallica’s 2025 guitar sound. The scoop is gone. I don’t love a lot of midrange on guitar, but I’ve had to adjust my ear to make it happen.”

Which brings us to the Supergrace, his pedal amp with British veterans Laney. The two-channel 60W amp in a stompbox was born from his desire to revamp the company’s ubiquitous Supergroup for the 21st century. He suggested they link up with Brian Carstens, builder of Corgan’s signature Grace head, and possessor of “a savant-level understanding of gain and power.”

The resultant Supergrace delivers precision-engineered high-gain sounds alongside woodier vintage tones, essentially bottling Corgan’s live tone in one pedal. He was so confident in the sound that its first road test was in front of 60,000 people in a headline-grabbing guest spot with My Chemical Romance.

“With My Chem, they’re all playing modelers, and they sound great. Having a full rig was complicated. I think that extols the virtue of the pedal.”

This could be just the beginning of a signature relationship with Laney. There’s talk of full-blown tube head collaborations with Carstens down the line. It’s a passion point for the guitarist, who hails the legacy of the family-run company.

“As someone who grew up listening to and being so inspired by this amp, and the man who played it, Tony Iommi, is there anything I can do out of loyalty to help them?”

Testament to his commitment to the brand, Corgan is very giving with his time. We discuss the changing role of tone in rock music, his memories of Ozzy Osbourne’s final show, and why he’s the most excited to make a guitar record in decades.

Like your Reverend and Fender signature guitars, the Supergrace is reasonably priced. Why is making gear affordable to guitar players important to you?

Pretty simple: the guitar that changed my life. I walked into a Guitar Center one day and off the wall I bought an Eric Clapton model ’57 reissue Strat with Lace Sensor pickups. It was affordable enough for me as a touring musician, and that became the main guitar for Siamese and Mellon Collie, and launched 1,000 ships of people chasing that sound.

[Editor’s note: The Lace Sensor pickups on that guitar, which became known as the Bat Strat, were not stock on ’57 reissues of the day. It may have been pre-modded in store. As Corgan recalls, Guitar Center was using Clapton, who used Lace Sensors at the time, to promote the model.]

I didn’t go out and buy some $4,500 boutique guitar. I bought a production-model guitar, and it became super-valuable in my life. So every time I work with a guitar or amp manufacturer, I always say the same thing: I don’t want this to be out of the price range of anybody.

And in that spirit, the Reverends I play on stage are all production models. I don’t have a special one only for Billy – you know, special neck, special pickup – nothing. They are literally off-the-wall Reverends.

You’ve been meticulous about your tone over the years, and it shows. Can you remember the moment you felt you’d found your sound?

The first revelatory moment was when Jimmy Chamberlin sold me what became known as the Gish Strat, the one that was stolen and later returned. And it wasn’t until I played a Strat through a Marshall that I thought, “Okay, I’m in the neighborhood.” That was the first time I thought, “The way I play, expressed through this instrument and this amp, is close to what I’m chasing – what I want to feel like when I play.”

But as soon as I got there, because I was using a JCM800, there was not enough gain. And that started this whole other thing that led to multiple gain stages and jacking the signal in through the low input and KT88 tubes, and this cabinet and this wiring, and anything to just get more gain, including using shorter cabling.

How important is tone when it comes to guitar playing?

The most important thing with any guitar player is how they attack the guitar, physically. Tony Iommi’s attack vector on a guitar is far different than, say, Eddie Van Halen’s or Brian May’s, but that’s what makes them them. Only they play like that. You can imitate, but you’re never going to replicate.

And then tone: even Eddie went from that “brown sound,” that Marshall Plexi. When I was in 5150 I asked him about it, and there in the corner was the amp. There was the amp I spent thousands of hours in my bedroom trying to replicate – not realizing I’m not Eddie Van Halen! It’s never going to work.

But even he had to update his sound. And every time he would do a new amp collab, it got more modern in terms of gain. I was recently watching a YouTube clip of when Van Halen last toured Japan. I saw some fan was complaining about the sound, saying it’s not what it used to be.

And I thought, “Yes, but I don’t think you understand that Ed was under the same pressure we all were, which is, ‘I can play my old shit, but it sounds old.’

You get put in this weird spot where somebody might sound more exciting with tone, even though you’re a better guitar player. And I think that’s always been the case. Clapton used line drivers. Ritchie Blackmore used line drivers. Tony did. They had to brighten up those dark British amps.

Last time I saw the Pumpkins, I was struck by the fact you were using more modulation on your guitar leads. Does that play into your tonal evolution?

Well, I like the way things animate against each other. I can’t say I love it. I just don’t have a better solution to get that movement behind the notes, especially for lead playing. I don’t play that many leads live anymore, so if I’m only going to play two or three leads live, I’ve got to make my point fairly quickly.

I’m 58 years old, and the kineticism of a lead is what I’m interested in. The notes are less important to me. And that might sound strange, but that’s just the way I feel.

In essence, if you’re going to play a lead in an alternative rock band in 2026, what are you trying to say? No-one’s going to care that you can play good, because there are 50 10-year-olds playing Eruption on YouTube.

There’s nothing actually that impressive about somebody being able to play the guitar at a decently high level anymore. So I think it’s the expressive quality that makes it interesting. I’m more interested in creating a feeling than showing off.

We’re talking about Laney, founded in Birmingham, where Ozzy Osbourne’s farewell show took place. What did it mean to you to perform at that show?

It was honestly one of the greatest experiences I’ve had. The music, and being there in support of the band and Ozzy, meant a lot to me as a fan and as somebody who knows the Osbournes a bit personally.

I think it’ll go down as one of the great days in rock history. Just to be part of that lineup was insane, but it was that incredible moment where so many people pulled together in a common cause to celebrate the band and Oz, and everybody was so graceful about it, the vibe, the performances, the generosity.

I noticed when you got up with your fellow Chicago “metal Yardbirds”, Adam Jones and Tom Morello, you didn’t play guitar. Why not?

[Laughs] Well, originally I was going to play guitar, and then Tom wrote me and said, “Are you cool with us having K.K. up?” And I was like, “I’m getting out of the way on that one!”

I’m a huge K.K. Downing fan. In fact, I own his old number one amp and his pedalboard from the ’70s and ’80s. He put them up for auction. I saw him play that amp and that pedalboard and that V at a racetrack here in Chicago in 1982 when they were on the Screaming for Vengeance tour.

I’m not sure K.K. knows who I am at this point. I tried to talk to him about the gear, and he seemed a bit bewildered, like, “Who’s the fan that wandered in off the street?” But to stand there in Birmingham and play, not only with that great lineup on stage, but also with K.K.

It was deafening on stage. I do prize my hearing, but when he was soloing during Snowblind, I went out of my way to stand in front of that cabinet to just listen to pure K.K. with the wah and the V. And it was like an out-of-body experience.

We’ve spoken about keeping up with guitar trends. When Kiki Wong joined Smashing Pumpkins, you said you were already familiar with her on Instagram. Are there any other social media guitarists you’re a fan of?

I burned out on it, I think. And I don’t mean this as criticism – there are some unbelievable guitar players on social media. Where I get a little lost is I don’t see where a lot of that great playing is converting into popular music, whether it’s in popular metal bands or popular alternative rock bands.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are guitar players that I wouldn’t know that got super-popular on Instagram and now they’re in the biggest metal band in Finland or something.

I guess I’m old-school. I want to see those people on stage. I want to see them making the Metallica songs of tomorrow, or Megadeth or Slayer or something. I want to see that crowd of guitar players convert those incredible abilities into the popular culture.

What if Clapton had just been a guitar influencer and hadn’t been in John Mayall and Cream and Derek and the Dominos? The reason everybody knows Eric Clapton’s name is not because he’s a great guitar player. It’s because he made some of the most popular music of the 20th century – and, oh, by the way, it has incredible guitar.

The last Smashing Pumpkins record, Aghori Mhori Mei, had a great reception. Do you see yourself continuing down a heavier path on your next release?

I’m working on music, and I’m very focused on guitar music. It’s the most motivated I have been to make a guitar record in 20-25 years. Part of that is shoegaze music has really come back in the culture, which we’re commonly associated with.

There came a point in the mid-2000s where it seemed like guitar was totally out of vogue. I’m not a Luddite – if people are not interested in guitar, that’s cool by me, and I’ll try to come at it a different way. But guitar is the thing I understand the most, and where I’ve had the most influence.

So I’m excited to once more dive into the sea of pedals and amps and guitars and see if I can come up with something new to say. And I think, in a good way, the bar is very high right now.

There’s a lot of very interesting guitar bands coming on the scene, and they’re saying lots of new things. Some are familiar – I think, “Well, you’ve definitely listened to me and Swervedriver,” but that’s cool, because we stole from everybody.

It’s just that young people are listening to guitar music, and the young guitar players of today have something new to say. It inspires me to get back on the horse one more time.

What will you change about your playing and your sounds to say something new with the instrument?

That’s a really good question, because I just did the operatic interpretation of Mellon Collie in Chicago at the Lyric Opera. And a lot of the parts that the orchestra was playing were the guitar parts, and they translated quite beautifully. In the band – and I’m not making this up – we used to call it orchestral arranging.

We would look at the wall of guitars as if, “This is the oboe and this is the violin.” So, I’m inspired to go back and once more operatically arrange the way I hear the music, and then use new technology and new approaches to guitar to achieve the polyphony that I would be interested in.

Mellon Collie was the peak of a lot of years of experimentation. But we also made that album thinking, “OK, that’s the end of this. There’s no chapter beyond this. We’ve taken this as far as we can go.” Hence, 46 guitars on Thru the Eyes of Ruby, Jelly Belly – all those crazy overdubs.

So I would like to come at it now down the road, because if Mellon Collie was the summit, Machina [/The Machines of God] was the deconstruction of that approach.

I haven’t really done that Siamese guitar stacking since Oceania in 2012. But I did it knowing I wasn’t that into it. It was like, “I’m getting all this pressure to do this again.” So rather than run away from it or shut my ears, I’ll approach it from the standpoint of, “I’m not sure I have anything new to say, but I’ll try.”

How has your relationship with the guitar changed from the ’90s to now?

I’ve always been fairly rewarded for my guitar playing. But it was not the main thrust of my thing. And I think this is the reason a lot of the guitar magazines went off me in the 2000s – because I was being critical of the guitar. I wasn’t doing like, “The guitar is great and I love my guitar.” I was actually saying something more artistic, which is: “Look, the guitar needs to innovate.”

The guitar needs to be moved forward in terms of technical and mechanical innovation. If you look at the major companies, the Fenders and the Gibsons, they’re basically running museums half the time; their main focus is not innovation. This is why I’m in a relationship with Reverend, because the focus is innovation.

I used to write guitar advice columns for Guitar World. I was totally in that community, and then they just booted me out, because I wasn’t saying the right kind of political things anymore. And what’s even weirder is because of that, those 15-20 years where I wasn’t part of “guitar world,” a lot of young guitar players don’t even know I’m the one playing the guitar! They think it’s James [Iha], because they assume I’m the singer and James is the guitar player.

So even just getting back into the conversation about guitars is a relatively recent thing, and obviously part of it is me making guitar music again. But also I think it’s just I’ve always come at it from a different perspective.

By the time I was 17/18, I could play lightning-fast. And for whatever reason, I just hit the wall. I focused more on innovation and bringing something new to the table, and getting out of the gunslinger wars, and realizing I was never going to be better than Steve Vai or Zakk Wylde – and that was OK.

I feel like I’ve come full circle, where people now understand what I did, what I’ve actually contributed, and I don’t need to play any game about it. I can talk about what I love: the guitar. And I think you can see my passion for the instrument.

• The Laney Supergrace Loudpedal is out now. Head to Laney for more info.

Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne invented heavy metal together. Iommi gave it its inaugural riff. Ozzy gave metal a voice. And they might have had their moments over the years, with Ozzy’s fractious departure from Black Sabbath in 1979 a rift that took some healing, the pair have a closeness that few can understand.

Jack Osbourne can. The son of the late Sabbath frontman has seen this up close, and speaking with Billy Corgan for The Magnificent Others podcast, he revealed that a moment on the night before Ozzy and Sabbath’s farewell show, Back to the Beginning, in July 2025, typified the “interesting dynamic” between the two.

Osbourne was feeling some pre-show jitters. Black Sabbath were going out in the only way they knew how, with the biggest heavy metal one-dayer in history.

“He was so nervous about making sure that they were happy and everyone was good, like, he was very nervous,” says Osbourne. “But he was also really happy about it. He was. He felt good.”

A lot of preparation had already been done. There had been some hairy moments, too. Ozzy’s ailing health had threatened the show on a number of occasions. Even close to showtime on 5 July, there was a worry that they might have to cancel it. With that in mind, the final soundcheck carried a certain gravitas. Everyone had an edge to them. Ozzy’s voice wasn’t quite there, and Iommi noticed.

“He was soundchecking, so he wasn’t going to go out there with his A-game on,” recalls Osbourne. “He was just making sure everything worked, and ran through the set. And Tony said, ‘Hey, you’re singing flat.’ And my dad got really pissed off. He was upset.

“And my mom was like, ‘Oh, you know dad.’”

But Jack could see it for what it was. Only someone that close to Ozzy could have said that on this of all nights. As Corgan suggests, Iommi was like a big brother, Ozzy the little brother. That was the dynamic. Osbourne agrees, and furthermore, that moment – as fractious as it was – speaks to the closeness between the two. We would all do well to find a friend as close as Iommi was to Ozzy.

“I was like, ‘No, I think it’s a good thing,’” says Osbourne. “I think it’s a good thing because, out of the 40-whatever-thousand people at that stadium, the only person in that stadium that could ever say to my dad, ‘Hey, do better,’ was Tony. And I think everyone needs someone like that.”

Osbourne says all of the original Black Sabbath members were like brothers. Even drummer Bill Ward, who had sat out Sabbath’s reunion shows over various disputes, was back for this show. It was all water under the bridge.

“Although Tony and my dad’s relationship over the years had its times of being contentious, it was family,” says Osbourne. “They were brothers: Geezer, Bill, like, closest family that anyone could ever ask [for]. They’ve done life together.”

Furthermore, he believes Iommi was right to say what he said. Ozzy, who passed away on 22 July, aged 76, ultimately got the send-off he deserved.

“As I look back on it, I’m like, ‘No, I think that that was OK to say, because they knew it was the last time,” says Osbourne. “And it was like, ‘Hey, get out there, everyone needs to give it.”

Tony Iommi may now be known as the Godfather of Heavy Metal, but he has admitted that he wasn’t keen on Black Sabbath being labeled “heavy metal” – especially in the band's earlier days – as he and the rest of the members weren't interested in being pigeonholed.

“The first album cover was a woman on the front with a black cloak on, and inside the cover was an inverted cross,” he tells Gibson TV, referring to the now-iconic album cover of the band's self-titled debut, featuring a figure – portrayed by model Louisa Livingstone – dressed in a black cloak, standing in front of the Mapledurham Watermill in Oxfordshire, England.

“So that, as you can imagine, opened a complete can of worms in 1969. That was basically a lot of the record company because of the imagery they put out, because nobody really had seen us. And then, of course, they'd see us, and because of what we played, it was scary music to them, which was really what we were trying to create.

“In those days, Geezer [Butler] and myself used to go and watch a lot of horror movies, and we loved them. And I thought it'd be great to have music like this – [to] create the same vibe as a horror film would do – and that was sort of what we did.”

The album's imagery ended up attracting a subset of people Iommi claimed he wasn't expecting to show up to their gigs. “Suddenly we had all these crazy people turning up at shows,” he said in a 2013 MOJO interview. “I think Alex Sanders [occultist and High Priest in the modern Pagan religion of Wicca] turned up at a gig once. It was all quite strange, really.”

But it was only when the band returned from an American run that Iommi first encountered the genre title that would define his musical legacy.

“I got back from America, and I've done an interview at my home with Melody Maker,” he told Gibson TV. “They said, ‘Oh, you know you're playing heavy metal.’ ‘Heavy Metal. What's that?’ ‘That's what you're playing.’ And I went, ‘No, we're heavy rock.’ He went, ‘No, no, you're heavy metal.’

“I said, ‘Well, we call it heavy rock. You call it heavy metal. Call it what you like, but we're heavy rock.’ And I wouldn't accept the heavy metal thing for years.”

The band took issue with being typecast. As Geezer Butler extrapolates in a 2018 BBC interview, “At first, we didn’t like being called heavy metal. But everyone likes to put you into certain pigeonholes, so we sort of got used to it. And then instead of it being derogatory, it became a whole lifestyle.”

Elsewhere in the same Gibson TV interview, the Iommi looked back at the birth of Black Sabbath – and their “horrible” first jam.

Gibson TV has launched a new free-to-air docu-series on the life and legacy of Tony Iommi, the undisputed godfather of heavy metal. Featuring everyone from Slash to Tom Morello and Brian May, the film details the origins of Black Sabbath and the man behind the riffs.

Its narrative, which also includes an extensive interview from the man himself, charts the musical heritage Iommi was born into, how the Shadows became one of his first loves, and why Birmingham, as “the industrial heartbeat of England,” played a vital role in the Black Sabbath’s birth.

Iommi’s famed finger-slicing accident is also covered, as is the influence that Django Reinhardt had in getting him playing again afterwards.

With Black Sabbath, Iommi would go on to change the world with his riffs, but it all started with Ozzy Osbourne’s unassuming advert, which found the aspiring musician scouring the local area for musicians to start a band with.

“We never really associated at school,” Iommi says of Ozzy. “We [Iommi and drummer Bill Ward] went into the music shop in Birmingham, and there was an advert that says, 'Ozzy Zig requires gig.' And I said to Bill, ‘I know an Ozzy, but it can't be him. He can't sing!’

“Sure enough, we went round to his house, and his mum came to the door. [We said] ‘We've come about the advert,’ and she said, ‘John, it's for you.’ I'm seeing him walk up the hall, and I said to Bill, ‘Forget it.’ We talked to him for a bit, and then we left.

“Two days later,” Iommi continues, “Ozzy came round to my house with Geezer [Butler, bass] and said, ‘Do you know any drummers?’ So we decided to get together and give it a go. It was absolutely horrible. Geezer was a guitar player; he'd never played bass before.”

History dictates, of course, that their ill-fated first jam would not be the end of the band, and in 1969, after a last-minute guitar change from Strat to SG, Black Sabbath recorded their seminal debut album. The world would never be the same again.

Despite Black Sabbath ending at Back to the Beginning last summer, Iommi has been keeping himself busy. He’s released a new Laney amp, relaunched his signature pickups, and continues to work on his hotly anticipated solo album, which he promises will be released in 2026.

In related news, he also recently explained why he never became a Les Paul player, despite always wanting one, and mourned the loss of two of his prized early SGs.

Brian May has gifted Tony Iommi a custom-made replica of his iconic Red Special guitar – and it has two unique features.

May famously crafted the electric guitar with his father, and the DIY home build has been his partner in crime throughout his entire career.

Alongside a Vox AC30 and a treble booster – two gear picks inspired by Rory Gallagher – the Red Special was pivotal in creating May's one-of-a-kind guitar tone, and now his fellow-Gibson endorsee and close friend has gotten his own small chapter in the guitar’s history books.

“Huge thanks to my best friend, Brian May, and master builder Andrew Guyton [of Guyton Guitars] for this incredible left-handed Red Special replica,” Iommi writes on Instagram. “Andrew personally delivered it last week – a true gift from Brian, two years in the making. Christmas came early!”

The guitar is built to the exact vintage construction of May’s original, save for the left-handed configuration and one other key tweak – its neck has been shaped to match that of Iommi’s iconic Jaydee Old Boy SG.

The rest, from its built-in treble booster, vintage-style pots, and replica pickups, are just as May would have it. Maybe it’ll feature on Iommi's long-awaited solo album.

May, who has remained loyal to his Red Special over the years, surprised the guitar community when he signed with Gibson last year. And yes, that means that Gibson-made Murphy Lab Red Specials are very much on the cards, but a signature 12-string acoustic has been the only official collaborative launch so far.

May and Iommi share a close friendship, having first met in the early ‘70s. Last year, they sat down to talk riffs and jam Black Sabbath’s Paranoid together – even though May knew it was “sacrilege” to play along.

Meanwhile, Steve Vai enlisted the help of Guyton for a tasteful reimagining of the Red Special, and fans have been going mad for it.

As the CEO of one of the world’s most important guitar brands, Gibson’s Cesar Gueikian has a pretty full plate.

Between developing new models, paying homage to Gibson’s heritage, bringing back long-lost designs, teasing upcoming launches on social media, expanding the company’s physical presence through various Garage stores and more, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Gueikian would struggle to find time to squeeze a new hobby into his hectic schedule.

But that’s not the case. While spinning the many plates that come with the job of Gibson CEO, Gueikian has also committed considerable time to learning the meticulous art of guitar making.

He has, for the past four years, been honing his skills as a luthier, gaining exposure and improving his understanding of each step of the process, from spec sheet to shred ready.

These are no novelty instruments, though. Rather, they are an collection of unique high-end electric guitars borne out of Gueikian’s passion for Gibson guitars and desire to inject them with something different. Something, in his own words, “epic”.

Gueikian charts all of his builds on his Instagram, and they’ve been gaining some traction. Hollywood star Jason Momoa – or, more specifically, Momoa’s son – is the proud owner of CEO-2, a decidedly James Hetfield-esque Explorer.

There’s also the CEO-1 – a Les Paul whose creation was documented via a social media series – and the Victory-styled CEO-3.

The most notable CEO model, though, is the CEO-4 – a Ghost Burst SG that Gueikian built and gave to Kirk Hammett, who played it at Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s final show, Back to the Beginning, for Metallica’s cover of Hole in the Sky.

That custom double-cut – which was named by Adam Jones, admired by Tony Iommi, and played by the Metallica great – is one of Gueikian’s most prized creations to date, and recently sold for $76,800 at auction in support of the Gibson Gives foundation.

We caught up with Gueikian before the auction to find out more about his guitar-making journey to date, and how the CEO-4 ended up playing a starring role at one of metal music’s most historic events.

How did the CEO series start for you? What inspired you to get into guitar building?

It started with an interest in building a guitar from beginning to end, and that changed over time. My initial thought was, ‘How interesting would it be to build a guitar from beginning to end, and learn the process of doing that?’

That was the first one. It took me three months, because I was going to the craftories for a few hours every Friday morning. Once I finished it, I realized it wasn't about the guitar. It was about the process of learning and working with our people, getting them to teach me how to do something.

I really enjoyed the whole process of getting to know them better, getting to learn from them, and that's what triggered in my mind, ‘This is something that I want to keep doing.’ Not only that, there's an opportunity here as we can auction them off for our foundation and do something really good for Gibson Gives.

That's been really one of the most enjoyable moments for me in my Gibson career. I get to work, and I get to learn from our people, and that's been amazing for me. It just fulfills me.

I didn't think of it this way. At the beginning, I thought, ‘I want to build a guitar.’ And I realized it was no longer about the guitars, but it was about the moment. It was about being there in the craftories, working, learning from them and what all of that has done for our company, and particularly for my relationship with our people.

Were there any particular learning curves or challenges that perhaps you weren’t expecting when it came to making a guitar?

There are so many very difficult things that happen in all the steps of making a Gibson. The first real challenge for me was learning how to do binding, so that the binding would be perfect and there would be no air pockets.

Neck fitting was really challenging. That's one of the processes where – because the binding can maybe have a couple of defects and they're going to be cosmetic – if that's not done properly, then the guitar won’t be playable. Beyond that, there's so many steps of sanding.

I knew about all these processes and how long they took, because I spent a lot of time in the craftories before. But once I really started making them, then I had a very different level of appreciation of how difficult it is.

With the sanding of the neck, I made mistakes. I went a little too far, and that's not something that can be repaired once you start eating into the wood to a certain degree. And gluing – it sounds simple, but if not done properly you can end up with air pockets in many different places. They're going to render the guitar unusable.

Once I started applying finishes, that took me a long time to get right. I had to do a lot of practice sprays to be able to control my arm in a way that was not overshadowing the guitar. For example, I was doing a perimeter burst, like I did for the one that Kirk Hammett played, and that required a lot of practice to be able to apply it.

We ended up calling [the finish] Ghost Burst. The idea for the name came from Adam Jones. I sent him a picture of it because I thought it was really cool and I knew that he would like it. Then he came back to me and he said, ‘That looks like a Ghost Burst.’

How do you go about spec’ing a CEO guitar?

I wanted to do an SG that had a highly figured maple top, so that the type of finish I had in mind would really pop. I've always really liked the Super 400 inlays that we also use in the Supreme line, but then I also really love the headstock of the Les Paul Custom with the Split Diamond. So that's what I had in my mind when I was thinking about that particular guitar.

Normally, I try to think of things that we're not doing that would be unique. The ideas that I have, I socialize those with the team, and then we develop something that is unique, so that when somebody uses it, or I get to use it, on stage, not only was it built by me, but it's also a unique guitar.

How did the collaboration with Kirk Hammett for Back to the Beginning come about?

I had in my mind that this show was happening, so I knew that if I built an SG as a tribute to Tony Iommi, somebody would probably be interested in using it. It just happened to be that I was talking to Kirk at the time that I was finishing it, and I told him, ‘I have something that I think you're gonna like for the Back to the Beginning show.’

When I finished it, I sent him a picture and said, ‘Here it is. Do you want to use it?’ And he replied in all caps, ‘YES.’ We were talking about other things that we were doing together, and it just occurred to me, ‘Maybe I'll just run it by him first…’

What was his reaction to the guitar? Did he have any comments or feedback?

We sent it to him so that he could put it through his rig for a couple of soundchecks before. He said he really loved it, and it was going to be the perfect guitar for Hole in the Sky [the Black Sabbath cover they played] and also as a way for him to pay tribute to Tony.

What was it like seeing one of your CEO guitars on stage for such a historic concert?

That was the coolest. I mean, that guitar is definitely the one that is the most special in that sense because, first it was Kirk with Metallica who used it, and also at that particular show, paying tribute to Black Sabbath and to Ozzy.

For me, particularly, being so close to Tony [Iommi], personally, and having picked up a guitar because of Black Sabbath and because of Tony, that was super special for me.

Did Tony have anything to say about it?

He loved it. He loved the gesture. He loved the story that I built it. When I say I built it, I say again, with the help of everybody [at the craftories]. He was pretty excited about it.

There have been a few artist connections to the CEO series. Which one does Jason Momoa have?

CEO-2, the White Explorer. It’s an Explorer with the ‘84 wiring diagram, so it's got the toggle switch by the volume knob like James [Hetfield's] original.

I told [Jason Momoa], ‘I'm building this guitar,’ and I left it there. I knew that he would love it because he loves Metallica. He came back to me before Christmas a couple of years ago and asked, ‘Have you finished that guitar? That would be the perfect gift for Wolfie [his son].’

He ended up getting it and contributing a pretty significant amount to our Gibson Gives Foundation, for which we are very grateful. It all worked out really nicely with that one nice.

The CEO8 and CEO4 are being auctioned off for Gibson Gives. What’s the foundation’s mission?

“For Gibson Gives, we have this mission of saving people's lives through music. We can do that through scholarships and funding, we can do it one guitar at a time. That could be guitars that we donate to music schools, or it could be guitars like this that we auction off to fund scholarships and many of the other causes that we fund.

“I get really excited when we get to do things like that. We get to promote healing through music in many different variations. That’s something that's very important to us.”

• Visit Julien's Auctions to learn more about the CEO-4.

In their three decades of playing together, Kilmarnock trio Biffy Clyro have become one of the most cutting-edge and far-reaching rock acts of their generation, blessed with an ability to write stadium-conquering anthems that thrill and mesmerise in equal measure.

Their Strat-wielding frontman, Simon Neil, is someone who understands the power of the riff, as well as the importance of the musical information above it – with a proven track record for striking a perfect balance between intensity and melody.

On this year’s 10th full-length album, Futique, the group still finds new ways to stretch that formula and experiment with the equation, dazzling and surprising us without ever running the risk of losing their identity.

Early singles such as A Little Love, Hunting Season and True Believer have a familiarity that would convince any listener that these tracks have existed for years and years. In fact, the same could be said for the album as a whole.

Working with producer Jonathan Gilmore for the very first time also allowed Simon to spread his wings and innovate, moving away from the classic trio format to embrace more layers and orchestration.

When you’re building music, the singer/guitarist explains, there’s a point where it can all “start to shrink”, so it’s best to handle grand designs and high ambitions with great care…

Simon, you’ve always been a Strat man. What is it about the original double-cutaway that does it for you?

The Strat is everything to me. My favourite model is the Michael Landau signature. I stumbled across one about 10 years ago and it just spoke to me. That’s the guitar I usually play in the studio, a reissue of his 1968 original. I actually ended up buying two of them. Those Strats are absolutely gorgeous and very much the foundation of everything we do, every time we record.

That said, you’re happy to experiment in the studio…

I flirted a bit with a small and boutique UK company called Fairlane Guitars. I’ve used their Zephyr model, and I’ve also used a guitar made by Novo in Nashville. My tour manager bought one and I pinched it off him for this record. Believe it or not, one of my main guitars for this record was this wee Fender Champ…

The one with the built-in speaker?

Yeah! It was released in Japan back in the ’90s. A tech had one, which played and felt so real and right, plus the sound that comes out of that speaker is just dynamite. You can get this really sludgy tone.

Obviously it’s quiet, but we mic’d it up for a few songs to get some cheap-sounding warmth. I’ve definitely embraced a few other guitars, but the Strat is my defining sound. It always speaks through whatever’s in the mix, no matter how thick it might be.

You’re no ultra hoarder like Slash or Bonamassa, but you must have some nice guitars knocking around.

I wish I had the money to collect like they do [laughs]. But I did treat myself to a nice guitar not long ago. It was one of the Custom Shop [Kirk Hammett] ‘Greeny’ [1959 Les Paul Standard] reissues, which I picked up in Nashville. I hummed and hawed because it was a lot of money.

I’m a Fender Strat man through and through, but I’m also a big Metallica fan. I’ve seen Kirk playing it over the years and know what a big deal that guitar is. I do like the sound of Les Pauls and find them extremely useful in the studio, but the act of putting one on feels wrong for me. It’s like I’m wearing someone else’s clothes.

I have a ’77 Les Paul, which got used on a couple of records. I also have a ’63 SG that I bought from Norm’s Rare Guitars. I tried to play it live a few times, but it struggles to hold tuning. That’s my pride and joy – a work of art that makes me sound like Angus Young. I use it to write, and the same goes for my White Falcon.

Did you use the ‘Greeny’ on the record?

It popped up on a couple of tunes: A Thousand And One, It’s Chemical! and Woe Is Me, Wow Is You. But I’m nervous of that guitar because it’s so expensive. I can barely look at it. I don’t know if I’ve overstepped my limit. But I love that middle pickup position where it goes out of phase. It’s so fucked up and cool, it’s almost Strat-y.

What were your go-to effects and amps in the studio?

The main amps were a Fender Twin Reverb and a big Marshall JCM800. We also used a Sears amp, this old cheap bugger that sounded dynamite when you turned it up, loads of character, though it was a little hit-and-miss in terms of how it reacted to pedals.

I also used some Audio Kitchen stuff, like this amp they make called the Little Chopper and a pedal called The Big Trees preamp. We did more DI and post-effects stuff this time, which I haven’t done a lot of in the past. I like to hear the air moving, but because we were working with a new producer, this album ended up with more of a modern approach.

What exactly were the benefits of doing that, then?

Normally, I’m too scared to DI anything, but it actually does bring a different quality. I used a few Chase Bliss pedals for textures in the background. This was the first time I wanted to make sure that what we recorded wasn’t necessarily the sound of what was on the floor. In the past, it’s been important to mainly capture us three playing together. This time I wanted everything shifting right there at the front.

On other albums, we’ve done everything so minimally, often using one microphone and one amp making one tone for an entire song. This time, I wanted layers. I didn’t want to sound too organic. It’s Chemical! ended up sounding really chorus-effected, but it’s actually more like 100 tracks of guitar doing different things.

I’ve gone from using the smallest amount of gear to make the biggest sound, to using as much as possible with the same end goal. And, actually, sometimes you can over-record guitars and the mix starts to shrink.

That’s interesting. You can end up becoming a victim of your own ambition?

Without Jonathan’s expertise, that’s where I’ve often ended up, at demo stage. I think I can add things and grow the song, but at a certain point it stops growing and starts to shrink. Jonathan kept us on that precipice of making it sound big enough without being swallowed by its own thickness.

And even on the albums that don’t always sound like a three-piece, it’s important for the songs to work stripped-back. We still prepare the same way. I still have my Marshall and Fender, plus my Boss Metal Zone and delays. They are on everything. That’s how we check that the songs are going to work – if they can exist with a basic setup, it doesn’t matter how we record it, we know it’ll translate.

A Little Love is all about big chords and even bigger hooks. What do you remember about writing it?

As soon as I went from minor to major, that’s when I knew the song was complete. It’s in DADGAD, which is one of my favourite open tunings because it can make chords sing. With just one or two fingers, you can have such a big impact, given how the voicings can change and reflect this deep sense of emotion.

There’s something really liberating about big open sounds like that, making the earth fucking shake with just one finger. DADGAD is a lot easier than some of the open C tunings I’ve used, which guitars usually don’t like because strings go from loose to tight. It can become a nightmare!

You and your tech, Richard Pratt from Gone Fishing Effects, unveiled the first batch of Booooom Blast overdrive/fuzz pedals back in 2020. Are there any plans to do more?

Yeah. That got used as well. To everyone reading this, it’s an absolute killer, so make sure you get it on your records, too [laughs]. We’re still making them. It’s a fine line, though. We thought about doing a wider release, but I like doing smaller batches.

Richard personally builds every pedal. If something – God forbid – goes wrong, people know they can send it back, get it fixed and returned. I feel like when things go to wider manufacturing, maybe the quality level dips a little. This is all made to order in someone’s shed.

It’s interesting how higher-gain pedals can work wonders on lower settings. Eric Clapton and David Gilmour were once using the Boss HM-2, which is mainly associated with extreme Scandinavian metal…

Isn’t that bonkers? It’s the sound of bands like At The Gates and Entombed, yet Clapton was plugging into one. We all use gear in different ways, sometimes for things beyond what it may have been designed for.

I used to think you needed someone’s rig to sound like them, but actually it’s all about the expression through your fingers. I’m still enthralled by the magic of the guitar, probably because I never conquered the technique side.

It’s this box of wonder that I approach as a creative instrument. A lot of songs on this record are in standard tuning, though a couple were standard a step down. I know I’m about to go down a creative period where I start fucking with tunings. I needed a wee break from the guitar before this album.

Why’s that?

We’d released two records during the pandemic and my guitar was my companion through that [so] I couldn’t look at my guitar for a year after that; I was scared of it. I felt this responsibility, where I had to write music every time I picked it up.

So instead I went away and made some heavy metal music in Empire State Bastard [with Mike Vennart]. As soon as I came home, I picked up the guitar and the songs started to come out. It was playtime again.

Being a novice when you are creating is actually a good place to be. You can have too much knowledge. Again, it’s that battle I’m having between being a better player and not ruining the creative relationship I have with my guitar.

So how do you go about evolving as a player?

I’d like to think I’m getting better as a player, though sometimes I think I’m only getting better as a songwriter. I guess they go hand in hand. Whenever I start to advance my chops as a guitarist, I end up stumbling upon a new idea and writing a new song instead of doing my exercises. But I’m at a stage where I really want to become a better guitarist.

What would you like to work on in the future – would it be anything like jazz comping, blues noodling or classical flamenco?

Definitely nylon! I’d love to become a proper fingerpicker. I’ve learned a few folk techniques over the years, but I’ve come to realise I haven’t progressed. I’d probably need to stop writing songs for a little while. As a person in my 40s, I really should be further along, you know? I feel like I missed a few years of learning other people’s tunes. Even for our very first show, we played nine songs and seven of them were our own.

Which guitarists do you look up to, then?

It’s a cliché, but I heard about Django Reinhardt and his missing fingers early on. I tried to learn a couple of his tunes when I was around 13 and didn’t realise how much it opened up a part of my brain.

What Django did for guitar was incredible. I love the pieces he wrote, despite the hindrances. He was a bit like Tony Iommi in that regard; he overcame his injuries and basically invented a whole genre of music. They both created something essential.

• Futique is out now via Warner.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Tony Iommi will raffle off one of his Gibson SG guitars to give back to the hospital where he received his cancer treatment.

The Black Sabbath guitarist and forefather of heavy metal was diagnosed with lymphoma at Birmingham’s Heartlands Hospital in 2012. He would go on to battle the disease for four years, entering remission in 2016.

Now, he’s hoping the sale of his personal SG will contribute to the hospital’s £150,000 (approx $195,000) fundraising appeal, which will fund the refurbishment of its cancer treatment center.

Fans will have a one-month window to purchase a raffle ticket for the electric guitar, with Iommi set to announce when the raffle is live via his Instagram.

“It was a terrible shock,” Iommi says, speaking to the BBC of his diagnosis. “It's really hard when you're going through that. You just never think until you're in that situation, and I know how difficult it is, and how they feel. I like to be able to give something back and be involved and help.”

Chief on the refurbishment’s shopping list are special chairs designed for chemotherapy patients.

“The more comfortable you can make the patient, the better,” Iommi reflects, looking back at his own experiences. “I know when I was in, they treated me so well, that everybody was so nice, the nurses were nice, everybody was great. To have the right environment means a hell of a lot.”

Iommi, who re-released his signature pickup set with Gibson over the summer, is back at work on his new solo album following Black Sabbath’s history-making Back to the Beginning bow out. He has admitted he’s in no rush to finish a record that’s set to involve orchestrations and Kemper amp modelling.

He’s also spoken about his long-running love affair with the SG, including why he shunned Les Pauls for them despite craving an LP for years, and the disappearance of two of his special white models.

Meanwhile, another SG – the mystery axe that Kirk Hammett played at Back to the Beginning – is headed to auction.

Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Slayer, Tool, Pantera, Alice In Chains and Gojira were among the acts who took part in Black Sabbath’s final ever show in the band’s hometown of Birmingham, UK. Aptly dubbed Back To The Beginning, Sabbath's last rodeo marked the final chapter in an epic 57-year run by the unequivocal godfathers of heavy metal.

The cornerstone of this success, as well as Sabbath's undeniable influence, stems from its sophomore effort, Paranoid, released by Vertigo in September 1970. The songs from Paranoid became not only a blueprint for Sabbath's subsequent recordings, but also the template for legions of metal bands that followed in their wake.

“Geezer Butler was basically playing lead bass on that album,” Machine Head’s Adam Duce told Bass Player back in 2011. “His playing was almost like singing and it was as integral to the songs as the vocals. His bass had a voice of its own.”

“I’ve always written my own bass parts in Sabbath, but when I first switched to bass from guitar, I was terrible,” said Butler in the October 2021 issue of Bass Player. “I'd never even thought about bass.

“I couldn't afford a real bass guitar, so I just tuned the strings down on a Telecaster and they were flapping all over the place. I was looking over at Tony lommi and playing the root note of whatever chord he was playing at the time!”

Paranoid was recorded at Regent Sound Studios in London with Rodger Bain producing and Tom Allom engineering. In the documentary Classic Albums: Black Sabbath – Paranoid, Allom says they recorded Paranoid in just two days – from 10 AM to 10 PM each day for basic tracks, with another two days at Island Studios (also in London) for overdubs and mixing.

In the film, Butler says the album was basically recorded live. “There weren't any trendy effects back then. It's like listening to a live band.”

The material had already been developed on the road and honed at Rockfield Studios in South Wales under the tutelage of Bain, so the urgency of the band's performances is part of the album's appeal.

While most songs from Paranoid had been staples of Sabbath shows for years (War Pigs, Iron Man, Fairies Wear Boots, and the title track), one song that also made it into the set for the Back To The Beginning show was Hand of Doom, with Tool performing their own take on the Sabbath classic.

Along with the intro to N,I.B., Hand of Doom opens with one of Geezer Butler's most iconic bass riffs, but before discussing the bassline, it's important to note that Butler was also Sabbath's main lyricist. He often tackled controversial subject matter relating to war, politics, the occult, etc. In the Classic Albums documentary, he explains that his inspiration for Hand of Doom was drug abuse.

“We played two American army bases – one in Germany and one in England. It's where the guys went after doing a tour of Vietnam. Instead of going straight back to America, they had to stay at these halfway houses.

They were in a terrible state – doing heroin. There was nothing about it on the news. It stuck in my head. That's what I wrote about.”

Musically, Hand of Doom, like many songs on Paranoid, doesn't follow a traditional songwriting format of verse/bridge/chorus. Sabbath liked to piece together seemingly unrelated parts, creating radical changes in direction of energy, time and feel. Within any given tune there can be time changes, sometimes there are key changes, and sometimes there are both.

The track begins with the eight-bar bass intro riff, which Butler maintains through the verses and choruses of the song's first section, adding some fills in the choruses. This section has two main tonalities: the six-note D blues scale (D-F-G-Ab-A-C-D) and the five-note D minor pentatonic scale (D-F-G-A-D). This can be determined in part by the way Ozzy Osbourne bends the F’s in the vocal melody toward F# as well as the bluesy styles of Butler and guitarist Tony Iommi.

For the song's second section, at 02:05, the tempo and feel changes to a shuffle, while the key leans toward C minor, thanks to the presence of Ab's in the guitar part. Still, Osbourne is singing C blues-based melodies, and lommi supplements his power chords with a bluesy Eb/Bb – Bb7 turnaround. Meanwhile, Butler adds interesting phrase ending fills.

Following a slight uptick in tempo, lommi's guitar solo begins at 04:24, for which he switches to a C Dorian tonality, evident in his use of A's instead of Ab's.

Here, a hallmark of Butler's playing on Paranoid emerges: rather than plodding along on a fixed pattern or motif, he improvises in the second half of each measure, underscoring Iommi's solo with a pseudo-solo of his own. It gives these moments a heavy Cream-on-steroids kind of vibe.

Following a transition at 04:51, the first section returns via a fade-in. Two verses and choruses ensue before Butler ends the song the way he started it: alone.

When Gus G joined Ozzy’s band after Zakk Wylde left in 2009, at 29 years of age, he had been around the block a few times with his band Firewind, but admits that he was a “starving musician.”

“I'm from Greece, and that's not a country that's known for its metal scene or impact,” Gus tells Guitarist. Ozzy's music was like a gateway for me to escape from the small country I come from and allowed me to dream big.”

Gus was drafted into Ozzy’s ranks with the understanding that he’d tour the world and make an album, which ended up being 2010’s Scream. With that, he admits to having “doubts” about his performance and fearing the “hate” he might receive from the fans.

“I'm sure he knew it must've been nerve-racking for a kid like me to all of a sudden be filling in these big shoes of these legendary players,” Gus says of Ozzy’s view on his induction into his band.

Gus’s concern was ultimately for naught, as he stuck with Ozzy until old pal Zakk Wylde returned in 2017 for Ozzy’s No More Tours II, which was to be his final jaunt. Gus admits this was a blow, and save for an occasional email with Ozzy’s wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne, he lost contact with Ozzy thereafter.

However, he’s gained perspective since. “I look at my time with him as someone who helped fill a gap for a couple of years while Ozzy and Zakk needed some time off from each other,” he says. “I'm a fan just like everyone else.”

Like the rest of us, Gus was watching when Ozzy performed his final gig solo and with Black Sabbath in Birmingham, on July 5, 2025. “Ozzy was very strong,” he says of the performance. “I'm sure he gave everything he had and lived for the final gig in Birmingham.”

As for how he looks back on his time in Ozzy’s latter-day band, Gus shrugs, saying, “My deal was for one album and one tour, and they kept calling me to tour for a few more years. So, I must've done something right.”

“But most importantly,” he adds. “I had a lot of fan support throughout the years, and they're the final judge, as you know. So, if the majority of fans were pleased and enjoyed the shows, then we did a good job.”

What are your memories of first meeting Ozzy? Is it true that he invited you to audition for his band via email?

“Yes, that's right. In the summer of 2009, I got an email from management asking me if I'd be interested in auditioning for Ozzy's band. Of course, I was starstruck when I first met him. I couldn't believe I was in the same room as him.

“But he was very cool and broke the ice right away. When I landed in LA and checked in at my hotel, he called me and told me not to worry about it and that he had ‘a good feeling’ about me. He just encouraged me to play with my heart and not worry about mistakes.”

How important was Ozzy’s music to you growing up?

“I grew up listening to Black Sabbath's Ozzy-era records. Sabbath drew me to the heavy metal culture instantly and inspired me to want to start my own band. I remember daydreaming as a teenager and wandering the streets of my hometown [Thessaloniki, Greece], listening to Master of Reality on cassette.”

Coming in after heavy-hitting players like Randy Rhoads, Jake E. Lee, and Zakk Wylde, why do you think Ozzy chose you, a relative unknown, at the time?

“I have no clue, and I’ll never find out, I guess. I was told that someone showed him a video of me on YouTube, and he went, ‘That's the guy.’ He had a great musical ear, and he knew what he liked and what he didn't like. I guess that he heard my sound and felt it would fit right in. I can’t think of anything else.”

Generally, what did Ozzy expect from his guitar players? And underlying, what did you sense that he needed?

“He never came in with any demands. He was always polite and encouraging. So, he always told me to be myself and play with my heart. Nothing else was discussed, really. I tried to do the best job that I could do. I practiced a lot, showed up on time, and played like there was no tomorrow.”

After joining Ozzy’s band, what are your memories of the early rehearsals?

“We did long rehearsals for a month in LA. At some point, we rehearsed most of Sabbath’s catalogue from the ’70s. The band spent a lot of time rehearsing and getting tight together as a unit. I think it showed on the world tour that followed.”

What did you bring to Ozzy’s sound that was different than past players? Did you take influence from them?

“I want to think that I brought a new energy and my own vibe, which is more European, I guess? [Laughs] It’s hard to analyze it myself. And, of course, I'm a huge fan of Randy, Jake, and Zakk, and I've been heavily influenced by all three of them. They were my school of guitar playing; I grew up on them.”

What was it like learning Tony Iommi, Randy, Jake, and Zakk’s parts? And which of those players did you find to be the trickiest to emulate?

“I've been asked this a lot in the past years. It was very exciting to dig deep into each player's style and re-learn it, so to speak. I tried to keep close to the original recordings, but of course, with my own tone and sound. I think the hardest one to emulate must have been Tony Iommi.”

Is that because of the hyper-idiosyncratic nature of his playing and the disability associated with his fingers?

“Yes. His playing is so unconventional. Maybe cause he's missing the tips of two of his fingers. But he slightly bends strings, even when he plays riffs. Also, his sense of timing is unique. I could never sound like Tony Iommi; nobody can. But I loved playing the Sabbath stuff every night.”

Did you use similar gear or your own rig on tour and in the studio?

“I used my own gear completely. Around that time, I started using Blackstar amps, and the Series One 200 amp is the one you hear on the Scream album, but also on the world tour. Of course, I already had my own signature guitars back then with ESP, so I used those.”

How did you approach the making of Scream, and what was it like writing with Ozzy?

“It was a wonderful experience, and we recorded it at Ozzy's home studio. So, every morning, [producer] Kevin Churko would pick me up from the hotel, and we'd drive to Ozzy's house. We'd have coffee and breakfast and then head downstairs and start working on the songs.

“We took our time and made sure everything sounded right. Also, working with Kevin was a big experience for me. He's an excellent songwriter, besides being a producer and engineer. My approach was just to try to add guitars.

“It was an already recorded album, so I tried to give it that Ozzy stamp and vibe. And have a few bits here and there that were reminiscent of his classic players. But of course, I brought my own game when it came down to the solos.”

How do you feel Scream’s legacy has evolved with time, compared to other records with Randy, Jake, and Zakk?

“It’s hard for me to say. I still think Scream is a strong album overall and has some fantastic moments. It's more up to the fans to decide, but I do get a lot of comments still from the young generation of that time, who discovered Ozzy from the Scream album.

“They tell me how much it means to them. I guess it's partly a generational thing. On the other hand, the classics are the classics. His early albums are the staples of his career and of the heavy metal genre in general.”

You left Ozzy’s band after he reunited with Zakk Wylde in 2017. What was that like, and was it difficult news to take at the time?

“Of course, I was bummed ‘cause I knew I'd probably never see him or play with him again. On the other hand, it totally made sense. Ozzy and Zakk have so much history together; those guys had to get back at some point. It was inevitable.”

How did your relationship with Ozzy evolve after you left? Did you stay in touch? And did you get to talk with Zakk at all thereafter?

“I last saw Ozzy at Graspop Festival in Belgium in 2016; that was the last time. He was there with Sabbath, and Firewind was playing that day as well. Honestly, we didn't stay in touch after I left. There was an occasional email to Sharon just to see how Ozzy's doing after his [quadbike] accident [which damaged his neck].

“But nothing besides that. He was always in my thoughts, and I hoped he'd get through this. As for Zakk, I bumped into him at a festival in France a couple of years ago and we spoke a bit. He's always been very nice to me.”

There’s no denying that Ozzy was special. He is beloved worldwide. But for you, someone who played with him, how will you remember the man and the musician?

“Ozzy was everything you imagined him to be. Proper rock royalty, very caring for those around him, big-hearted, generous, and super-funny. He was the funniest guy I've ever met. His aura was so strong that when he walked into a room, everyone stopped immediately and looked at him.”

Where do you think your career might have gone if you’d never met or played with Ozzy?

“I owe so much to Ozzy and Sharon for giving me that opportunity. It changed my life forever. Sure, I had my band before I met the Osbournes and made records, but I was a starving musician. Everything changed after I worked with him. So many opportunities and doors opened for me, and of course, playing with Ozzy has been such a huge part of my music career.”

How do you look back on your place within the canon of Ozzy’s players?

“I remember at some point, while recording Scream, I was having doubts about myself and my abilities, and I said to Kevin Churko, Ozzy's producer, ‘I'll probably get a lot of hate when the new album comes out, and people will think I'm the worst guitarist he's ever had.’

“And Kevin said to me, ‘I don't think so. But even if that happens, at least you were one of them, and how many people can say that?’ But all things considered, I think I did well during a transitional phase for Ozzy.”

As the godfather of heavy metal, Tony Iommi has become one of the most iconic Gibson SG players of all time. However, the Black Sabbath riff lord recently admitted that, at one point, it was another Gibson guitar that he wanted to play.

“I always wanted a Les Paul,” he confessed at a Q&A event at the Gibson Garage, London, during which his signature Gibson humbuckers were relaunched. “But I couldn't play the Les Paul because of my accident.”

A teenage Iommi fell foul of sheet metal factory machinery, with the famous accident costing him the tips of the middle and ring fingers on his fretting hand. Inspired by Django Reinhardt, he'd add thimbles to the affected fingers, which in turn helped forge the sound of his iconic guitar tone in the process.

“I couldn't get up to the top frets, but the SG suited me perfectly,” he explains. “The SG for me was comfortable. I liked the shape, the weight, and, eventually, a ton of people started using it. Everybody wanted a Les Paul in the early days; that was always the best.

“As I said, I couldn't have a Les Paul. I didn't feel comfortable, [it was] too heavy, and I couldn't get to the top frets. So the SG has been perfect for me, and that's why I always stuck with it.”

Iommi had started his Black Sabbath career with a Fender Stratocaster. However, the guitar broke down during the recording of Sabbath’s change-making self-titled LP, and one “dodgy” car park guitar swap later, he became the owner of his first Gibson SG, which has defined his career since.

Owing to his association with the SG, Gibson has bestowed the guitarist with some special models over the years. Incredibly, one of his most prized early SGs was stolen from a hotel while Sabbath were on tour, and its replacement suffered a similar fate.

Tragically, he managed to track one of the guitars down, but never got it back.

Iommi's latest guitar project with Gibson prior to the relaunch of his flagship humbucker came in 2021, with the release of a signature SG Special based on the rifflord's iconic Vintage Cherry original. He also launched a new signature Laney amp earlier this year.

After bowing out with Black Sabbath at Back to the Beginning, Iommi is expected to finally finish his next solo album, which he says will feature orchestral arrangements and some Kemper modeling.

Hello, and welcome to Guitar World’s sparkly new gear round-up, your one-stop-shop for keeping up to date with what’s been happening in the big wide world of guitar gear over the past seven days.

From new electric guitars to amp modeler updates, the guitar industry is never short of fresh releases, and it can sometimes be hard to stay abreast of every new launch that may be of interest to you.

To make things a little easier, we’ve put together an essential must-read guide that will cover the major releases, the boutique drops, and everything in between.

The highlight this week probably has to be the Gibson Tony Iommi signature humbucker which, while at first glance may seem fairly modest, proved to be rather special, as the firm decided to celebrate in style with an in-person event in London with Iommi himself in attendance. Watching him riff Iron Man up close was borderline biblical.

Elsewhere, there was a multi-effects pedal from Boss, new-look Sweetwater Silver Sky guitars and yet another crazy invention form Jack White's Third Man Hardware brand...

Gibson Tony Iommi signature pickup

Gibson rolled out the red carpet for the return of the Tony Iommi signature humbucker this week, hosting an exclusive in-person event at the Gibson Garage in London to celebrate the reissue of the firm's first-ever signature pickup.

Iommi has on-hand at the event for a Q&A during which he, naturally, demo'd the pickups. Hearing the heavy metal riff lord himself rip through Iron Man from three feet away really is quite something. The pickups sounded exceptional. Iommi didn't sound half-bad, either...

For more: Gibson

Fender Player II Shell Pink

Yet more web-exclusive Fender Player II models landed this week, with the Big F following its Racing Green catalog of Strats, Teles and Jazzmasters with a crop of Shell Pink variants. We aren't quite sure why Shell Pink isn't a standard finish available more widely, because – let's face it – these are irresistible.

Even those with a phobia of pink would have to admit these look absolutely spectacular. And the decision to complement it with a tortoiseshell pickguard? Chef's kiss. Take all our monies, Fender.

For more: Fender

Boss PX-1 Plugout FX

Single-effect multi-effects pedals have been having a moment in recent years, with Boss now unveiling its answer to the Line 6 HX One and TC Electronic Plethora X1 with the PX-1 – a compact pedal in appearance and design that lets players load a bunch of Boss effects into the chassis of one unit.

The OD-1, CE-2 and DD-2 are just three of the 16 effects available at launch, with more expected to arrive in the future (with an added premium, at should be added). It weighs in at $250, and doesn't come close to the sheer array of effects the HX One offers – the Plethora X1 doesn't do drives by comparison – so it remains to be seen just how much of a hit this one will be.

For more: Boss

PRS John Mayer SE Silver Sky Sweetwater Exclusives

We can't quite believe we've never seen any store-exclusive Silver Sky models in the past – spot drops with big retailers are a mainstay strategy for the likes of Fender and Gibson, after all – but PRS and John Mayer have kickstarted their own custom launch portfolio with two dashing models designed exclusively for Sweetwater.

Gold Spark and Platinum Spark (missed the trick by not calling it the Silver Spark, I'd argue) are the order of the business here, both giving the best-selling signature a metallic twist. Both look killer. I'd put my eggs in the Gold Spark basket, though.

For more: Sweetwater

Fender Adrian Younge signature Jazz Bass

A semi-fretless fingerboard? A Silver Sparkle finish? An onboard fuzz circuit? A built-in tremolo?! Just exactly what did Adrian Younge cook up with his new Fender signature? Well, for our money, perhaps the craziest Jazz Bass model in Big F history, that's what.

It truly is a marvel, and a stunning example of how the worlds of vintage designs can be married with a boundary-pushing blueprint that looks to reinvent them altogether. Kudos to Younge and Fender for daring to take the Jazz Bass to such experimental heights. Of course, it helps that it was made by the Custom Shop (as such it's quite pricey) but the principle remains.

For more: Fender Custom Shop

Kramer Pacer Deluxe

Back in the day, Kramer was arguably the Superstrat builder to beat, but with a market now saturated with models from the likes of Ibanez, Jackson, EVH and more, competition for that title has never been tighter. Furthermore, a Kramer revival is still very much underway, so there's work to do for the Gibson-owned brand if it hopes to reach the peak of Superstrat mountain again.

The Pacer Deluxe collection – a bevy of appropriately appointed HSS Superstrats that tread the line between contemporary specs and vintage visuals – is a strong first step on the way, with EMG pickups, super-slim neck profiles and, in some instances, Floyd Rose trems.

A sure-fire winner for retro-minded shredders, and with old-school hair metal-style guitars seemingly on the rise, the appeal of the Pacer Deluxe might yet spill into more colorful genres...

For more: Kramer

Third Man Hardware x Black Mountain Roto-Echo

What's this? Oh, nothing, just another crazy Third Man Hardware invention from Jack White's gear company that once again puts a unique twist on traditional effects pedal thinking.

Simply put, it's an adjustable delay pedal, built in collaboration with Black Mountain, that leverages an innovative foot-scroll wheel to trigger parameter changes. There are three parameters, and all of them can be dictated by the wheel, thanks to a mode-changing switch at the bottom of the pedal.

It is, without doubt, one of the most forward-thinking delay pedals I've come across in quite some time, and it begs the question as to why the scroll wheel isn't a more common tool for effects tweaking. Sure, it might not be quite as accurate, but it looks very, very fun.

For more: Third Man Hardware

Bzzzzkill Stratocaster Hum Reducer

Single-coil pickups are, of course, responsible for some of the most cherished guitar tones ever dialed in, but the unfortunate reality is that, sometimes, they can be incredibly noisy. Because of the fundamental design of single-coils, they are susceptible to the dreaded 60Hz hum.

Newly launched BzzzzKill, though, hopes to have solved that problem, debuting a new Hum Reducer coil that can be fitted into your Stratocaster-style guitar to drastically reduce that unwanted noise.

Installation is said to be easy, so that's a bonus, and when all is in place, BzzzzKill says hum is "virtually gone". Better yet, it's said to have no effect whatsoever on your tone.

For more: BzzzzKill

Epiphone EDS-1275

Epiphone seemed to have stealth-launched a bunch of new electric guitars this week, and this EDS-1275 has left us scratching our heads a bit. A double-neck from the Gibson-owned company for less than $1k? That's bound to get some attention.

What's more, Epi double-necks have previously been badged G-1275, and came with the old, outdated Epiphone headstock design as limited-edition launches. Now, though, this model has been given the full-fat EDS-1275 moniker – as per the Gibson original – and also boasts an updated headstock to boot.

When you remember that Jimmy Page's signature EDS-1275 went for $50,000, $949 sounds like a pretty good deal in comparison. Okay, this one is white, but it's still an EDS-1275.

For more: Epiphone

Fender Eddie Vedder Telecaster Trophy

Okay, not strictly a gear drop, but I felt compelled to include this here, because how often do you see the winning team of an MLB baseball competition be awarded with a trophy that's literally a guitar? Never. That's how often.

The Vedder Cup – inspired by Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder and recently formalized as an actual competitive event – was hosted recently, and for the occasion, Fender and Vedder designed a custom, playable Telecaster as a substitute for a traditional trophy.

The Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres faced off for the Tele. The Mariners one. Whether it will ever be played live remains to be seen. Don't expect the 'Vedder Cup Trophy Telecaster' to get a production release soon, though...

Tony Iommi and the Gibson SG go hand in hand – and with the recent relaunch of Gibson's first-ever signature pickup, Iommi couldn't help but reminisce about not one, but two white SGs that got stolen from him.

“That was a really old one,” Iommi recalled at the official launch event, referring to the Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul SG with three humbucker pickups and a Maestro Vibrola that he brandished on Top of the Pops [a long-running British record chart television program] in 1970.

“Somebody stole it from the hotel. And then Gibson made another white one, and somebody stole that as well! I couldn't believe it,” he quipped.

“I've got another white one now. I actually did find a guitar memorabilia collector who found out who had gotten the guitar. It turns out it was some producer who owned it, and he was trying to sell it. He contacted this memorabilia guy who I know, and he got in touch with me, [and] said, ‘We know where your guitar is.’ But I never ever got it back.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Iommi talked about his coincidental start with Gibson and the heavily modified Strat that was once his main guitar, which he ditched for an SG due to a technical issue.

“I always, always played that [referring to the Strat],” he related. “I worked on it myself and got it so it felt right for me. And I happened to come across a right-handed Gibson, and I thought I should have another guitar just as a spare.

“And I met this guy – I don't even know how I met him – he was right-handed, and he had a left-handed guitar. So we met in a car park, and basically we swapped guitars.

“When we were doing the first album, I was using the Strat, and I did Wicked World with the Strat, and then the pickup went. We only got a day to record the album, the first album, so I had to use the Gibson.

“And from that day to this, I always used a Gibson-style guitar,” he concludes.

Iommi’s relationship with Gibson continues to be fruitful after all these years, as, aside from the relaunch of the signature pickup, he also released a signature SG Special a few years back in collaboration with the legacy brand.

Back in the late 1990s, Gibson joined forces with Black Sabbath rifflord Tony Iommi to create the brand's first ever signature pickup. Now – less than two months after Sabbath took their final onstage bow with the late Ozzy Osbourne – that pickup, the Tony Iommi Signature Humbucker, is back.

Featuring a distinct configuration of powerful ceramic and Alnico 2 magnets, and unique winding, the fully wax-potted and epoxied Iommi humbucker is designed to help guitarists emulate the mighty, distorted rumble of the metal godfather's tone, without descending into overcooked, blown-out mush.

The humbucker's 4-conductor wiring, meanwhile, allows for series, parallel, and split coil operation.

The Iommi 'bucker had become an increasingly rare sight in recent years, in turn fetching ever-bigger money on the secondhand market.

“I’m really excited that Gibson’s bringing back my signature humbucker, they were getting pretty hard to find!” Iommi himself said in a statement. “This pickup came about after a lot of time spent in Nashville, just experimenting with different setups to get that perfect tone and sustain from my favorite guitars.

“We had to make sure it worked with my light gauge strings and low tunings, but still pack a punch, and the result has got some serious output. They're on my signature guitars too, and I couldn’t be more pleased with how they turned out.”

“I’d personally installed these on one of my Gibson guitars 15 years ago, and I was blown away with the distinct Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath sound I was able to get out of them,” added Gibson President and CEO Cesar Gueikian.

“They have such a great, clean look with the unique pickup cover, and we are excited to bring the Rifflord’s signature humbucker back as we continue to pay tribute to Tony.”

The re-release of the Sabbath man's signature pickup continues his fruitful relationship with Gibson, which has also – in recent years – produced a signature SG Special, which for our money stands as one of the best Gibson SGs you can buy today.

The Gibson Tony Iommi Signature Humbucker is available now for $229.

For more info, visit Gibson.

Read the tributes to Ozzy Osbourne since his death in July at the age of 76, and you’ll hear salutes to every side of his considerable skill set. The flesh-creeping feline yowl. The underrated ear for a melody. The knack for turning a macabre lyric. The madhouse stage presence.

But whatever else he was in life – heavy-metal icon, reality TV pioneer, berserker, survivor – Osbourne was no guitarist. As the Black Sabbath and solo star readily admitted, to cast him as a ‘musician’ in the traditional sense – or as an ‘instrumentalist’ in any sense – was off the mark.

“I don’t play an instrument, I don’t understand music, I can’t even play chords on a guitar,” Osbourne insisted in one video interview with his son, Jack. During a separate 2017 encounter with Rolling Stone, a rueful note crept into the frontman’s voice. “That’s one of my biggest regrets. I can play a little bit of harmonica, and that’s about it. It’s been interesting, because I can’t communicate on a musical level with other musicians.”

Unlike other figures we have bade farewell to in 2025 – among them Mick Ralphs, Brian James and Joe Louis Walker – Osbourne never put fingers to fretboard to play a single classic riff, much less an essential solo or trailblazing technique. And yet, his impact and influence on the guitar scene over the past half-century is deep, profound and undeniable.

Remove the singer from the narrative and some of the rock era’s greatest six-string moments would either never have existed or else gone down in a drabber, much-diluted fashion. Lift him from the timeline – were such a thing even possible – and a fistful of hungry young rough diamonds might never have caught their break or blossomed into all-time greats.

It feels a little glib to cast him as ‘the heavy-metal John Mayall’, but perhaps there’s something in the comparison. Like the Brit-blues godfather – or, indeed, that other supreme talent-spotter, David Bowie – Osbourne had an eye for untapped genius and the ability to ignite it.

Time and again, he drew hard-rock and metal’s most promising gunslingers to him like an industrial magnet, then lit the fuse that turned base metal into gold.

“It’s like shopping for a new suit,” Osbourne told Guitar World’s Brad Tolinski of his recruitment policy. “There may be a whole rack of blue suits, but only one will grab you. There’s no ritual, there’s no formula. I’ve just been lucky that everybody’s liked my taste in guitar players.”

Osbourne’s first guitar foil, of course, does not belong in this category. Even in his early 20s, Tony Iommi was no ingénue in need of a guiding hand.

Rightly recognised as the chief architect of Sabbath’s thunderous, industrial shudder, his steely de facto leadership meant the Birmingham band would likely have gained a level of notice with or without Ozzy onboard.

Yet the best rock ’n’ roll has counterpoint, and it is hopefully not sacrilege to argue that Iommi’s pulverising SG grooves – especially after he began drop-tuning for songs like Children Of The Grave – might have been too torpid, too sludgy, too heavy without Osbourne’s insistent, agonised upper-register vocal as a catalyst.

From Paranoid to Iron Man, the riffs landed so hard precisely because of that tension between razor’s edge and blunt instrumentation.

His firing from Sabbath in ’79 should have been the end of Ozzy. But while future wife Sharon Arden must take credit for pulling the drug-wrecked singer out of the dirt, his nascent solo career only flew thanks to him identifying the neo-classical wizard Randy Rhoads as a breath of fresh air among the Iommi clones lining the corridor to audition.

“I was all over the fucking place,” Osbourne told this writer in 2011. “But fucking hell, when I first heard Randy play, it was poetry in motion. I thought, ‘Wow, I’m onto a good thing here.’ Who knows why we worked so well. Who knows the answer to anything. But sometimes you’ll meet a girlfriend and it’s more than just a night in the sack.”

Osbourne and Rhoads – with vital input from bassist Bob Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslake – were a true creative team, fixing each other’s holes, working nose-to-nose and exploring tone and pitch to ensure both vocals and guitars exploded from the mix on standouts like Crazy Train and Mr Crowley.

“I’d give him a melody, and he’d work a riff around it,” the frontman told journalist Jas Obrecht. “What we both worked out [was], every heavy metal band sticks to one key. So we made a rule that every number we recorded was never played in the same key.”

The magnanimous singer even defied record label bosses to let his then-unknown junior partner perform an unaccompanied classical vignette, Dee, on 1980’s Blizzard Of Ozz.

In hindsight, it was an unprecedented and ballsy move for a make-or-break debut solo album.

“For me,” Osbourne told this writer, “if it’s just fucking headbanging from start to finish, that’s not an album, it’s just a fucking racket. So when Randy says to me, ‘Do you mind if I put this classical instrumental piece on?’, I said, ‘What are you fucking asking me for? It’s your album as well. Just go for it, y’know?’”

Two years later, Rhoads’ death at 25 in a stupid, senseless prank-gone-wrong might have put Osbourne back to square one. Yet the singer somehow managed to replace the irreplaceable, unearthing a volley of stellar players and urging them to contribute.

Some were dazzling-but-transient placeholders, like Brad Gillis or Bernie Tormé. Others, though, stuck around to become part of the mythology. Jake E Lee proved a tough and fiery sideman when he joined for 1983’s Bark At The Moon.

Later that decade, a Viking-haired Rhoads acolyte named Zakk Wylde was pumping gas until divine intervention (or glorious dumb luck, you decide) led Ozzy’s hand to his audition tape.

“You can imagine how many guitarists sent in their résumés – it was fucking mind-boggling,” recalled the frontman in an interview with Joe Bosso.

“So after a while, Sharon started bugging me – ‘When are you gonna listen to these tapes?’ I just didn’t want to deal with it. So one morning I decided, ‘I gotta do this.’ I stuck my hand in a bag and pulled out a tape, and Zakk’s tape was the first and only one I listened to.”

Once again, Osbourne and Wylde’s partnership bore instant fruit (“Back then it was just us in a room jamming,” the guitarist told Andrew Daly. “We’d be blasting it out in a room. The first song we worked on was Miracle Man…”).

And even when Wylde stepped away from the line-up in the post-millennium to tend to Black Label Society, the ripples kept spreading, with one Osbourne Band axeman informing the next.

“I grew up on Ozzy and Sabbath – if you’re into heavy metal, that’s your father,” late-period sideman Gus G told That Metal Interview podcast, adding in a separate interview with Rob Laing that “the first Ozzy album I got on cassette was Diary of a Madman. When I first heard Randy, I thought, ‘Whoa, who is this guy…?’”

No guitarist, then. But Osbourne’s passing marks the exit of both metal’s most captivating frontman and a lightning rod for the genre’s towering players.

Perhaps Wylde spoke most succinctly for the long line of Osbourne alumni – not to mention the wider hard-rock guitar scene – when he laid it on the line in a 2015 interview with Australia’s Heavy magazine.

“Without Ozzy, I wouldn’t be talking here with you right now. The thing is, with Ozzy, he introduces you to the world, and whatever you want to do is up to you…”

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Tony Iommi has spoken publicly for the first time since Ozzy Osbourne’s passing and has reflected on Back to the Beginning farewell show, which took place weeks before his bandmate passed away.

As the news of the Prince of Darkness’ death broke on Tuesday (July 22), Iommi had said, “There won’t ever be another like him” during a short but touching social post. Now, speaking to UK broadcaster ITV, the guitarist whose hands helped forge heavy metal has further opened up.

“It was a shock for us,” he confesses, with Ozzy's passing coming just over two weeks after his blockbuster bow out. “When I heard yesterday, it couldn’t sink in. I thought, ‘It can’t be.’ I only had a text from him the day before.

“It just seemed unreal, surreal,” he continues. “In the night, I started thinking about it: ‘God, am I dreaming all this?’ But he’s not looked well through the rehearsals.

“I think he really just held out to do that show. And just after that, he’s done it and said goodbye to the fans. And that was the end of it, really.

“I think he must have had something in his head that said, ‘Well, this is gonna be it, the last thing I’m ever gonna do.’ Whether he thought he was gonna die or what, I don’t know. But he really wanted to do it; he was determined to do it. And fair dues, he’d done it.”

Iommi had previously said that he wasn’t sure about Ozzy doing a double shift on the day, considering his condition. But he understood the singer was dedicated to closing the curtain on a six-decade career. Ozzy did it his way.

“He came around before he was leaving in a wheelchair to say goodbye and have a little chat. He seemed alright, he enjoyed it,” Iommi says of Ozzy’s reaction to the show. “He said, ‘Oh, it went all right, didn’t it?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it did.’”

The text he received from Ozzy several days ago said that he was tired and low on energy. His last dance had taken its toll on him.

“We could see it in rehearsal,” Iommi adds. “We didn’t want him there every day at rehearsal, because it’s too much. So they’d bring him in and he’d sit down and sing a few songs, and then we’d talk about some rubbish old times or whatever, have a laugh, and then he’d go.

“But the gig was for him, really; for us, to say goodbye and to have Bill drum with us as well after 20 years.

“I think he was frustrated as well, ’cause he wanted to stand up,” Iommi concludes. “You could see he was trying to get up.

“But it meant everything to him. This is what we built up for, for that big ending where he could see all the people and close it in that way.

“We didn’t expect him to go that quickly, really. We didn’t expect him to go. So it’s been a shock.”

After news of Ozzy's death broke, the music world came out in full force to pay tribute to the life and legacy of the legendary singer.

Black Sabbath’s co-founding members have reacted to the news of Ozzy Osbourne’s passing, with Tony Iommi echoing the thoughts of the wider metal community by reflecting, “There won’t ever be another like him.”

The singer died aged 76 on July 22, just weeks after his blockbuster blowout at Back to the Beginning, and the men he shared the stage with on that unforgettable night have paid tribute to the Prince of Darkness, and the legacy he’s left behind.

“I just can’t believe it! My dear, dear friend Ozzy has passed away only weeks after our show at Villa Park,” writes Iommi.

"It’s just such heartbreaking news that I can’t really find the words. There won’t ever be another like him. Geezer, Bill and myself have lost our brother. My thoughts go out to Sharon and all the Osbourne family. Rest in peace. Oz.”

The guitarist had previously expressed his thoughts about Ozzy pulling a double shift at Back to the Beginning but the show, which smashed records with its charity fundraising efforts, epitomized Ozzy’s hardened dedication to music. Even if that meant performing on a bat-encrusted throne. It’s a sense of spirit that bass player Geezer Butler was keen to highlight with his post.

“Goodbye, dear friend,” he says. “Thanks for all those years. We had some great fun. Four kids from Aston. Who’d have thought, eh? So glad we got to do it one last time, back in Aston. Love you.”

It may have been Ozzy’s name that made the news headlines following their spectacular final show earlier this month, but it also provided a pertinent farewell for drummer Bill Ward, too, who missed out on 2017’s The End tour amid health issues. Now, he’s left to mourn the loss of his friend, the voice of heavy metal.

“Where will I find you now?” he asks. “In the memories, our unspoken embraces, our missed phone calls, no, you’re forever in my heart. Deepest condolences to Sharon and all family members. RIP.

“Sincere regrets to all the fans,” he adds. “Never goodbye. Thank you, forever.”

Ozzy leaves behind a superlative legacy with Black Sabbath and as a solo artist, which helped immortalize the likes of Randy Rhoads and Zakk Wylde along the way.

But above all, he was a working-class hero who redefined heavy music forever, and he had one hell of a taste for guitar players. He was a singer most metalheads could see themselves reflected in, and he won't be forgotten.

Following the announcement that Ozzy Osbourne has died at the age of 76, we're revisiting the Guitar World archives to look back on the life and legacy of the legendary Black Sabbath singer.

The following interview is taken from Guitar World's June 1990 issue. The original headline was "The Good, The Bad & The Ozzy: Or How to Become a Heavy Metal Guitar Hero in One E-Z Lesson."

If only half the rumors about him are true, Ozzy Osbourne should be dead. Yet, after 21 years of twisted public behavior, the man who brought you songs like Paranoid, Bark at the Moon and Children of the Grave looks incredibly healthy and ready to take on the world.

Ozzy recently celebrated more than 20 years in the business by polishing off a live greatest hits EP, Just Say Ozzy, and is currently at work on his next studio metal masterpiece.

In the conversation that follows, Ozzy thoughtfully recalls what made each of his great guitarists special, and elaborates his criteria for choosing a guitarist, his audition process, and his theory on why it's good to be bad.

Let’s start by looking at your past guitarists. How did you find Randy Rhoads?

"Thinking back, it was quite extraordinary. I had been in Black Sabbath since high school, and suddenly Tony Iommi fired me from the band. It was a shock because Sabbath had always been there. I was out of my brain on drugs and alcohol and I was stuck in the position of getting a band together. I had never auditioned anyone before and I was petrified.

"The auditioning process was so embarrassing. How do you tell someone that they’re not what you’re looking for? Back then, everyone was trying to clone Jimi Hendrix. I heard nothing but Purple Haze and Foxy Lady riffs. One guy even hooked up several tape recorders and echo units so he could play both the lead and rhythms to Hendrix tunes simultaneously. It was a nightmare!

"I had almost given up when somebody told Sharon [Osbourne, Ozzy’s wife and personal manager] about this great guitar player in town named Randy Rhoads. Shortly afterward, Randy came over to my Los Angeles apartment. He was so frail, tiny and effeminate that I thought, 'Oh no, oh hell.' But out of politeness, I invited him to play the next day.

"Unfortunately, when he turned up, I was stoned out of my mind. I mean, I was on another planet. Some guy woke me up and said, 'He’s here!' I looked up and Randy started playing from this tiny amp. Even in my semiconsciousness he blew my mind. I told him to come by the next day and that he had the gig.

"The next day I told someone I dreamed that I hired a guitar player. They told me I didn’t dream it and that he was coming that day. I thought, 'Oh god, what have I done? I hope he can play!'"

How do you know when a guitarist is right or wrong?

"It’s like shopping for a new suit: there may be a whole rack of blue suits, but only one will grab you. There’s no ritual, there’s no formula. I’ve just been lucky that everybody’s liked my taste in guitar players."

What were Randy’s weaknesses as a player? Was there any aspect you had to help him with?

"He didn’t really have any weaknesses. I was the one that needed work. I had just come from Sabbath and Tony Iommi was a bit of a tyrant. His attitude was that I was the singer, I was allocated a space, and if I couldn’t come up with anything then I was screwed.

"Whereas Randy would work with me. Randy had patience because he was a guitar teacher. It was potentially a very frustrating situation for him because I couldn’t play a musical instrument. But he was always supportive and would say things like, 'Try bending a note here,' or 'Try this key.'

"It was a bit like going to music school. Randy was very instrumental in bringing me out of me. The first two Ozzy albums are by far the greatest things I’ve ever done. He was too good to last."

You and Randy had chemistry.

"Yeah, and now I think it’s gone, but you never know. I was never sure whether my work with Sabbath was any good. I used to think it was all too ordinary, but it seems to have stood the test of time. You never know what you got till it’s gone."

You must have had more confidence when you found Jake E. Lee.

"Not really. I knew a guitarist had to look good and have a good attitude, but other than that… Randy was the exception. He was from somewhere else.

"Randy came to me one day and said, 'I’ve had enough of this rock and roll stuff, I want to get a degree in music from UCLA.' I said to him, 'Why don’t you wait a few years and get some money and success behind you. You can always get a degree when you’re 90, if you want.' But he wanted to study right then and there.

"He started spending hours practicing and writing out his own formulas – diads or niads or whatever you call them. Day in and day out, whatever spare time he had was spent plucking on his flamenco guitar. He was a musician in the true sense. The instrument was an extension of his personality.

"When we were recording Diary of a Madman he would disappear into the studio for days. I’d ask him what he was doing and he would say, 'I’m working on this solo and I still can’t get it.' Finally, it would come to him and he would call me and say, 'Listen to this.' It would always tear my head off.

"That’s the difference between guitar players: there are guys who’ll go wingly-wangly up and down the fretboard, and some have emotions and others don’t. Randy and Eddie Van Halen were at the winning post, and everyone else is a close second.

"I mean, this Yngwie Malmsteen guy must have the capability to do some amazing things, but it’s too cold; it’s too much for the mind to take in. And watching Steve Vai is like watching a good mechanic strip down an engine in three seconds and rebuild it. He makes things run perfectly, but there’s no nice little errors that make things sound human."

Okay, but what about Jake?

"Well, Jake was fine for the first three days; then he wanted to take over. Randy wasn’t like that; he was one of the cool guys. I wouldn’t say Jake and I got along, but I wouldn’t say we didn’t get along. But in the last few years he became very reserved and it was hard to communicate with him.

"We lived together in a house in Beverly Hills and we never spoke! It wasn’t because we didn’t like each other. We just didn’t have anything to say.

"It was similar to the relationship I had with Tony Iommi. We’d get together to rehearse, write a mediocre song and then go our own way. It’s not the relationship I wanted with Jake, but a festering cancer set in. I wouldn’t have it. If I ask, 'What do you think of that?' I want a reaction. If it’s negative we’ll try something else, that’s not a problem. But Jake would shrug his shoulders, raise an eyebrow and walk away.

"The word 'band' means a band of men – an army, a platoon, a unit. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If there is a communication breakdown – hey, that’s a great name for a song – you’ve got no unit.

"To be fair, Jake did have a fantastic presence and he was a great guitar player."

What made Zakk stand out?

"This is a bizarre story, but it’s the God’s honest truth. It was a bad period for me because I was sick of auditioning people – drummers, bass players, keyboard players, you name it. Now it was time to audition yet another guitar player. The spark had gone out of it, probably due to my various battles with drugs and alcohol. I had a lot of personal hang-ups about a lot of things, plus I was tired.

"I asked the guys who were in the band at the time to put out the word that I needed somebody and to have people send me résumés. I auditioned about 50 guys. Some of them were hilarious. I asked one guy to play something in a specific key. He said, 'I think it would be better in another key.' I said, 'No it wouldn’t. Just play it in the key it was written in.' He protested again and I just thought, What the hell am I doing here? I’m jet-lagged to the max, arguing with some idiot guitar player.

"Then there were all these Eddie Van Halen clones on steroids. They played like Van Halen while standing on their heads and hopping on one leg. One guy even played like Eddie while eating a fucking sword!

"One morning I was confronted with a mound of tapes and I remember picking one up out of thousands and saying, 'Look here, a Randy Rhoads clone.' It was a picture of some guy with long blonde hair playing a Les Paul Custom. I couldn’t even bring myself to listen to his tape. I tossed it back in the pile and forgot about it.

"Then about six months later, my drummer, Randy Castillo, walks in and says, 'I found this great guitarist from New Jersey, and his name is Zakk.' I walked into the audition and I knew I had seen him before, but I couldn’t remember where. He plugs in and plays my whole catalog, note for note.

"I then asked him to play something of his own and he played some acoustic stuff and some classical stuff. He had a bounce and a spark about him. Then I realized where I saw Zakk before: he was the Randy Rhoads clone in the photo, the one tape I had picked out of thousands. Only it turned out that he wasn’t a Randy clone at all. Randy would’ve looked like an ant next to Zakk.

"There were lots of benefits to choosing Zakk. He had followed my career and he knew my songs better than I knew them myself. We knew it wouldn’t be hard to break him in."

Now that you’ve worked with Zakk for a while, what do you think his strengths are?

"That’s a difficult question. He’s still very young and still very impressionable. I think he’s still finding his own feet."

What are the drawbacks to working with young players?

"I keep thinking I would love to work on a project with musicians my own age. I guess I’d better do it quick because with each passing year the number of people my age gets smaller. I’m starting to feel like a daddy or something. I don’t want to be the wild man of rock and roll for too much longer."

You could go the David Coverdale route and hire established guitarists, yet you seem to prefer to discover new talent.

"I want someone that’s hungry. I want someone who wants to go out and kick Eddie Van Halen’s ass. I look for that hunger, that ability to succeed."

What was your most bizarre auditioning experience?

"There’s been thousands of them. One guy did a break dance and spun around on his back on the floor while playing wild guitar licks. There were lots of guys who were great but horrible to look at. I mean, there’s always cosmetic surgery, I suppose. Besides being a great guitarist you’ve got to look the part; you’ve got to be able to attract people. Some of the people I’ve auditioned looked like they should’ve been in a sideshow at the circus.

"I’m never worried about finding players, though. If Zakk walked through the door and said, 'I’m leaving,' I’d say, 'God bless you, goodbye.' There’s an abundance of guitar players jamming in their rooms who are brilliant. In fact, I often wonder why they aren’t out doing something.

You’ve got to have an interesting frontman.

"Yeah, you’re right. There is a lack of good frontmen. Axl Rose is the best I’ve seen in many years. I appeared in a movie called The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization, Part II: The Heavy Metal Years, along with a number of bands. I couldn’t believe the horseshit in that film. It seemed that all anyone talked about was partying and getting laid. What about being in a band and playing music?

"Guns N’ Roses is a great name for a band and they seem committed. I’m not trying to be trendy, but that’s what I think. I think they’ve got a great image, as well. Everybody likes the bad guys.

"Take that band Stryper – that’s the highest form of hypocrisy. They wear the same clothes as me, but they carry crucifixes and Bibles. The difference is, nobody likes to hear a good person. I discovered that many years ago."

What’s your assessment of Tony Iommi? He’s left-handed, his fingers are chopped off, he had to detune his guitar three steps, yet he ended up defining a genre.

"In the beginning he was brilliant – he was the master of heavy metal riffs. He was very clever. But I never really knew Tony; we rarely spoke. He was the god-almighty figure in the band and verged on being a bully. I must have learned something from him, though, because when I left I did pretty well on my own. I still keep in touch with the rest of the band, but I don’t speak with Tony because we never talked when I was in the band.

"He’s very intimidating. To be honest, toward the end his playing bored me, because everyone else was progressing and he wasn’t. That’s probably not fair, given his problems with his fingers. I should be grateful for Black Sabbath. But Tony needs to stop writing about devils and bullshit – it’s already been done.

"Ultimately, I think it was good that I moved on when I did. It was starting to get frustrating, because Tony would get a good headbanger going, then he’d start doing all this weird stuff. It started getting too complicated."

Except for Shot in the Dark, your live versions of songs stay pretty close to the originals.

"I’ve seen bands who’ve played endings that are longer than the actual song. I always think, Jeez, c’mon! End it already! I’m old-fashioned in the sense that I like the song to sound like the song. I don’t even like live records; I haven’t really acknowledged the release of Just Say Ozzy. Those songs have already been done. Why do them again?"

Aren’t you ever tempted to rework songs to keep them from getting boring?

"No. If I don’t get off on something, I just drop the song from the set. I’ve got enough tunes in the pipeline."

Millions of bands have tried to cop your formula, yet you endure. What is it about your songs that make them stand the test of time?

"God only knows. I was touring with Metallica a couple of years ago and I went backstage to talk with them. They were hanging out, and all of them were staring at me in a very strange manner. Then a couple weeks later I wandered backstage and they were playing Sabbath tunes.

"I asked ’em if they were trying to give me a hard time. And they said 'No, we’re mad for Sabbath.' They were big fans. I thought, What, Sabbath-mad? It’s incredible to me that people still like the music.

"Sabbath was a band that used to pull into an arena, play and never see a fan on the street. We came, we saw, we conquered and went home. I’d see an occasional acid freak wandering around San Francisco like a zombie mumbling 'Black Sabbath.' But we had no real contact with the fans, and we had no idea of the extent of our impact.

Of your albums, which are your favorites?

"Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman. I relate more to the period of time than to the actual album. If I was having fun, then it was a good album. If I wasn’t, then the album was crap. We had a blast making Blizzard and Diary – screwed-up and always laughing.

"Those first two albums were my revenge because I was fired from Sabbath. I thought, Man, I’ll show them what it’s about! I always come out with my best when my back’s against the wall. It’s always when the luxury and financial rewards come piling in that I begin to lose it."

What would make you hungry again?

"I am, in a way. This is the first record I’ve ever done sober. I’m five months sober, and it’s very difficult. I don’t know whether it’s good or not. I’m writing mellower songs. Not to say the album will be mellow. Zakk will make sure it’s not. He’s crazy. In fact, he reminds me of me.

"During rehearsal, I’ll sit down with the road crew and have a can of Coke. Geezer [Butler] will walk in and quietly join us, then Randy [Castillo, drums]. But Zakk, you hear him from a mile away, screaming or whatever. He’s like a circus coming to town. Geezer cowers when he hears Zakk coming. There are so many cool-guy guitar players with their sunglasses and all that, but Zakk is one of the boys.

"He’s a real shitkicker. He always says hi to people and takes the time to talk to the fans – he’s always on. One of the key things about him is that he’s always got some time for the people. That’s a big asset. When people find success, they tend to get big heads and 18 bodyguards. They forget that without the fans they wouldn’t have a flash limousine and the money to pay for the bodyguards.

"You shouldn’t make yourself over-available, but you shouldn’t make yourself invisible either. I have to be careful because, in a lot of areas, not only are there a lot of people who like me but also a lot of people who hate me. I don’t want to be the next John Lennon.

"Trying to clean my act up was a major step in my life. I’m suddenly stone-cold sober in this zoo and the lions are trying to pick the lock. I was stoned for 21 years. Most rockers get stoned to break down the inhibitions, paranoia and shyness that stem from personal hang-ups we’ve carried around since we were kids. We all want to communicate with our fellow man, but we’re too frightened to try.

"Getting drunk allowed me to relax. But after a period of years, that stopped working for me. So I had a real dilemma. I was getting high and it was killing me. Yet, I was afraid of being sober. Things began going drastically wrong for me in my personal life. I had hit the bottom, and all that was left was death or insanity. Now with the grace of God, I’ve kept my sobriety, but I still take it one day at a time.

"On the next studio record I’ve decided to take a whack at writing a love song and things I actually feel. I may also write a song called, 'Son of a Bitch, Everything’s Real.' [laughs]

Someone once described you as a “nuclear bluesman.” The analogy fits – you often write simple, guitar-oriented songs about the woes of the modern man.

"Just the other day I was watching an old video of me singing Paranoid. I listened to the lyrics and thought, Hell, where were we when we wrote that? It was really strange because I had this smile on my face while I was singing this heavy, heavy song.

"I mean, Sabbath grew up in Birmingham, England, which was in an industrialized pit. That was a billion light years from San Francisco’s hippified flower power, where you’d hear some guy singing about wearing flowers in your hair. Meanwhile, my life was shit. I was frightened by fear. Fear has been my closest friend throughout my life. That’s why we drank. That’s why we’re all fucked up.

"But I have no real regrets, except that I wasn't up to keeping Randy Rhoads from getting on that plane. I'm no superman, no person from another planet – I'm just a lucky guy."

Black Sabbath’s blockbuster curtain closer, Back to the Beginning, saw the heavy metal pioneers sign off across an exhaustive, riff-filled 10-hour party. Each band covered a cut from Sabbath's or frontman Ozzy Osbourne’s solo catalogs. Sabbath delivered a four-song set. They had, however, rehearsed more.

Reflecting on a night that is estimated to have raised millions for charity, guitarist Tony Iommi told SiriusXM's Trunk Nation with Eddie Trunk: “I'm really a bit of a perfectionist, but they can only do what they can do, and you can't expect anything else.” [via Blabbermouth]

Drummer Bill Ward missed out on Sabbath’s last farewell due to health issues. This time out, Ozzy had to perform seated. Four songs was their lot, but that didn’t stop them defrosting some other classics.

“We're in our seventies and late seventies, so you can only do so much,” he confesses. “To expect perfection from everybody is just impossible at the moment.

“But they did what they could do, and everybody was fine about it. I think the audience would know that and accepted that. They weren't expecting us to go on and be absolutely brilliant players. We played as we played and as we are now.”

The fact that the Prince of Darkness was pulling a double shift, bowing out as a solo artist with a five-song set before going straight into Sabbath’s sign off, sparked further concern for Iommi.

“We worked out what songs we were gonna play, and it was really a case of how long Ozzy could do it, because we didn't know,” he says. “With him doing his own set – which I didn't think he should do – I didn't want him to get burnt out by the time he'd come with us.”

Their final quartet of songs comprised War Pigs, Iron Man, N.I.B., and Paranoid, but “six or seven” songs were rehearsed. Ultimately, Black Sabbath and Fairies Wear Boots – the latter covered by Alice In Chains on the night – were dropped.

“It was a little difficult for Bill 'cause he hadn't played them for so long,” Iommi expands sympathetically. “Geezer and I, of course, played them on the last tour. And, of course, Bill hasn't toured, don't forget, for a long time.

“We hadn't played with Bill live for 20 years, so it was hairy wondering what's gonna happen, because Bill, when he plays, he plays different things every time. So you just have to be on your toes. But it went well.”

Much of the media coverage around the show has focussed on Ozzy’s retirement but Iommi has a solo album on the way, and he’s far from finished. Writing in the wake of the historic event, Guitar World editor-in-chief Michael Astley-Brown called it “a tribute to Tony Iommi’s singular impact on guitar music.”

Sabbath weren’t the only ones facing health issues and uncertainty in the run up to the gig, Jake E. Lee was forced to revert to plan B after he accepted he wasn’t fit to play his biggest hit, Bark to the Moon.

That was ultimately handled by a supergroup including Vernon Reid, Nuno Bettencourt – who debuted a stunning mystery guitar for the performance – and Ghost mastermind Papa V Perpetua, as part of Tom Morello's ‘Metal Yardbirds.’

Black Sabbath, in any of their incarnations across their 57-year career to date, are a force of nature. Inventing heavy metal and doom metal at a stroke, thrilling the wise with their epic fantasy lyrics and scaring the weak-witted with their satanic flirtations, Sabbath have somehow survived it all.

They’ve been through lows and highs – in commercial and narcotic senses – and have navigated periods of total unfashionability as well as others of godlike regard.

The original – and best – Sabbath lineup of John “Ozzy” Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Terence “Geezer” Butler (bass) and Bill Ward (drums) just completed the apex of their existence: Back to the Beginning at Villa Park in Birmingham. How big is this show? The support acts include Metallica, Guns N’ Roses and Tool, arena-sized acts who haven’t felt the need to support another band in decades.

How did they get to this exalted point? Well, since you asked…

It’s a bit weird, but not unreasonable, to conclude that the four musicians, all born in Aston, Birmingham, in 1948 or ’49, should never have become superstars. That kind of thing just didn’t happen in Aston, especially in the aftermath of World War II, when young men were expected to spend 45 years working in a factory before dying in their sixties.

Ozzy’s first job was as a tool-maker’s apprentice, where he cut the end of his thumb off on the very first day. Having had the missing chunk sewed back on, he moved through a succession of more or less desperate jobs, including killing livestock in an abattoir.

The tedium was briefly interrupted in 1966 by a stint in prison for breaking and entering – he was an incompetent burglar at best, once wearing fingerless gloves while attempting to steal goods from a clothing store – and another stretch after he punched a police officer in the face.

Music was his only solace, as it was for Iommi, Butler and Ward – three boys with fewer antisocial tendencies than Ozzy, but with just as poor a career outlook. Ward had started learning to play the drums as a pre-teen; Butler was playing rhythm guitar; and Iommi was pouring his efforts into mastering a cheap Watkins Rapier 22.

The future guitar hero came very close to having no musical career of any kind. When his band secured dates in Europe in 1965, Iommi was ready to quit his job as a machine-press operator, but on his last day at the factory his hand became trapped inside the machine – and the ends of his two middle right-hand fingers were severed. Doctors stopped the bleeding and managed to re-implant Iommi’s fingernails, but the damage was serious.

As he told me, “To this day it hasn’t really healed; there’s only a couple of layers of skin over the ends of the bone, and if I bend those fingers, they still hurt. I’ve looked into every conceivable way of getting them repaired surgically. They want to pull the skin forward from the rest of the finger to make a bigger covering at the fingertip, but I really don’t want to do that.”

One of the obvious problems posed to Iommi by the injury to his right hand was how to hold guitar strings down with two fingertips missing. Fortunately for the future of heavy metal, he was inspired by gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, who had evolved a way of fretting notes without using the third and fourth fingers of his left hand, which had been damaged in a fire.

Noting this, Iommi hit on the strategy of attaching home-made plastic clips to his injured fingertips to reduce the pain of holding down the strings.

As time passed, Iommi improved this further by switching to light-gauge strings and tuning down, thus reducing the string tension and making it easier to fret the notes. The consequence of this was that the riffs he played were what we would now call “heavier,” although in 1965 this was pretty meaningless.

In 1966, drummer Bill Ward formed a band called the Rest and soon asked Iommi – now playing his guitar with dexterity again – to come onboard. Ozzy, too, had decided in the absence of other options to become a singer and placed an ad on a musicians’ noticeboard.

It read “Ozzy Zig requires gig. Owns own PA” and was read with interest by Butler, who was playing in a band called Rare Breed; he contacted Ozzy and recruited him into the group.

The Rest soon split up, and Rare Breed changed their name to Mythology, although a drug bust in 1968 caused them to call it a day. Iommi and Ward knew Butler, who had by now switched to bass, and invited him to form a band with them. The latter recommended Ozzy as a singer, and by the summer of ’68 the quartet of Osbourne, Iommi, Butler and Ward had solidified.

Renaming themselves Earth, the band adopted an overdriven, blues-indebted sound, and a manager – Jim Simpson – started to handle their affairs, although in December 1968 there was a hitch when Iommi quit to join Jethro Tull, then – as now – a successful folk-rock band.

He didn’t stay long, fortunately; although he did stick around just long enough to perform with Tull in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, in December.

Returning to Earth – literally – Iommi warned his bandmates that a new level of discipline would be required if they were to succeed. A new band name was borrowed from the 1963 horror movie Black Sabbath, and an independent producer, Tony Hall, gave the group £500 to record a debut album…

Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: June 1, 1970
• Producer: Rodger Bain
• Personnel: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals, blues harp), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass), Bill Ward (drums)

This album’s first song is the unholy trinity of metal – Black Sabbath on Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath. It’s based on a tritone, the infamous flattened fifth or diabolus in musica, and Ozzy’s wail of “What is this that stands before me?” is spine-chilling to this day.

Other high points on this primitive but enormously influential album include Behind the Wall of Sleep, an expert exercise in allowing a riff to breathe. There’s tangible subtlety in the songwriting, with the riffage replaced at times by a warm, pastoral range of tones, and as the drums fade out, a slick bass solo from Butler stretches out for 40 seconds, aided by a Tycho Brahe wah pedal.

The songs, the artwork, the image, Ozzy’s sinister, untrained monotone, Iommi’s monolithic riffs… all combined to create the impression of a musical phenomenon far greater than the four scruffy musicians who inhabited it. This was the emerging sound of heavy metal, and the public lapped it up, sending it to Number 23 in the U.S.

Jim Simpson began shopping the album to record companies, looking for a deal, although most of them were unimpressed. Eventually his efforts paid off and a deal was struck with Vertigo in the U.K. and Warner Brothers in North America. Suddenly Black Sabbath were a hot property, commercially speaking, even if the musicians themselves remained flat broke.

Paranoid

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: January 7, 1971
• Producer: Rodger Bain
• Personnel: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar, flute), Geezer Butler (bass), Bill Ward (drums)

Paranoid, which appeared a mere eight months after its predecessor, is one of the most influential metal albums of all time. Its dark, lustrous appeal helped to make it Sabbath’s first Number 1, while the Paranoid single was an international hit. These were remarkable achievements for a band who had been practically unknown a year before.

The album’s high points are many, including War Pigs, where Sabbath take a stance against the warmongering regimes of the day, widely presumed to include the U.S. administration responsible for the final stages of the Vietnam War. Lyrically, the song doesn’t win any prizes – famously, lyricist Butler rhymes “Generals gathered in their masses” with “Just like witches at black masses” – but that’s an integral part of its charm.

Planet Caravan is a surprise; a gorgeous ballad laden with echoing textures, it demonstrated that a mellower side lay within the Sabbath songwriting team. That said, Iron Man – with its carved-in-stone riff and almost comedically threatening intro, featuring Ozzy’s electronically treated wail of “I am Iron Man!” – made it clear that this band didn’t want to be friends with you. They wanted to terrify you.

Master of Reality

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: August 6, 1971
• Producer: Rodger Bain
• Personnel: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar, keyboards, flute), Geezer Butler (bass), Bill Ward (drums, percussion)

Master of Reality, recorded from February to April 1971, is a milestone by any standards.

Butler explained in an interview with the author: “With Master of Reality, we wanted to change the music a bit because we didn’t want to keep playing the same stuff all the time. We all bought different instruments, Tony started playing piano, we wanted to expand our musical horizons a bit. We took our time because we could afford to.”

Master begins with an ode to marijuana, Sweet Leaf, introduced by the sound of Iommi taking a hit from a joint and coughing, with the sound taped, looped and panned slowly across the speakers.

Elsewhere, the guitarist’s mellower side was on full display; see Orchid, an instrumental lasting just a minute and a half and effectively an acoustic guitar symphony. However, the immense Lord of This World and Into the Void are based on all-time classic riffs: success hadn’t taken away any of Iommi’s desire to make heavy music, evidently.

With the three-album run of Black Sabbath, Paranoid and Master of Reality, Sabbath had distinguished themselves beyond all reasonable expectations. Could they keep the momentum rolling?

Vol. 4

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: September 30, 1972
• Producer: Black Sabbath, Patrick Meehan
• Personnel: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar, piano, Mellotron), Geezer Butler (bass, Mellotron), Bill Ward (drums, percussion)

Vol. 4 IS a great album, if a slightly unusual one. Changes is nothing less than a piano-and-strings ballad, Supernaut is an uptempo rock anthem based on a harmony riff and huge cymbals from Ward, and Snowblind is an anthem to cocaine (“Feeling happy in my pain/Icicles within my brain” intones Ozzy.)

Laguna Sunrise is another sweet instrumental and works perfectly in context, showcasing once more Tony Iommi’s many-sided writing talents, but it’s an example of how Vol. 4 could – and did – leave a few Black Sabbath followers more than a little confused.

On the other hand, the musicianship (by all four members of the band) was superior to anything they’d done before, and the band had also successfully expanded their lyrical approach.

The album went gold in the U.S. within eight weeks of its release, where a celebrated tour followed. In fact, this was the beginning of the era of Black Sabbath’s heaviest period of rock ’n’ roll indulgence; the message on the album’s sleeve of “We wish to thank the great COKE-Cola company of Los Angeles” made it clear where the band were headed. Indeed, Iommi recalled in his 2011 autobiography, Iron Man, that Sabbath ordered cocaine to be delivered to the recording studio, hidden inside speaker boxes.

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: November 1973
• Producer: Black Sabbath
• Personnel: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals, keyboards, tambourine), Tony Iommi (guitar, piano, keyboard, harpsichord, flute, bagpipes), Geezer Butler (bass, keyboards, Mellotron), Bill Ward (drums, bongos, timpani), Rick Wakeman (piano, Minimoog)

“I’d reached a point where I was addicted to narcotics,” said Bill Ward mournfully when I asked him what he recalled of the recording of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Geezer Butler saw it differently, telling me, “It was a great atmosphere – good times, great coke! Just like a new birth for me,” which reveals, if nothing else, that perspective is everything.

The pace certainly wasn’t letting up. In early ’73, Sabbath put in yet another row of international dates, this time in New Zealand, with Fairport Convention in tow. Curiously, the second support was local heroes Split Enz, who made a huge impact in the ’80s and ’90s when the core duo of Neil and Tim Finn made their names as Crowded House.

This didn’t exactly leave much gas in the creative tank when it came to writing new material. After time wasted in a Bel Air (Los Angeles) house – rented for songwriting purposes – had led to zero results due to writer’s block and exhaustion on Iommi’s part, Sabbath switched locations to Clearwell Castle, an ancient country manor in Gloucestershire, southern England.

Apparently inspired by their surroundings, where tales of hauntings were rife, the band came up with a set of songs that were their most compositionally ambitious yet.

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath’s standout tracks include the now-classic title cut, kicking off with one of Iommi’s best, and best-known riffs, and Sabbra Cadabra, a chunk of melodic rock ’n’ roll. The most impressive cut, technically speaking, is Spiral Architect, a grandiose ending to the album that features a lustrous string accompaniment and triple-tracked vocals. Believe it or not, Iommi also contributes bagpipes.

Very much back in business, the Black Sabbath gang hit the road in support of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, performing through Europe before a U.S. tour in February.

A Long Island, New York, show saw them perform over Bedlam, a band in which the supremely talented drummer named Cozy Powell played, before what was undoubtedly the most ambitious live gig of their career to date, the California Jam on April 6, 1974, at Ontario Motor Speedway in Ontario, California, about an hour’s drive east of L.A.

And yes, Ozzy was up all night beforehand doing coke; we know because he told us.

Sabotage

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: July 28, 1975
• Producer: Black Sabbath, Mike Butcher
• Personnel: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar, piano, keyboards, harp), Geezer Butler (bass), Bill Ward (drums, percussion, piano)

Sabbath's next album, Sabotage, was recorded in early 1975 at Morgan Studios in London and was the first LP to be produced by Iommi, although the overall credit went to Sabbath with Mike Butcher.

The high point of Sabotage is the majestic Symptom of the Universe, six-and-a-half minutes of riffs and solos, with multiple key and tempo changes underpinning Ozzy’s bat-like vocals. At 04:30, the track resolves into a piano and acoustic section, and in doing so becomes possibly the first progressive metal song.

The vocals were a problem, said Butler: “We always try to get Ozzy to sing Symptom of the Universe, but he never will. He says that he can’t reach the notes… It’s a psychological thing, I think. He won’t do it.”

The road was calling again, and Sabbath finished 1975 with another European and American tour. Business might have been good, but for some reason or other – drugs? Pressure? The rise of punk rock? – Sabbath were not to record a truly excellent album for some years.

Fortunately, a compilation, We Sold our Souls for Rock ’n’ Roll, was released in late 1975 and went some way toward reminding the kids what a tremendous early catalog Sabbath had.

Technical Ecstasy

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: October 22, 1976
• Producer: Black Sabbath
• Personnel: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals, blues harp), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass), Bill Ward (drums, vocals), Gerald Woodroffe (keyboards)

Recorded and mixed at Criteria Studios in Miami and mastered in California, this album is almost devoid of classic riffage, focusing on light, radio-friendly rock.

Although it reached Number 13 in the U.K., it remained on the charts there for only six weeks before dropping off entirely – a far cry from the 42 and 27 weeks achieved by Black Sabbath and Paranoid, respectively.

Tour dates were as relentless as ever, though; for six months straight, starting in October 1976, Black Sabbath hit the road on a huge American tour. In March ’77, they played the U.K. and Europe, this time with fellow rockers AC/DC.

A backstage incident between Geezer Butler and AC/DC’s Malcolm Young has gone down in the annals of rock; the former is reported to have drawn a switchblade comb from his pocket, causing Young to misconstrue it as a flick-knife.

These were the least of Sabbath’s problems in late 1977. Ozzy’s father, Jack, was seriously ill with cancer, and as the end approached, the singer decided to quit the band. Iommi immediately recruited Dave Walker from Savoy Brown, although Walker and Ozzy could not have been more different in looks or singing style.

The prospect of an Ozzy-less Black Sabbath seemed not to deter the new lineup, who – along with session keyboard player Don Airey – rehearsed new material for the next album.

The Walker-fronted band even appeared on a BBC TV show, Look Hear, performing a new song, Junior’s Eyes. The program was broadcast on January 6, 1978, three weeks before Ozzy asked if he could rejoin. Shortly afterwards, he was reinstated.

Never Say Die!

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: September 29, 1978
• Producer: Black Sabbath
• Personnel: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass), Bill Ward (drums, vocals), Don Airey (keyboards), Jon Elstar (blues harp)

The problem now was that Black Sabbath had lost ground in the face of a tedious last album – so their next album, Never Say Die!, recorded in early 1978 at Sound Interchange Studios in Toronto, needed to be significantly better than 1976’s Technical Ecstasy.

It wasn’t. As it turned out, Never Say Die! was basically the last gasp of a band that had run out of enthusiasm, and Sabbath’s choice of Van Halen as the support act for the subsequent tour didn’t help, either. The youngsters from Pasadena were probably the hottest rock band on the planet in 1979, whereas Sabbath seemed old and tired in comparison.

As the writer Sylvie Simmons, who witnessed Van Halen’s rise, recalled: “Van Halen were almost like a one-off blip. They came out of Pasadena with this thrust of power that absolutely knocked you sideways. It was absolutely fantastic; they were this completely don’t-give-a-fuck band. They toured with Sabbath on that last tour – and blew them out of the water.”

A new album was planned, of course, but Ozzy’s heart wasn’t in it. Songwriting sessions, once again in Bel Air, failed to produce anything of note – and on April 27, 1979, Bill Ward was delegated to tell Ozzy that he was being fired.

Heaven and Hell

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: April 18, 1980
• Producer: Martin Birch
• Personnel: Ronnie James Dio (vocals, blues harp), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass), Bill Ward (drums, percussion), Geoff Nicholls (keyboards)

Sabbath’s new singer was Ronnie James Dio, a warbler of unearthly vocal prowess who had hit the big time with Rainbow, the band formed by Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore.

Dio’s arrival was beset by a certain amount of chaos; Geezer Butler quit Sabbath temporarily after Ozzy’s departure, apparently feeling unsure if anyone could fill their long-time singer’s boots.

Recording sessions for the new lineup’s debut album, Heaven and Hell, began at Criteria Studios in Miami in September 1979, without Butler, who was still on a temporary break from Sabbath.

An acquaintance of Iommi’s, Geoff Nicholls, who played in a band called Quartz, stepped in on bass, switching to the position of touring keyboard player when Butler returned a few days later.

Martin Birch, who had engineered several early Fleetwood Mac and Faces albums as well as producing five Deep Purple albums, was brought in to produce Heaven and Hell. He gave the album a slick, precise feel that was a huge step up from previous Sabbath releases, not least in its radio-friendly arrangements.

The obvious example of this new, taut sound was Neon Knights, the highly catchy opener, and Children of the Sea, which begins with an ocean of acoustic guitars. The song Heaven and Hell is riffier in nature, recalling the glory days of Iron Man, and so is Die Young with its complex midsection.

Heaven and Hell was the perfect antidote to the humdrum albums recorded in the last years of Ozzy’s tenure, but Bill Ward, whose parents had both died in recent months, was finding life in Sabbath tough to endure. In urgent need of rehab, he left Sabbath on August 21, replaced by ex-Axis drummer Vinny Appice.

Mob Rules

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release date: November 4, 1981
• Producer: Martin Birch
• Personnel: Ronnie James Dio (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass), Bill Ward (drums, percussion), Geoff Nicholls (keyboards)

In 1981, Sabbath scheduled the recording of a second LP with Ronnie James Dio, this time featuring Appice on drums. Mob Rules was scheduled for release in the autumn, after another huge tour in the summer.

Its title track was solid, featuring on the soundtrack for the cult Canadian film Heavy Metal, but the rest of the album didn’t quite match up to Heaven and Hell, unfortunately for Sabbath, who now faced the dread specter of their former singer outstripping them. Ozzy had recruited a firebrand guitarist in Randy Rhoads and was about to embark on a phenomenally successful solo career.

In fact, the Sabs were about to find themselves on the outside of modern heavy metal: in the early ’80s, American thrash metal was only a couple of years away from the dominance it achieved later in the decade, spearheaded by Metallica and Slayer and a host of lesser bands such as Exciter, who supported Sabbath in Canada that year.

Sabbath’s gradual descent from the top of the heavy metal pile began here, especially when Dio and Appice quit after the release of a live LP, Live Evil.

Born Again

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: September 9, 1983
• Producer: Black Sabbath, Robin Black
• Personnel: Ian Gillan (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar, flute), Geezer Butler (bass), Bill Ward (drums, percussion), Geoff Nicholls (keyboards)

A night at the pub in 1983 led to a remarkable new lineup. Deep Purple singer and then-solo artist Ian Gillan became temporary frontman, perhaps improbably; although Purple and Sabbath had co-existed in a state of more or less mutual respect for a decade or more, the image of the two groups was dissimilar, to say the least.

Gillan joined the band in a state of serious intoxication, he later revealed, having forgotten to inform his manager that he was joining what was jocularly referred to as “Purple Sabbath” until the morning after the fateful night.

Before rehearsals could begin, a drummer was needed, so a call was placed to Bill Ward, who was on his way toward sobriety by the end of ’82, but he fell off the wagon when the album was finished and was unable to play the subsequent tour.

The ensuing dates became infamous, thanks to the extravagant stage set – a replica of the Stonehenge columns in Wiltshire, England – and also This Is Spinal Tap, which lampooned it mercilessly the following year. The columns were 15 meters in height rather than the intended 15 feet and barely fit into the venues on the tour, if at all.

Ward took off after only a year or so back in the band, and to make things worse, Butler also quit, leaving Iommi as the last man standing.

Seventh Star

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: January 28, 1986
• Producer: Jeff Glixman
• Personnel: Glenn Hughes (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Dave Spitz (bass), Eric Singer (drums), Geoff Nicholls (keyboards)

This sorry state of affairs was overshadowed, at least temporarily, by the Live Aid concert on July 13, 1985, when the original foursome of Ozzy, Iommi, Butler and Ward made an appearance at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.

Take a look at the performance on YouTube; you’ll witness Black Sabbath kicking off their three-song, 15-minute set with a version of Children of the Grave. Note the spandex, the mirrored shades and lack of chemistry between the musicians. Everything points to a fairly uninspired collaboration. Iron Man and Paranoid were delivered with conviction, although any possibility of a full reunion was soon quashed.

Back to work for Iommi, then, whose concept for a solo album – which he wanted to call Seventh Star – had extended as far as bass and drum tracks. He required a singer and called Glenn Hughes, the singer/bassist whose unearthly vocals had graced albums by Trapeze, Deep Purple and a host of other heavy-rock projects since the late ’60s.

Once on board, Hughes recorded his vocals at Cherokee Studios in Hollywood in July and August. Lyrics came from keyboardist Geoff Nicholls, producer Jeff Glixman and Hughes. Iommi added a bassist, Dave Spitz – nicknamed “The Beast” for his Wookiee-like hair – and the new lineup was ready to tour.

A single, Stranger to Love, proved there was still life in the new band, albeit of a painfully weak AOR nature. However, Hughes was ousted after a few dates, unable to sing properly after being punched by one of Sabbath’s road crew in an argument. Once more, Sabbath were singerless.

The Eternal Idol

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: December 8, 1987
• Producer: Jeff Glixman, Vic Coppersmith-Heaven, Chris Tsangarides
• Personnel: Tony Martin (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Bob Daisley, Dave Spitz (bass), Eric Singer (drums), Geoff Nicholls (keyboards, bass)

Black Sabbath singer number nine in seven years was Ray Gillen, a 25-year-old New Jersey resident who had sung with the Brooklyn-born former Rainbow drummer Bobby Rondinelli. Gillen – not to be confused with Ian Gillan – arrived before Glenn Hughes’ departure and played a series of shows.

The crowd seemed to accept the new recruit, and both Iommi and management breathed a collective sigh of relief… just before the entire band quit.

Once again left only with his long-term musical partner Geoff Nicholls, Iommi recruited a whole new lineup to complete the next album. His new singer was the golden-larynxed Tony Martin, while Bev Bevan played drums and Bob Daisley signed up to play bass.

The Eternal Idol was released November 28, 1987 (U.K.), and had some high-quality songs, including Nightmare, with its Tubular Bells-style keyboard intro, the instrumental Scarlet Pimpernel and the title track.

The subsequent European tour featured bassist Jo Burt, who had worked with Freddie Mercury, and Terry Chimes of the Clash came aboard as drummer, making this incarnation of Sabbath one of the strangest to date.

Headless Cross

• Label: I.R.S.
• U.S. release: April 17, 1989
• Producer: Tony Iommi, Cozy Powell
• Personnel: Tony Martin (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Laurence Cottle (bass), Cozy Powell (drums), Geoff Nicholls (keyboards)

1987 was Black Sabbath’s worst year yet, despite Iommi’s attempts to keep the band credible. The band ended their deal with the Vertigo label, signing with IRS Records, the American company founded by Police and Sting manager Miles Copeland.

Yet another Sabbath lineup, featuring the two Tonys, Blue Murder drummer Cozy Powell and a session bassist, Laurence Cottle, gathered in August 1988 to rehearse for a new album, Headless Cross.

As Ozzy had recruited Geezer Butler to play on his No Rest for the Wicked tour in 1989, Iommi asked the session bassist Neil Murray to accompany him on tour that summer. Things were looking up a little; Headless Cross contained some moderately entertaining tunes, notably When Death Calls, with its Wagnerian conclusion, and went some way toward alleviating the damage done by the feebly performing Eternal Idol.

Fans of Iommi’s sheet-metal playing also appreciated the master’s melodic touch on Devil & Daughter, while the slick AOR sheen of Kill in the Spirit World was redeemed a little by the finger-twisting riff at the song’s core. Still, what a dismal period this was for the remnants of this once-great band.

Tyr

• Label: I.R.S.
• U.S. release: August 20, 1990
• Producer: Tony Iommi, Cozy Powell
• Personnel: Tony Martin (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Neil Murray (bass), Cozy Powell (drums), Geoff Nicholls (keyboards)

Grunge and alternative rock were about to make life very hard for Black Sabbath as they entered the ’90s. It was a strange time for heavy metal in general, because the new, more serious dynamic emerging from Seattle made the old guard look, well, a touch silly. We were all a bit embarrassed – admit it...

That said, Sabbath managed to pull themselves out of the creative doldrums of the period to an extent, with Tony Martin’s expert vocals generally regarded by fans as a decent vehicle for Iommi’s songs. The next album, Tyr, released in the summer of 1990, enthralled more than a few fans with The Sabbath Stones, a near-seven-minute dinosaur of a track.

The Tyr tour was a success, with British and European dates lasting until November. Highlights included guest appearances at shows by Ian Gillan and Brian May, not to mention Geezer Butler, whose presence fuelled rumors that a classic lineup reunion might be on the cards — not the first, or last, time that such an idea had been suggested.

Dehumanizer

• Label: Reprise
• U.S. release: June 10, 1992
• Producer: Reinhold Mack
• Personnel: Ronnie James Dio (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass), Vinny Appice (drums, percussion), Geoff Nicholls (keyboards)

Reunion fever was definitely in the air in January 1991, when Ronnie James Dio replaced Tony Martin and Vinny Appice took over from Cozy Powell, who had sustained an injury while horse riding.

When a new album, Dehumanizer, was released in the summer of 1992, the song TV Crimes was a high point, with the technical riffing shared by Butler and Iommi a reminder of their advanced musicianship.

A tour rolled through South America in the month before the album release, gained momentum as Dehumanizer took off and passed through the U.S. before arriving at Ozzy’s supposed “retirement” show in Costa Mesa, California.

The idea had been that Dio, Iommi, Butler and Ward would support him before he closed the show, but Dio was not keen on the idea.

The show was a landmark nonetheless, with Ozzy joining his old band for four songs, and behind the scenes, real plans for a full-scale Osbourne, Iommi, Butler and Ward reunion were being hatched.

As the last of these told me, “After the Costa Mesa show, we had our mind on this for at least nine months… We had conversations with [Ozzy] by phone, and our managers were in touch. Dates had already been scheduled before Ozzy decided not to carry on with the project.”

Ozzy did indeed pass on the idea, and his retirement turned out to be brief. For their part, Ronnie James Dio and Vinny Appice departed to re-form the band Dio, so Iommi called Tony Martin and asked if he would be interested in taking back his place in the band. The singer agreed, and the drummer Bobby Rondinelli signed up too, although some tough times lay ahead.

Cross Purposes

• Label: Warner
• U.S. release: January 31, 1994
• Producer: Leif Mases, Black Sabbath
• Personnel: Tony Martin (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass), Bobby Rondinelli (drums), Geoff Nicholls (keyboards)

New songs were ready by summer 1993, and Cross Purposes was released in early ’94, just as Korn debuted with their self-titled album. There were still plenty of decent musical ideas coming from Sabbath, and Cross Purposes was respectable.

Virtual Death was a throwback to the style of their glory days, while Immaculate Deception featured an unusual but weighty guitar riff. The next step was a tour, and although the album performed only mildly well, ticket sales were strong; support came from Motörhead and Morbid Angel. Sabbath were starting to do well, which made it all the more strange when Butler and Ward quit again.

Ward still couldn’t face the band without Ozzy, and Butler wanted to start his own group with a sound that would fit better with modern metal. Neil Murray and Cozy Powell came back to the fold, but Sabbath fans began to wonder if the ’90s would only be about reunions and breakups.

Forbidden

• Label: Warner U.S.
• Release: June 5, 1995
• Producer: Ernie Cunnigan
• Personnel: Tony Martin (vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Neil Murray (bass), Cozy Powell (drums), Geoff Nicholls (keyboards)

All of Sabbath’s uncertainty about their role in modern music came to the fore on Forbidden. The band and management asked Ernie Cunnigan – a member of rapper Ice-T’s metal side-project, Body Count – to produce.

Body Count had a serious profile, thanks to the controversy over Cop Killer, and the group maintained a dangerous air that Sabbath presumably wanted for themselves. Still, the ruse smacked of desperation. That said, Forbidden wasn’t bad.

Illusion of Power, had its moments, including a guest rant from Ice-T. But that was it for Sabbath, studio albums-wise, for the next 18 years. The classic lineup reunited from 1997 to ’99 and again from 2004 to ’06 to play Ozzfest and tour the world, with a live album, Reunion, keeping the coffers full, and Sabbath were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in ’06.

From 2007 to 2010, Iommi and Butler reunited with Dio and Appice to form a new band, Heaven & Hell, a world-class act that toured widely and released an excellent album, The Devil You Know, in 2009. Sadly, the group ended when Dio succumbed to stomach cancer in 2010.

13

• Label: Republic
• U.S. release: June 10, 2013
• Producer: Rick Rubin
• Personnel: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals, blues harp), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass), Brad Wilk (drums)

In November 2011, promotional images bearing “11-11-11” appeared on Black Sabbath’s social media pages. Sabbath’s third reunion, fourth if you include Live Aid in 1985, was about to occur – and when it did, it was an occasion to remember. All four original members confirmed that live dates and an album produced by Rick Rubin were on their way.

The delight that many observers felt at Sabbath’s return was diminished when Iommi issued the dismal news in January 2012 that he was suffering from lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system. The following month, Bill Ward compounded the disappointment by announcing that he would not be taking part in the album and tour after all, citing contractual reasons.

Ultimately, 13 was recorded with Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk; Ozzy’s drummer, Tommy Clufetos, stepped up to play the subsequent tour dates. 13 instantly went to Number 1 in the U.S., largely because it consisted of the most charismatic recordings Sabbath had created in decades.

Highlights included God Is Dead?, End of the Beginning and the convincing Zeitgeist, the best Sabbath ballad in years. Sabbath toured for the rest of 2013, with dates in Australia and New Zealand – their first shows there for 40 years – and then North and South America, before more gigs in Europe.

Black Sabbath have remained busy in the decade-plus since 13, with a final run of dates called The End taking the Clufetos-anchored live band through North America, Europe and Australasia from January 2016 to February 2017. The final shows of The End tour took place at the Genting Arena in Birmingham on February 2 and 4, 2017, leaving most of us unconvinced that they were really calling time on their careers.

Only Iommi – who revealed that his cancer was in remission in the summer of ’16 – kept things vague, hinting that one-off shows and an album weren’t out of the question. Butler said in 2017 that the band had considered recording a blues album, a fascinating possibility, but that the tour “got in the way”.

There was always a slight feeling of unfinished business about Sabbath; Ozzy hinted at some regrets regarding Bill Ward in 2020, saying, “The only thing I do regret is not doing the last farewell show in Birmingham with Bill. I felt really bad about that. It would have been so nice.”

A medley of Iron Man and Paranoid by Ozzy and Iommi at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham was more or less the last we’ve seen of them since then.

However, things were moving behind the scenes, and in 2024 Ozzy admitted, “It’s unfinished. If they wanted to do one more gig with Bill, I would jump at the chance,” and in February, news broke of Back to the Beginning. And the rest, as they say, is history…

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

“The greatest day in the history of heavy metal, in honor of the band that started it all.” That’s how musical director Tom Morello billed Back to the Beginning, Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s final-ever show. And he wasn’t kidding.

Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Slayer, Tool, Pantera, Alice In Chains and Gojira were among the acts taking part at Villa Park in the band’s hometown of Birmingham, UK.

40,000 people were in attendance, but an estimated 5.8 million tuned in via livestream (myself included) – surely making it the biggest celebration of metal music in history.

With (mostly) 15-minute sets and seven-minute turnarounds between acts, it was a breathless affair, despite being nine hours long. And it’s testament to the affection for Ozzy and Sabbath that so many big names showed up to play three songs then take a back seat.

Outside of the big bands, there was a roll call of guitar hero guests taking the lead in a series of supergroups. Jake E. Lee, Ronnie Wood, Nuno Bettencourt, Billy Corgan, Vernon Reid, Andrew Watt and Lzzy Hale all had their moment in the spotlight.

Each band tackled a classic Sabbath or Ozzy track – and you can only imagine the arguments over who played what song. Anthrax won the coin toss with Into the Void – Iommi’s Fifth Symphony – but you have to feel for Pantera and Rival Sons, who somehow both ended up covering the sludgy (and lengthy) Electric Funeral. Must have been some crossed emails.

But whatever this Rolodex of guitar royalty played, there was no mistaking the grins on their faces. This was their chance to play the riffs they grew up learning in their bedrooms in front of a stadium of fans – their opportunity to be Tony Iommi or Randy Rhoads. It was a childhood fantasy come to life.

It was also a daunting proposition. To play some of rock and metal’s most iconic tracks in front of the heroes who wrote them? And a sea of people who knew every riff, every lick, like the back of their hands? No pressure.

Every band on this bill would not sound the way they do today without Sabbath, and they each drew something different out of the originals with their own takes.

Lamb of God’s Children of the Grave was a pummeling chug fest updated for the late-Noughties metal revival. Never Say Die became a hair metal anthem at the hands of Guns N’ Roses, while Hole in the Sky sounded like something Metallica could have sneaked onto the tracklisting forLoad.

Many of the renditions leaned more into the legacy of Sabbath as metal trailblazers – upping the aggression and taming the groove. But Iommi and co were schooled in the blues, so more traditional rock outfits like Rival Sons, Guns N’ Roses (Sabbath Bloody Sabbath) and, especially, Alice in Chains (Fairies Wear Boots) were arguably most successful in their looser, more dynamic covers – and all the heavier for it.

Iommi’s influence on a spider diagram of genres is such that the lineup – while loaded with big names, albeit far from diverse – didn’t have space to tap into all the styles Sabbath spawned. You had your thrash (Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax), hard rock (Halestorm, GNR), groove metal (Pantera, Gojira), but stoner and doom weren’t represented. Some Sleep or Kyuss to break up the mid-scooped assault that dominated much of the daytime sets would have been welcome.

But Sabbath’s psychedelic side was at least represented by Tool, who lent into a bluesy Hand of God, sandwiched between an abbreviated Forty Six & 2 and Ænema. It must have been their shortest set in decades.

It was heart-warming to see Ozzy’s other right-hand axemen represented, too. Morello said he couldn’t imagine this show without Jake E. Lee, who made an emotional return after he was shot multiple times while walking his dog last year.

When you have Nuno Bettencourt bowing down before you, you know you’re in for something special, and Lee’s fluid renditions of The Ultimate Sin (with Lzzy Hale) and Shot in the Dark (with David Draiman) were a reminder that he remains an underrated player in the pantheon of Ozzy six-stringers.

Bettencourt proved, as he so often does, to be the MVP of the show’s supergroup proceedings, tackling Bark at the Moon’s acrobatic leads alongside Vernon Reid; Sweet Leaf with David Draiman; Flying High Again with Sammy Hagar; and Walk This Way/Whole Lotta Love with surprise guest Steven Tyler. Ronnie Wood even sauntered up to play a sleazy The Train Kept A-Rollin’.

Other highlights included a rendition of Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law plus Sabbath’s Snowblind with K.K. Downing and the ‘metal Yardbirds’ Tom Morello, Adam Jones and Billy Corgan (who was sadly sans guitar), plus an onscreen rendition of Mr. Crowley featuring Jack Black along with Revel Ian (son of Scott) and Roman Morello (son of Tom).

There were two moments that gave me chills. The first was when Ozzy rose up out of the floor on a none-more-black throne complete with carving of a bat/demon thing.

His voice was better than anyone could have been expecting on I Don’t Know, and his five-song set rocketed by in a blur of Zakk Wylde squealies. There was a touching tribute to fallen hero Randy Rhoads during the Crazy Train solo, where he appeared onscreen as Wylde blazed through the iconic lead.

The second goosebumps moment was hearing 40,000 people sing along to Iommi’s solo in War Pigs with equal, if not louder fervour, than Ozzy’s “Oh Lord, yeahs!” That, ladies and gentlemen, is when you know you’ve achieved guitar god status. The same can be said for Iron Man’s lumbering riff which, had it been released in a more metal-tolerant era, would have been a stadium chant long before Seven Nation Army.

Bar a brief chord fumble in the outro of War Pigs, Iommi was absolutely unimpeachable. After eight hours of hearing other guitarists take their own shots at his riffs and solos, you realize that – even with a lifetime of study and influence – it is impossible to come close.

There’s a paradoxical relaxedness about Iommi’s style. Combined with Bill Ward’s (this evening, inexplicably topless) drumming, it has a drag and swagger. Maybe it’s the effect of those prosthetic fingertips, but there’s something about the behind-the-beat timing, the calm confidence that makes Iommi’s command of the fretboard so disconcerting.

In N.I.B., he summons lightning strikes of pentatonic flurries and blood-curdling bends: he’s far from the fastest player here today, but easily the most recognizable from tone alone.

One quick blast through Paranoid – never the most representative of Sabbath’s oeuvre, but among the most fun – and it’s over. We’re unlikely to see Ozzy onstage again, but his voice will echo through the ages.

Iommi hasn’t hung up his SGs just yet, though. He’s still on fine form – and there remains the tantalizing prospect of a new solo album (and collaborative record with his old mate Brian May).

But should he decide to call it a day, he can be left in no doubt that he changed the course of music history – and, as Back to the Beginning showed, every band with even the mildest heavy leanings owes him a debt of gratitude.

If you caught Black Sabbath’s The End tour, which lasted from 2016 to 2017 and spanned 81 shows over six legs, there’s a good chance you caught Rival Sons opening for them. But even if you didn’t, that tour remains a significant pride point for Rival Sons’ fuzz-laden guitarist, Scott Holiday – and it’s why Rival Sons are a part of Back to the Beginning.

“I got to see a lot,” Holiday says about his time on the road with his heroes. “It’s rare that you get to spend that much time with a band that has been that legendary for that long. It was a heavy feeling to think you could be that deep into your career and be so totally focused on delivering those old songs. It was really inspiring. It was an energy.”

Rival Sons were the openers for Black Sabbath during their final tour. Is that why you got the call for Back to the Beginning?

“We were on tour with Sabbath for 13 months and were actually the only opener for their last official tour. Right after we finished that tour, we presented them with their Grammy Lifetime Achievement [award], where we played some Sabbath songs, spoke in front of everybody and did that whole thing with them, too.

“So we’ve been friends with them, and when they reached out, of course, we were obliged and wanted to be a part of it.”

What did you learn from sharing the stage with Sabbath?

“I watched Tony a lot. We became friends, which was amazing. It was emotional for me. Not in a ‘Pinch me!’ sense, but just realizing how on-point he was and how much he was not phoning in that performance. I felt moved by it, like, ‘Wow… he’s really keyed-in every night. He’s really focused, dedicated and still totally there.’”

Was being on the road with Sabbath as wild as it’s made out to be?

“Everybody looks at these guys, and they have assumptions. I would tell people, ‘You don’t understand who these guys are. These guys are grandfathers. They’re family men. They’ve been wealthy for a long time because of music. These aren’t kids doing devil-worshiping music in their basements.’ [Laughs]

“These were grown men with insanely successful careers who made boatloads of money and became totally adjusted family men. They were warm people. It was a nice, warm atmosphere.”

Can you recall the first time you heard Black Sabbath and how it made you feel?

“I remember hearing those early records by digging through my parents’ records and cassettes. The first Sabbath album I heard was Paranoid, and heavy metal was established. So I wasn’t like, ‘Holy shit, what is this?’ There was already Metallica and heavy music happening that was thrashy, so Sabbath was much more of a rock feel to me as a kid.

“But I distinctly remember putting on [Black Sabbath] at my parents’ house, listening to it in headphones, holding that cover and feeling like, ‘This is spooky. This is frightening.’ What they came up with, the image and the sound, made me feel uneasy.”

You’re a riff writer and fuzz fan. Was Tony Iommi a big influence on you?

“Definitely. Black Sabbath played a role in that. I’d say that Electric Funeral was probably the first riff I learned to play. That was kind of the building blocks. It’s just the simplest, early head-banging, kind of devil-y, amazing and cool energy they created.”

Is there a chance Rival Sons will play Electric Funeral at Back to the Beginning?

“I know what songs we’re gonna play – but I don’t think I’m allowed to say it… but I might dip into my history a little bit. [Laughs] I think we’re just going to do two songs. We’ll do one of ours, and one of [Sabbath’s].”

What does it mean to be a part of their final ever show?

“It’s great! I don’t know how much we’re going to get to see of them playing together. I’m like everybody else, just wondering, ‘How much is Bill going to get up and do? How much can Ozzy even get up and do?’ It may just turn out to be much more of a tribute with them there and then them popping in here and there.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Although Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher is one of metal’s premier riff writers, he remains in awe of Black Sabbath. Moreover, he’s in awe of being asked to be a part of the July 5 Back to the Beginning event.

“I’m just going to take it in, man,” he says. “I’m privileged to be in a band that’s been asked to be on such a metal experience.”

It’s been a whirlwind for Kelliher and Mastodon, who, back in March, announced the “mutual” departure of Brent Hinds, meaning Mastodon will be sporting a new lead guitarist – most likely Nick Johnston – come July 5.

Still, Kelliher marvels at the fact that the original four members of Mastodon held it together for so long, which makes the lessons learned from Sabbath – who have had trouble doing the same – bittersweet.

“They taught us that you’re never too old to rock,” Kelliher says. “They’ve withstood the test of time. They’ve been a band for over 50 years, since the late ’60s. That’s a long time, man.”

What led to Mastodon getting the call for Back to the Beginning?

“I’m not exactly sure who mentioned us, but I mean… we’re Sabbath-worthy! [Laughs] We toured with Sabbath during Ozzfest in 2005. And they were fans of Mastodon, but I’m not sure if they had anything to do with it. I’m just happy to go. I’m not asking any questions!”

What was it like touring with Sabbath? Did you rub elbows with the band?

“Those guys are pretty well-padded, you know? They’re kinda like fine china at this point. They’re not rubbing elbows with the common folk too much. [Laughs] But I remember sitting down with Bill Ward a couple of times, and he had nice things to say about us.”

You didn’t get to talk with Ozzy, Geezer or Tony?

“I believe I met Ozzy at one time for a second – but I think both of us had a few substances in us. [Laughs] The only time I spoke to Mr. Iommi was when we were accepting an award in London, 10 or 12 years ago; he was accepting an award, too.”

What did Tony have to say?

“We were all standing there and were going to perform a couple of songs. He was about to accept his award, and it was dark behind the stage; as he was getting ready to walk out, instead of being like, ‘Hey, man, you’re my favorite guitar player, let’s get a picture,’ I was like, ‘Watch out for that cable running across the floor.’ [Laughs] He was like, ‘Oh, yeah. Thanks, dude.’ That was my interaction.”

Do you regret not saying more – or not getting that photo?

“I’m sure he gets plenty of crazy, weird bands all over him. I don’t ever really like to meet my heroes, you know? I like to think of them as the way they are in my head, like these gods. I don’t want to be disappointed when I meet them.”

How has Iommi impacted your playing?

“They’re the quintessential heavy metal band. They’re like the original fucking metal band, really, in my eyes. His playing influenced just about every metal riff you’ve heard. Whether you want to admit it or not, he created a lot of those iconic harmonies.”

Tony is about as unique a player as it gets. What’s his secret?

“It’s not the proficiency of the playing. It’s more about writing a great riff that sticks in your head and is catchy. A lot of them are simple, but believe it or not, it’s harder to write a three-chord rock song than to write something super-arpeggiated with weird time signatures all over the place.”

Do you have a favorite Sabbath riff?

“Supernaut. I can’t imagine writing that at home and being like, ‘I can’t wait to take this to practice to show the other guys,’ and then showing up and being like [in a British accent], ‘Hey, mates, I got this cool fucking riff. Check it out!’

“It fucking checks all the boxes. It’s very upbeat but dark and evil at the same time. It’s got a great swing to it. Swing is another thing that metal guitar players don’t think about.”

What’s the greatest challenge in trying to cover Tony’s parts?

“A lot of people emulate him. He’s not over-the-top with his guitar solos, really fast or technical. He’s right in the middle. He created sludge metal with those slowed-down, heavy-ass riffs.

“It’s not hard to be like, ‘That kind of sounds like Black Sabbath’ when you’re writing riffs. I mean, it’s hard not to; I don’t know; he just used pentatonic scales in a really evil way and chose his notes wisely.”

Have you discussed what Sabbath song you’ll play at the show?

“I want to play Supernaut! But I don’t have all the details. We’re still in the dark about a lot of that. There’s a lot of bands playing, and there’s only so much time to let Sabbath do their thing… Metallica will probably play a few songs, so we may only get to play one song, which is fine.”

What does it mean to you to be a part of this event?

“It’s a very special occasion. Those guys are getting up there – we all are – so for them to get back together and do this one last show as the original four dudes is monumental.

“It’s great. When we were invited to do it, I was kind of beside myself, like, ‘Really? Wow.’ We’re going to be up there with some really fucking huge bands of our genre that we looked up to. I’m very humbled. It’s super-special that we got asked. It speaks volumes.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Considering that they’re old pals, Scott Ian wasn’t surprised to get a random text from Tom Morello. The surprising part was the text’s content: “Do you want to come jam a Sabbath song at the final Black Sabbath show in Birmingham on July 5?”

Obviously, Ian – a lifelong Sabbath devotee – was in. Soon, the rest of Anthrax was in too.

“It’s mind-blowing,” Ian says. “I’ve been flipping out. It’s hard to believe it’s real. It’s not hard for me to think back to my childhood discovering them – and the earliest days of Anthrax. We were a bunch of kids in Queens [New York], doing our best to emulate the bands we loved, thinking, ‘Could you imagine if we ever got to do this?’”

Were you nervous when you got Tom Morello’s text?

“Tom had texted me because we’re friends, so we’ll text each other out of the blue, and I got this text, which I read back quickly. In my brain, I got so excited reading the text that I thought he was asking me if I wanted to play a song with Black Sabbath onstage at some final show that I knew nothing about – but that Tom is now texting me about. [Laughs]

“I literally started sweating, like, the thought of that… I was like, ‘How is this even possible?’ Then I calmed down, looked at the text again and realized, ‘Okay, he’s not talking about me playing with Sabbath together onstage with them.’ I was equally excited about it – just much less nervous.”

Do you remember the first time you heard Sabbath?

“My uncle Mitch, who is only 10 years older than me – and this would have been when we were still in Queens – we used to go over there a lot, and I’d sit in his room.

“He had these cool rock and black-light posters on the wall, and he had a huge collection of vinyl and comic books. It was like my dream room! I’d go through his records, and I was eight years old. One time, I pulled out the first Black Sabbath record.”

That cover must have been a real sight for an eight-year-old.

“I was intrigued! I was like, ‘What is this? Is it like a witch or something?’ I didn’t know from looking at it, and I said, ‘What’s Black Sabbath?’ My cousin said, 'Oh, that’s acid rock…’ That’s how he described them, which meant nothing to me and still means nothing to me. [Laughs]

“But he took it out, the record started, and I heard the sound effects and the bell, and I’m like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ Now I’m sitting there scared, and there’s some haunted-house shit going on… it sounds cliché, but it just completely changed the whole mood.”

How do you measure the influence of Tony Iommi on you as a guitarist?

“Tony was such a big influence on me as a kid. I actually tried to play lefty… it didn’t work. [Laughs] I tried as hard as I could because I was convinced that him playing lefty was part of why he sounded so evil.

“I was like, ‘He’s the only left-handed player I’ve ever heard of, so it must have something to do with that.’ But I can’t even quantify it because I grew up learning by listening to Tony, the down-picking, the tone and the galloping.”

Where would heavy metal be without Black Sabbath?

“It wouldn’t be. Without Sabbath, Judas Priest wouldn’t have become the band they became, and then there’d be no Iron Maiden and so on and so on.

“Maybe there would have been another band… maybe in an alternate universe, there’s some other band that would have been like Black Sabbath is in our universe but without them… I don’t know. I can’t tell you that metal would exist the way it does in 2025 without them.”

What’s your favorite original-lineup Sabbath riff?

“The first thing that popped into my head is Into the Void, for whatever reason. There’s just something about that riff; it’s got what I consider to be the origin of thrash metal. The bridge in the middle, where they pick it up, and Bill [Ward] starts playing double kick – to me, that’s the beginning of thrash metal.”

Once you get onstage, what’ll be the biggest challenge in terms of doing justice to Tony’s unique style, which seems simple… until you try.

“Sabbath and AC/DC are similar to me because people make the mistake of thinking, ‘That’s so easy. It’s like a caveman. Anyone could play those parts.’ If they could, they would. That’s why there’s never been another Black Sabbath or another AC/DC – nobody else can do it!

“Nobody else could play those parts the way those guys do. They’re original entities on guitar, and that’s why I don’t even try. I play it the way I play it. We’ve always been a band that tries to honor it.”

Can you tell us what you’ll be playing?

“No! I’m not going to give away the song we’re playing. And I don’t think this is public knowledge, either, like the way it works for most of the bands on the bill; you do a Sabbath cover and one of your own.”

Have you gotten to meet or play with the Sabbath guys before, and what does it mean to be a part of this final show?

“Yeah, [Anthrax] played with them in ’05 at Download [Festival], I think. I got to stand on the side and watch them play. That would have been the last time I saw them. If I weren’t a part of this show, I’d still be going; I’d make the pilgrimage, be there all day and watch the whole thing.”

You’ve done a ton of cool things, but this seems like it’ll be at the top of your list when you look back.

“It’ll be high up there. Some of the coolest moments of my life are just having been involved with the fact that I got to stand and talk to Tony Iommi. He’s always been just so wonderful and fantastic to speak with. I call them ‘Who let me in here?’ moments, where it’s hard to believe I get to do this.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

As a fellow native of Birmingham, former Judas Priest – and current KK’s Priest – guitarist K.K. Downing remembers coming up within the same scene as Black Sabbath. Prior to hearing their music, specifically their debut album, Downing felt like an outlier who was consistently misclassified, genre-wise. But upon hearing Sabbath’s kindred spirit music, everything changed.

“There was a kind of similarity,” Downing says. “[Sabbath and Priest] were doing something that was different. It gave us a real confidence boost to carry on what we were doing. Black Sabbath was a big confidence boost to us.”

Like many greats from the metal community, Downing has been invited to participate in the Back to the Beginning farewell show. That said, it’s a bit bittersweet for Downing, who was on the ground floor of the Birmingham metal scene and still makes his home nearby. But he’s not sad, as it’s a celebration of how far they’ve come.

“It was hard,” Downing says. “It was tough. We were troopers and fought in the trenches together to survive. But we came out of it. If we never see another Ozzy or Black Sabbath show, this hits home hard. Nothing lasts forever. Nobody lasts forever. But one thing’s for sure: we’re here, and we’re going to make the best of it.”

What led to your getting the call for the Back to the Beginning show?

“I’m actually involved with quite a sizable venue here in the Midlands [of England] called KK’s Steel Mill [in Wolverhampton]. A lot of bands played there, like Michael Schenker and Wishbone Ash, and it’s a cool venue. The guys that run that facility contacted me and said Andy Copping from Live Nation has been in touch, and they did mention Sharon [Osbourne].

“I thought, ‘Oh, that’d be great.’ I hadn’t seen or spoken to Sharon for a long time, but Andy called me and said, ‘Would you be on board for doing this?’ I said, ‘Well, yeah.’ And the thing is that it’s only about an hour away from where I live; it’s not much further than that. I was thinking, ‘That’s really cool. I’m on board. Let’s do it.’”

Judas Priest came up in Birmingham around the same time as Sabbath. What was that scene like?

“Ever since I started, I was always playing this weird music that nobody could describe. At the time, it was all progressive blues bands, and Tony [Iommi] would tell me the same thing. I’m sure that when people booked Judas Priest into a venue, they’d call us a ‘progressive blues band’ because rock wasn’t really consolidated.

“It went from progressive blues to rock to progressive rock to hard rock to heavy rock to heavy metal. But in the late ’60s, none of that existed.”

Do you remember the first time you heard Sabbath’s music?

“I wasn’t aware of Black Sabbath until I heard their [first] album. Somebody introduced me to it, and it was basically a sigh of relief, with me thinking, ‘Thank fuck,’ you know? I thought, ‘There are other dudes on the planet that are thinking the same as me.’ And I thought, ‘Behold! They’re not far away from where we live and operate from.’”

Did Tony’s playing impact yours much?

“Well, those guys were doing what we were doing, which was metal, though we didn’t know that at the time; we only knew it wasn’t a progression on a blues song. It was just the atmosphere, the mood, the heaviness of the riffs, the darkness and a lot of other words I could think of to describe the kind of similarities, which was really cool.”

I assume you’ve rubbed elbows with Tony, Ozzy and the rest of Sabbath a lot over the years?

“Oh, yeah. They’re just really nice guys, and I wouldn’t say that if it weren’t absolutely true. I know the guys were from a similar sort of area, and they’re just typical guys from there, sort of salt-of-the-earth people, very kind, very warm and good guys to be around.

“Everybody says the same thing about all the guys from Black Sabbath; they’re lovely people. [Judas Priest] were fortunate; we went out and did Ozzfest with the guys and had some good times. True to form, with those guys, it’s all about a sense of humor. Everything’s got an element of humor. It’s what gets us through the day; it’s great to be around guys like that.”

What can you say about the idiosyncratic way Tony plays guitar – especially since you’ll be trying to cover it at the show?

“There’s only one Tony Iommi. He can’t be replicated. I wouldn’t anticipate that would be the case, so I’ll do justice the best I can.”

Does he play very differently from the way you do?

“I think it’s exactly the same as myself, and I stand corrected if Tony thinks otherwise, but we were young guys, and I think it’s fair to say we had a great passion for what we were doing, what we wanted to do and what we wanted to become. I think we placed more importance on preconceived conceptions of what we were going to become than on studying music, musical notation and doing musical homework.

“I think we considered that we would go it alone and do our own things – and that’s what we did. You can hear that in our playing, we were in search of what we could do musically, whether it was right or wrong, or what anybody thought about it because it sounded good to us. For that reason, we were executing what we were doing on the guitar; it was coming from inside of us, it wasn’t from the sheets.

“Back in the day, we just saw ourselves as guys thinking, ‘We look like we should be doing this,’ whatever that means. ‘We’re going to do it. Whatever our skill set is, good, bad, we’re going to go out there, front it, show some shapes [devil’s horns] and some attitude.’ It was early days, and we thought, ‘We’re on board with it. It’s nasty and it’s different from everything else.’”

Do you have a favorite Sabbath riff, and have you decided what song you’ll play?

“They’re all good! It’s still up in the air at the moment. It’s moving fast. First, they said, ‘Can you play this song?’ I said, ‘Sure,’ but it kind of got changed, and they said, ‘What about this?’ I went, ‘Yeah, cool!’ So, whatever the guys decide to do, I’m happy with it.

“I’d like to play some KK’s Priest, and that will be happening as well. But I think the element of surprise is a good thing. I think the fans have paid for a great day, and it’s gonna be pretty spectacular. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this the biggest metal fest in history?”

That’s what they say. It seems the entire metal industry will be on hand.

“I don’t know where they’re going to put us all! [Laughs] It’s a great thrill and an honor. At the same time, someone asked me, ‘Are you going to feel a bit sad and remorseful that it’s the end?’ I said, ‘No. None of that.’ This is going to be a massive party and a great celebration of metal. Maybe afterward, I might come back and think, ‘Well, you know…’”

Do you think it’s truly the end for Ozzy and Sabbath?

“Knowing this industry, and you’ll probably agree with me, you can never say never. It’s always changing. Hopefully, I’ll see Sharon and Ozzy and say, ‘Guys, that was awesome. Let’s take it here and there and see if you can drag it out a bit.’ But whatever will be, will be. It’s an incredible thing to have been on this journey from the beginning.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Tony Iommi has partnered with Laney to release a limited-edition signature guitar amp, the TI100 Reissue – a faithful replica of the Black Sabbath electric guitar legend’s original TI100 from 2012.

Back to the Beginning – Black Sabbath’s epic bow-out and Ozzy Osbourne’s last-ever show – is only days away, and to mark the occasion Laney has reissued the TI100, which, for the past decade or so, has been Iommi’s go-to amp of choice.

Notably, the TI100 was the most recent culmination of the pair’s long-standing partnership, which began way back in the 1960s when Iommi used a LA100BL model to help forge the sound of heavy metal on Black Sabbath.

Along the way, Iommi also released his first signature head, the GH100TI, in the 1990s. It was replaced by the TI100, which was designed for greater versatility and dubbed “the most significant amp launch” of the year.

Since the inception of the Sabbath sound, Laney amps – along with the customary Gibson SG – have provided the backbone of Iommi’s rig. Now, the 2012 signature model is back, but only as part of an ultra-exclusive launch that comprises just 50 units.

Launched in conjunction with Back to the Beginning, the TI100 Limited Edition is a like-for-like replica of the 2012 model, with the added benefit of some additional celebratory extras. That includes Iommi’s signature on the amp, a custom slip cover, a certificate of authenticity, a set of Iommi pics and more.

As for the amp itself, it offers Lead and Rhythm channels, which are housed in a custom-liveried chassis complete with Iommi inlay-style Cross motifs. The Lead promises liquid smooth gain, while Rhythm is concerned with edge of break up tones, with both offering a super-tight low-end primed for down-tuning.

Each channel gets parameters for Drive, Bass, Middle, Treble, Volume, Enhance and Presence, as well as Pre-Boost controls that can be engaged via two channel-specific toggle switches.

Under the hood, eight 12AX7 and four 6L6 tubes do the heavy lifting, while on the rear, an FX Loop with three different modes, and Preamp-Out and Power Amp In jacks, can be found for more complex rig assimilation.

“The return of a legend,” writes Laney. “We are extremely proud of our association with Tony Iommi and very happy to mark the final ever Black Sabbath show with the announcement of a very limited, hand signed and numbered faithful re-issue of his legendary signature amp, the Laney TI100.”

Only 50 TI100 Limited Edition amps will be made, and each will be available for $4999.

Visit Laney to find out more.

Back to the Beginning, which will pull the curtain down on Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne’s live careers, will take place this weekend (July 5). The lineup features a huge roster of special guests, from Tom Morello and Adam Jones to Jake E. Lee and Lzzy Hale.

Judging by his cavernous riffs, it’s not hard to see that when it comes to guitar, for Jerry Cantrell, the apple doesn’t fall far from the Sabbath tree. It’s a fact, and Cantrell isn’t hiding it. “Those [Black Sabbath] albums and songs are timeless,” he says. “They spoke to me then; they speak to me today.”

Sabbath first entered Cantrell’s orbit when the burgeoning riff meister was a grammar-school student in Pennsylvania in the late ’70s. From the moment Cantrell took in the opening chords of Iron Man, he was hooked. So it must have been sweet when just over a decade later, in 1991, Cantrell’s band, Alice in Chains, supported Ozzy Osbourne on his first “farewell tour,” the No More Tours Tour.

“We’ve had a close relationship with Ozzy since then,” Cantrell says. So when Tom Morello called Cantrell to ask Alice in Chains to participate in Back to the Beginning, it was an easy “Yes.”

“It’s an honor,” Cantrell says. “I just think it’s cool to be going back to their hometown and honoring the band, Ozzy and all of us who are fans and who have been influenced by them.”

How did you first get wind of the Back to the Beginning show?

“We got a call from Tom Morello, who is kind of handling this whole thing. He asked if we’d be into showing up to celebrate some Sabbath, and we were very happy to be included.”

What were your initial thoughts once you understood the scale of the show?

“First and foremost, I’m a huge Sabbath fan. Most of us rocker types would put Sabbath in the top tier of why we do what we do, and as our biggest influence. And we’ve [Alice in Chains] have had a long relationship with Ozzy, who took us out [on tour] in ’91, and gave us one of our first breaks – and gave us a bass player [Mike Inez]! [Laughs]”

What was it like touring with Ozzy?

“It was pretty cool to get that slot. We were just going to go out for a run, and then Ozzy asked us back for a few more. We hit it off with the band, obviously, Zakk [Wylde], Randy [Castillo] and Mike Inez. Ozzy was really cool to us and supportive. It was just a good vibe. We made a lot of lifelong friends, and having the opportunity to play on a big stage for one of your heroes is always a pretty big deal for a young artist.”

Can you remember the first time you heard Black Sabbath?

“I was probably in seventh or eighth grade. I was living in Pennsylvania, where my dad was stationed. I had a neighbor whose name I think was Dale, and he had a great stereo system. I used to always hear him rocking out next door, and I took to hanging out with him. He turned me on to Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd, which would have been 1978 or 1979.”

Once you picked up guitar, how did Tony Iommi influence you?

“He’s one of the prime faces of the [guitar] Mount Rushmore, if you want to put it that way. And he’s one of the handful of guitar players that really impacted me with the riffs, intensity and the band that he was a part of.”

Sabbath’s music is simple, but it’s hard to replicate. What did Alice in Chains take away from it?

“The best music is pretty straightforward and simple. I mean, what are you trying to do? When you first have the crazy notion in your head to follow your dream and think, ‘I’d like to do that, too,’ [Sabbath] are the guys you look to. You emulate your heroes until, at some point, your own identity starts to shine through.

“The lesson is that you’re just trying to find yourself and hope that at some point you have some sort of impact, too. But those are really lofty ideas that I don’t really think are front of mind.”

“First off, you just want to rock. [Laughs] You want to make your own rock that makes you feel like the rock of Black Sabbath, like, 'That’s badass, man,'you know? You want to create something that’s badass that has its own identity and flavor. We’ve been able to accomplish that, and that feels good.

“The lesson is to do what makes you feel happy and to create music you enjoy making. If you can satisfy yourself as an artist, and as a group, and throw something out there into the world, you’ve already won the game. Those are all the lessons and goals that we learned from listening to the bands that came before us, like Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi, one of my favorite guitar players.”

What’s a nuance of Tony’s playing that stands out, and do you have a favorite riff?

“The heaviness, the bends, the larger-than-life, doomy quality and the power of his guitar. I pretty much dig everything he’s ever done, so it’d be hard to pick out a riff. There are so many of them, but the first one I ever heard was Iron Man. That’s the one that struck me at the beginning.”

Have you decided what Alice in Chains will play?

“We had a little meeting a few months back, but it’s still in motion and in flux. We’re going into it like all the other bands, and we’ll do whatever they want us to do. We threw out a bunch of songs that we liked, like Children of the Grave, Hand of Doom and Fairies Wear Boots. They asked us what we’d be interested in, and we picked four or five, but we still don’t have a final idea of what we’re going to play.”

What does it mean to you to not only be a part of this show, but to witness it?

“As a fan, it’s something you want to do. You want to be there, and it’s going to be very satisfying. As a musician who’s been doing this for decades and been in a band that’s gone through changes like Sabbath has, it’s a triumphant thing. They’re representative of what it takes to last for decades and to be sent out on your own terms. It’s worth celebrating.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Like many guitarists before him, when Tool’s Adam Jones describes his early experience with Black Sabbath, he recalls the fear – and excitement – the foursome of Osbourne, Butler, Iommi and Ward elicited.

“I always wanted to do a compilation of music that scared the shit out of me when I heard it for the first time,” Jones says.

“Black Sabbath was like that for me. I loved horror movies, and [Sabbath] had the same temperature to me. There’s just something romantic about it. I feel lucky that there are so many songs I’m obsessed with. I still put that music on today, and I get the same thing I was getting out of it when I first heard it. I can’t say that about a lot of bands.”

Tool signed on to the festivities of Black Sabbath's Back to the Beginning extravaganza late, and like most of the other acts on the bill, as of this writing, they aren’t sure what they’ll be playing. No matter; Jones is just happy to be there.

“I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it,” he says. “I pinch myself every day. You go, ‘When I was 16, did you ever think you’d meet these guys? Did you ever think you’d open for these guys? Did you ever think you’d have your own guitar line with Gibson? Did you ever think you’d have four Grammys?’ My life’s good, man. It’s good, and on that day, it’ll be even better.”

What led to your involvement with Back to the Beginning?

“It came through Tom Morello. The four of us [in Tool] were on the phone, or texting – I can’t remember – and someone went, ‘I don’t think I can do it.’ Someone else went, ‘Okay, yeah, I think I’m gonna do this other thing.’ I think I even went, ‘Yeah, let’s not do it.’ But it was really an honor that they asked us.”

You weren’t going to do it, but then you changed your mind?

“Months later, Tom contacted me and said, ‘Would you be down to play something with me?’ I was like, ‘Hmmm, that could be fun. Yeah!’ He goes, ‘It’ll just be me, you and Billy Corgan.’ He was thinking we could play a tune, so I said, ‘Yeah, that’s fine. But if plans change, I won’t feel bad if you decide that you don’t want me to do it – but let’s do it.’”

Ultimately, Tool – the whole band – signed on for the show. How’d that happen?

“I was again talking to Tom, and I went, ‘Yeah, I’m sorry we all couldn’t do it.’ He goes, ‘Well, you know Dan [Carey, Tool’s drummer] is playing with these guys, and Maynard [James Keenan, Tool’s singer] is playing with these people…’ I went, ‘I didn’t know that…’ It hit me, and I said, ‘If the three of us are there – and I know Justin [Chancellor, bass] will want to do it…’ I went back to our people and went, ‘Why don’t we just do it? We’re all going to be there.’ That’s how it happened – and why it was announced later.”

How far back does your personal Sabbath fandom go?

“To when I was young. We had different [radio] stations in Chicago that were my main source of music. And I have an older brother and sister who influenced my early taste. It goes way back. I think everyone has the same story of how wonderfully haunting and attractive that music was, how they were innovators and influenced so many people.”

How did Tony Iommi shape your guitar playing style?

“You’re talking, like, ’70s headphones turned up all the way – and air guitaring! [Laughs] Learning later in life that he’s missing parts of his fingers was inspiring because when you’re a kid, and you’re playing guitar, you go, ‘I could never be as good as a real rockstar,’ and here’s a guy that is a professional, a rockstar and amazing, and he’s missing parts of his fingers. It’s inspiring. It makes you feel like, ‘I can do that.’”

Has Tony’s style impacted your riff writing?

“It’s why I’m obsessed with drop D. The stuff he did – the tone, the playing the notes and then pulling off, you know, the open D, or whatever tuning they had that’s comparable – it was just haunting, and the riffs were so good. I could play them, but there’s a vibe, and it’s wonderful. And if you don’t hear it in Tool, you probably aren’t really into Black Sabbath.”

There’s a nuance in Tony’s playing that can’t be duplicated.

“That’s any good guitarist that’s doing their own thing. It’s that thing where they have such a unique style, emotion and passion in their playing. If he picked up any guitar and any amp… I don’t know what the right analogy would be.

“Sometimes I bitch about my equipment, and Buzz Osborne from the Melvins goes, ‘A poor carpenter blames his tools.’ It’s kind of the same concept; it’s [Tony Iommi], it’s his style. It’s very passionate. What I was saying earlier, you know, it’s simple, but I don’t mean it’s simple, I just mean it’s stuff I could play. Do you know what I mean?”

Absolutely. There’s just something about the way Tony plays that can’t be explained.

“Yeah. It’s his emotion and his approach. Maybe there’s stuff he can do with his handicap that other people can’t. It’s fascinating. It just goes to those things where there’s some stuff they can’t teach in school. You have to experience it. You have to feel it. You have to do it on your own. It’s nothing that you’re gonna learn in a book.”

Have you talked about what songs Tool would like to play at the show?

“There are so many. We’re waiting because a lot of them are taken. I don’t know if it’s official yet, which songs we’re supposed to do. I hope they tell us soon because I’d like to do a good job and learn it! [Laughs] To have the [Black Sabbath] band members watch us while we’re playing, I just want to make sure we fucking kill it.”

As a fan and a peer, what does it mean to you to help send off Ozzy and Sabbath?

“It’s exciting. To honor them, and play their music in front of them, and then for them to turn around and do the same thing, but back to the fans and musicians that admire them so much, is really overwhelming. I’m going to be a part of this collective fanbase that’s going to be in Birmingham to share with that. It’s going to be awesome.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

When Sharon Osbourne approached Tom Morello about being Back to the Beginning’s musical director, his response was immediate: “If called, I will serve.” Now the Rage Against the Machine guitarist is helping to assemble what he calls “the greatest day in the history of heavy metal, in honor of the band that started it all.”

The July 5 event will feature an unprecedented lineup of heavy bands including Metallica, Slayer, Pantera, Alice in Chains, Guns N’ Roses and Tool. Morello will be directing segments featuring legendary individual musicians like Slash, Billy Corgan, Wolfgang Van Halen, Jake E. Lee, K.K. Downing, Lzzy Hale, Duff McKagan, Rudy Sarzo and more in what he describes as revolving supergroups.

“You’re never going to know what’s going to happen next on this day, trust me,” he says.

How did you go about getting musicians on board for this event?

“People pick up the phone, dude! When you’re able to call up and say, you know, ‘Final Black Sabbath show, with all four original members. Final Ozzy Osbourne show. Happening in the birthplace of heavy metal – Birmingham, England. In the soccer stadium that these guys attended as kids. And we would love for you to come and play some songs…’ People tend to respond positively.”

So it was up to you to reach out?

“I called everybody! I looked at my heavy-metal Rolodex and just called up friends who Ozzy, Sharon and I had talked about wanting to have there. I take this job so seriously as a curator, and I’m looking at who’s gonna be the most impactful, the most meaningful, the most moving, the most fun, the most metal. [Laughs]”

What can fans expect at the show?

“With regards to the individual musicians, there’s going to be time during the day and evening for these revolving supergroups where some of the greatest drummers and guitarists and singers and bass players are going to play in different combinations, which is going to be exciting.”

Any collaborations you’re excited about?

“One thing I’m looking forward to happening is it’s the first time that Billy Corgan, [Tool guitarist] Adam Jones and myself will be playing together. Three dudes from northern Illinois! Adam and I went to high school together. Billy grew up a couple towns over. All of us were so influenced by Black Sabbath, but we’ve never played together. So that’s something I’m really psyched about.”

What is your personal history with Black Sabbath?

“I remember very clearly being scared shitless when I saw the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath album cover as a child… and then I fell in love with the music. Paranoid was the first record I got. Iron Man was the first hook that drew me in, and it began riff imprinting on me. It’s a cornerstone of every song I’ve ever been a part of.”

What sets Tony Iommi apart as a guitarist?

“Along with Jimmy Page, he’s the greatest riff writer of all time. The riffs are so heavy, and there’s also great grooves. I remember an early guitar lesson where I was learning, I don’t know, Sweet Leaf or something like that. And the teacher, who was a bit of a muso, was kind of denigrating Tony’s playing, saying, ‘These riffs are so simple.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, but he wrote them and they’re just awesome!’

“Like, simple doesn’t take it off the awesome scale. [Laughs] I’ve always tried to keep that in mind in my riff writing. Because the more you develop technically as a musician, sometimes you start to think that if it’s not complicated, it’s not good. So I’m constantly bringing myself back to the incredible catalog of Tony Iommi and his great riffs. He is a singular stylist.”

You’ve worked with Ozzy before. Any funny stories?

“There was one time where Ozzy nearly blew up me and Slash. We joined him and his band as guests at the Voodoo Fest in New Orleans [in 2015], and during a part of the show where we weren’t playing, the two of us were sitting behind the stage chatting. And there’s this crew guy at the side of the stage who’s apoplectic.

“He’s gesturing wildly to us, and finally he gets the courage to come over. And he says, ‘You guys are sitting on the pyro!’ So yeah, Ozzy nearly blew us up. Anyway, we survived that.”

Given your history with these guys, how does it feel to be given this responsibility?

“It’s a great honor and I take it really seriously. This is something meant to pay tribute to one of the greatest bands of all time, and it’s going to be a really special day.

“Every day we kind of go through the run-of-show and the stuff that’s changing – who’s added, who’s subtracted and what other elements are going to be there that are going to make it even more spectacular. But it’s a labor of love. I can’t wait for July 5.”

• Black Sabbath's final performance will be livestreamed on July 5. See Back to the Beginning for details.
• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

Lzzy Hale has recalled the first time she crossed paths with Tony Iommi – her “absolute favorite guitar player of all time” – after a “fluke accident” resulted in her band opening for Heaven & Hell during what would be Ronnie James Dio’s last show before he died.

The new issue of Guitar World looks ahead to the historic Back to the Beginning event, which will serve as both Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s final live gig. The Halestorm electric guitar hero, along with a huge list of other big names, is set to feature on the night – and she’s now recalled the first time she crossed paths with some of her Sabbath heroes.

It was 2009 and Heaven & Hell – a reprised version of Sabbath’s Dio era featuring Iommi and Geezer Butler – were playing the final run of their The Devil You Know tour. As Hale recalls, Halestorm stepped in to save the last show at the last minute.

“The boys and I had just gotten off tour and were on our way home,” Hale recalls of how she first crossed paths with Iommi and co. “We got a call from our booking agent saying, ‘Heaven & Hell's opener dropped out for their last show. Do you want to open for them?’ We were like, ‘Oh, my god, yes!’”

They say don’t meet your heroes, but the band received a warm welcome from the godfather of heavy metal.

“We opened for them and got to know Ronnie James Dio, Geezer, and Tony,” she says. “They made us feel like family. They hung out with us until about three in the morning.”

It would become a bittersweet memory for Hale, though, because not long after the gig, Dio passed away.

“A couple of months later,” Hale continues, “Ronnie was diagnosed with cancer. That ended up being the last show Dio ever performed.”

Hale, Kramer’s first female signature artist, is set to appear at Back to the Beginning alongside Billy Corgan, Wolfgang Van Halen, and Sammy Hagar, who has already let slip what he’ll be doing on the night.

Those performers are set to be involved during the Ozzy Osbourne solo and Black Sabbath sets, meaning – after hanging out with her heroes all those years ago – Hale now gets to share the stage with them and help them sign off in historic fashion.

“It's a dream come true,” she says. “Why do we do what we do? Why did we start a band, keep going when things got tough, and remain in the same band as Halestorm? We boil it down to the fact that these men, against all odds and with society saying, ‘You shouldn't write about this,’ proved that there are no rules to this music thing. Music is magic.

“It's a portal to this other world – but we can be a vessel for it,” she continues. “Music is a language for the downtrodden, the silent ones, the ones with the darker thoughts who are ostracized. We are the voice for the voiceless – and that is what Black Sabbath began for all of us. They gave me a voice when I didn't have one.

“They're one of a kind, and no band will ever top them. But we can all try.”

For the masses unable to get tickets to the show, Back to the Beginning will be live streamed, and there are plenty of reasons to tune in. Alongside a stellar line-up that includes Metallica, Gojira, and Guns N’ Roses, there will also be a supergroup featuring Tool, Rage Against the Machine, and Smashing Pumpkins members.

Tickets for Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath's blockbuster final show, which is being curated by Tom Morello and features a veritable feast of the heavy metal elite, sold out in just 16 minutes. That's a speed equivalent of the first four tracks of Master of Reality. Those who blinked unfortunately missed out.

Thankfully, fans whose fingers (and internet speeds) weren't fast enough to get a ticket the live show amid the rush will still be available to stream the show from the comfort of their homes.

For those who can’t attend in person, a pay-per-view live stream will be available, produced by Mercury Studios – the team behind Metallica Saved My Life and One to One: John & Yoko. Tickets are priced at $29.99, and there’s also a premium package which, for $64.98, throws a special tour shirt into the mix.

The stream starts at 3:00 pm BST (10:00 am EDT, 7:00 am PDT) on July 5th, and the night’s shenanigans and frivolities will be available to rewatch for another 48 hours.

“Mercury Studios [is] incredibly proud to be involved in capturing this monumental milestone at Villa Park,” says managing director Kelly Sweeney. “Back To The Beginning will be an unforgettable experience, and our aim is to deliver this moment to fans worldwide, wherever they are, so they don’t miss out on seeing music history being made.”

Morello’s task for the show is simple: “To curate the greatest day in the history of heavy metal for the greatest band in the history of heavy metal.” It’s only fair then that such a historic day will be televised – and that's now become a reality.

Sabbath's classic line-up – Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward – will make their final bow at Villa Park in Birmingham, England, next month alongside a cast of metal royalty that transcends generations. Bands such as Metallica, Alice In Chains, and Gojira, while individual names, including Wolfgang Van Halen, and Halestorm's Lzzy Hale, will also star.

As for what to expect from the event, Ozzy has already revealed he will only play a bit–part role, and Sammy Hagar has revealed the song he’ll be performing during Ozzy’s solo set.

It is also expected that some of the assembled guest stars will fill-in at various points during Sabbath’s set – WVH, Hale, and Sleep Token drummer II, and Ghost’s enigmatic frontman, Papa V Perpetua, are all seemingly on the bill for that reason.

There will also be a supergroup comprising members of Tool, Rage Against the Machine, and Smashing Pumpkins, with Slash and Duff McKagan joining them for the ride, too.

Scott Ian, meanwhile, has joked about how Anthrax were added to the bill because he got a severe case of FOMO after seeing the gig poster without his band's name on it.

Tickets for the Black Sabbath Back to the Beginning live stream can be purchased from Back to the Beginning.

English pop singer Robbie Williams (who was famously depicted as a CGI monkey in his acclaimed biopic, Better Man) has shared the first track from his upcoming album – and in a move that no one saw coming, it features the Godfather of Heavy Metal himself, Tony Iommi.

The electric guitar legend and Gibson SG loyalist can be heard all over the track, hurtling first into an energetic riff before providing a gritted undercurrent for Williams to deliver a fairly snarling vocal performance. Heck, there’s even space for the odd lead guitar flurry.

Clocking in under three minutes, it’s a straightforward song that never tires and feels like the natural sum of its parts. The outro is particularly fun, too, a hint of Queen swinging into the fray.

Williams’ 13th album, BRITPOP, is due for release in the Autumn. Iommi won’t be the only guest.

“I set out to create the album that I wanted to write and release after I left Take That in 1995,” Williams said of the album in an Instagram post. “It was the peak of Britpop and a golden age for British Music. I’ve worked with some of my heroes on this album; it’s raw, there are more guitars and it’s an album that’s even more upbeat and anthemic than usual.”

It’s certainly a pairing that will surprise both sets of fans, but it’s one they make work. Admittedly, Williams does have a history of rock-laced pop bangers – see Let Me Entertain You and Rock DJ as evidence – so it will be interesting to see who else guests on the record, and how heavy he pushes proceedings.

Iommi’s guest spot follows two singles that dropped in collaboration with luxury Italian perfume house Xerjoff and Sergio Momo. The tracks, Scent of the Dark and Deified, found Iommi at his doom-mongering best and stood as his first electric guitar-charged offerings since Black Sabbath’s 2013 album, 13 – save for his part on Ozzy Osbourne’s Patient Number 9.

Elsewhere, Iommi continues to work on a new solo album, which he says will feature plenty of epic orchestras, and that has encouraged him to experiment with digital modeling for the first time.

The guitarist is also busy preparing for Black Sabbath’s final show which, alongside a stacked bill, is set to feature a Tool, Rage Against the Machine, and Smashing Pumpkins supergroup.

Other notable 2025 collaborations so far include Plini and Tosin Abasi writing a song together in a day, modern metal maestros Connor Kaminski and Keyan joining forces for a new EP, and, stranger still, Ed Sheeran, John Mayer, and Dave Grohl writing a driving anthem together for a new Brad Pitt movie.

Ozzy Osbourne has downplayed the role he will play at Black Sabbath’s blockbuster final show later this summer, saying he will only be doing “little bits and pieces”.

The heavy metal legends – who forged the sound of the genre from Birmingham’s smoke-filled industrial air and Tony Iommi’s Gibson SG – are set to perform one last show in their hometown this summer, and they’ve got quite the cast joining them.

The list reads like a who’s who of metal and rock royalty, with Pantera and Sleep Token among the generations-spanning bill, which will also play host to Osbourne's final solo set.

However, questions have been raised over the level of involvement Osbourne himself will have in the show, owing to the fact he retired from touring due to health reasons in 2023.

Now, in a new episode of Ozzy Speaks on SiriusXM, Osbourne has shed light on his prospective role in the concert, and downplayed the involvement he will have.

“I'm not planning on doing a set with Black Sabbath but I am doing little bits and pieces with them,” Osbourne says (via Louder). “I am doing what I can, where I feel comfortable.

“I am trying to get back on my feet,” he expands. “When you get up in the morning, you just jump out of bed. I have to balance myself, but I'm not dead. I'm still actively doing things."

As first revealed in 2022, in the wake of some canceled solo tours, the singer has been battling Parkinson's Disease since 2003. He was present for his second induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame late last year but remained seated on a bat-adorned throne during an event that saw Wolfgang Van Halen perform Ozzy songs with a star-studded band.

The role of Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward – whose own involvement in the band has been reduced due to health reasons – has also been the subject of speculation in the lead up to the event.

After all, Rage Against The Machine’s Brad Wilk featured on the band’s final album, 13, and Ozzy’s solo drummer, Tommy Clufetos, has typically filled the vacant drum throne for Sabbath shows over the past decade, save for rare guest appearances.

The show's lineup, however, offers some potential clues over how it might play out. It seems several guest musicians could perform alongside big-name acts like Metallica, Gojira, and Alice In Chains.

These include a lot of singers and drummers, such as Ghost’s Papa V Perpetua, Korn’s Jonathan Davis, and Sleep Token’s acclaimed sticksman, II. As such, it seems possible that both Sabbath members will feature infrequently, with some top-tier performers filling the gaps throughout their set.

Meanwhile, Ozzy has announced the supergroup that will feature doing his last solo performance.

Kerry King has revealed who he thinks is the most “overlooked” guitarist in metal. The Slayer guitarist was asked to name his top five guitarists of all time during an appearance on the Lipps Service With Scott Lipps podcast – and he took the opportunity to rave about a guitarist he believes deserves much more credit.

“Probably my favorite one [of] all time is [Judas Priest's] Glenn Tipton. And I think he's the most overlooked,” he states. “’Cause if you look at the leads he was doing and when he was doing ’em, he kind of innovated a lot of that stuff.”

As for the rest of his top five? “I would have a hard time numbering them, but I can come up with five. [Ritchie] Blackmore, Tony Iommi, Eddie Van Halen, without question. I'll go with a super-heavy hitter that's my bro and say Zakk Wylde.”

Over the years, King has spoken profusely about Judas Priest's impact on his playing. “As a young guitar player, I could tell there were two guitars on the recording, and the creativity and early uniqueness of two guitars totally inspired what Slayer became,” he told Rolling Stone in a 2022 interview.

“Judas Priest definitely inspired me and Jeff [Hanneman] and Slayer. If we were doing Priest covers in the beginning, he would always play the K.K. Downing guitar parts because he was the blond guy. I would always do the Glenn Tipton ones.”

In a recent Guitar World interview, King explained how he owes his choice of chords and rhythmic patterns to Judas Priest.

Grammy-winning producer and engineer Mike Exeter is well-known for his credits on releases that range from UB40, the Specials and Jeff Beck to Cradle of Filth and Judas Priest.

However, it’s the Englishman’s work with Tony Iommi that has proved to be his most fruitful, having initially stepped in for The 1996 DEP Sessions with Glenn Hughes and the Fused solo album of 2005, leading to the 2009 reunion with Ronnie James Dio as Heaven & Hell and Black Sabbath’s final studio album, 2013’s 13. Following the death of Iommi’s long-serving tech, Mike Clement, in 2022, Exeter is undoubtedly the person best placed to provide insight into what Iommi is searching for.

“What’s most important is that there needs to be some sort of response,” says the producer after concluding another day of studio work at the Black Sabbath founder’s home. “The music has to come out of the amp and hit him in the body and head.

“When he plays, there is no beginning or end. It’s all chicken and egg. He goes into a zone where he’s just expressing himself with no plan of what might happen, and that’s when he starts getting the real ideas. It becomes this cyclical thing.”

As anyone would expect, over the course of time the sound guru has learned how to tell whether his employer is happy with what he’s hearing. It’s all part and parcel of spending countless hours locked away together, listening to recordings and letting the creative process dictate where they go next.

“Tony is very easy for me to read,” Exeter says. “I know him so well, I can spot the facial expressions or body language. Sometimes it’s what he plays, other times it’s how he plays. If he does a certain trill, I know that means he’s not getting enough sustain from the amp. What he’s looking for is, ultimately, an extension of himself.”

That extension has arrived in different forms over the years, depending on the equipment and musicians in the room. The producer goes on to explain how the pair will listen to live footage from Paris in 1974 and compare it to the sound of the first two Black Sabbath albums, or the post-Ozzy years with Ronnie James Dio – which, as well as welcoming a new singer, saw them embracing the updated music technology of the time.

“When I listen to the first two Sabbath albums, they’re incredibly fuzzy,” Exeter says. “It’s a classic Laney sound. But he wasn’t using that in 1980 for the Dio albums. He’d switched to hotter Marshalls around that period. So there is no singular definitive sound for Tony, but he definitely has his own feel. I can pick him out from a mile off just because of the little things he does.”

Bearing in mind the sonic evolution throughout the decades, Exeter still has plenty of advice for those of us hoping to get into the rough ballpark of the legendary guitarist’s tones.

The early Black Sabbath albums were recorded with a 1965 Gibson SG Special – nicknamed the Monkey, thanks to the sticker at the base of the body – fitted with a pair of P90 pickups, which explains the rounded balance of body and bite on the classic-era recordings.

“To sound like Tony, you generally need P-90s going into a thick, soupy sound,” Exeter says. “It’s broken up, almost like speaker distortion. You might not think he was dialing in much gain, but trust me, he was on 11 for everything, because in the old days they had single-channel amps.

“You had to crank the front, turn the treble, presence and mids down, turn the bass up and then stick a treble booster in front. It only sounds right blasting through a 4x12 at full volume and needs to be smooth. It’s the tone of death if you’re in front of his amp when it’s not set properly.”

Stacking gain is another core element of the tone, and though Iommi was heavily dependent on his modded Rangemaster for the first eight albums, in the years that followed he grew increasingly fond of having several different options at his feet.

“He wants the amp crunching past the edge of breakup, but also extra stages in front,” the producer says. “I wouldn’t use a Tube Screamer, particularly; instead I’d recommend things like the TC Electronic Spark. It’s a stacked-gain thing he’s looking for, one that cleans up easily. In the studio we’ll often dial the gain in to suit the riff.

“If you don’t do it right, you won’t get the pick attack or clarity of the notes. Less gain can sound better because it’s clearer, but ultimately it depends on the idea. There’s definitely a fine line; you can find something that suits the artist, who might prefer more saturation, and the producer, who generally wants to back things down.”

It would be safe to say Laney amps are without question Iommi’s go-to, but as Exeter notes, some work better than others. The LA100BL may have been at the forefront of the Sabbath sound during their most celebrated years, but it’s the guitarist’s signature 6L6-powered TI100, launched in 2012, that Exeter considers to reign supreme as the ultimate weapon for nailing an entire career’s worth of game-changing tones.

“The TI100 was like the golden goose for me,” he says. “Tony actually went back to the LA100s for the final tour. But I remember Tony did an appearance with the Hollywood Vampires last year and we shot out a few amps. The TI100 through a single 4x12 won.

“For soundcheck, we put it on stage with a Roland SDE-3000 in the loop to thicken the sound with a short delay, and all the other roadies came over saying, ‘Holy shit! What are you using?’ Tony was really happy – I could tell because he started playing Lonely Is the Word. He seemed really comfortable. Joe Perry was running close to 15 cabs on stage, and apparently he ended up asking Tony to turn down. It was only on 4.” [Laughs]

As Iommi reveals in our extensive interview, he’s amassed a sizable pedal collection over the years, but only a select few have been good enough to stay on the pedal pedalboard. Exeter picks up the conversation by shedding light on the ones that stuck; beyond the boosts and drives, there have been chorus, phaser and octave units.

“Tony isn’t a gear hound at all,” Exeter says. “But one thing people don’t realize is that he does watch YouTube just to see what’s out there. His rig is generally straightforward. The most complicated it got was on the farewell tour, where he had an insane amount of stuff.

“He’s very particular about having a short delay when he plays live; in the ’80s it was a Korg rackmount. He likes to have a chorus around, and it’s usually the blue one by Analog Man. I think it’s the best chorus out there, especially for distorted guitars. The owner, Mike Piera, is brilliant, and we’ve got a King of Tone, too.

“Before the POG, we were using a DOD octave pedal. I actually liked the way it didn’t track properly! At the end of chords you’d get this weird digital breakup thing going on, which was fun. An MXR Phase 90 is another thing he likes to have; generally it’s the script ones.”

The Van Halen connection doesn’t end there, either. After a brief spell with Engl amps for the Exeter-produced Heaven & Hell debut of 2009, titled The Devil You Know, Iommi switched over to EVH 5150III heads and cabs. Eddie and his tech Matt Bruck, who now heads up EVH alongside Wolfgang Van Halen, were kind enough to help with getting the tones right for what would be Sabbath’s grand finale.

“Eddie and Matt were great while we were recording 13,” Exeter says. “We were borrowing amps and cabs off Eddie during the whole writing process. From 2009 to 2013 it was a mixture of the EVH and TI100.

“That was the golden era of tone for me. We listened to some of the raw recordings later and Tony asked, ‘Bloody hell, that’s unreal, what were we using?’ And it was just the EVH with an Eventide H3000 for delay.

“He said, ‘That’s the sound I want,’ and I joked, ‘Well, you do today!’ But it was a big deal for Tony – getting a modern amp that had been designed by a player he respected. The confidence went a long way, because he knew Eddie would only give him something good. Things like that put you at ease.”

And, as many of us know all too well, creative freedom and inspiration tends to strike when a guitar player is at his or her most comfortable. A good tone can go a very long way indeed.

“I remember Brian May visiting last year, and as soon as he said, ‘There’s that sound,’ Tony instantly relaxed,” Exeter says. “He stopped worrying. The mutual respect between them is insane and it’s a real help when you hear you’re on the right track.

“Being an engineer and producer is a bit like being a psychologist. You have to tell the artist they’re right when they complain the sound has changed, but also convince them that it’s still sounding great through the speakers, if that’s indeed the case. We can always re-amp things later.

“All I’m after is some smiles and for it to be a good day in the studio. The confidence will feed into the music.”

Iommi’s innovations in Black Sabbath would not only prove to be influential on the sound of the genre in its most classic form, but would also spawn many of its offshoots and subgenres, from the doomy discordance of the self-titled track that opened their debut to the groove-metal thunder heard on the chromatic riffs of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and the proto thrash of Symptom of the Universe.

Then there’s the more progressive side of his playing, exquisitely documented by lesser-known deep cuts like Megalomania, Spiral Architect and The Writ, where the bold stream of consciousness seemed to laugh in the face of musical boundaries and choose to follow no calling but its own.

In that sense, his stature as the original and definitive metal riff lord often can feel like a double-edged sword; a well-intended acknowledgement doesn’t quite do justice to the wide breadth of his genius in full. To put it bluntly, Iommi’s influence on guitar playing and wider culture as a whole goes far beyond the obvious.

There’s a famous quote attributed to punk rock icon Henry Rollins: “You can only trust yourself and the first six Sabbath albums.” Some say the comment was made about the first four records (not the first six), but either way, there’s a comforting truth in such a notion.

The Ronnie James Dio-fronted years were mesmerizing in their own way, and there were certainly creative victories on later conquests with Tony Martin, and an honorable mention definitely goes to 13 – the 2013 Ozzy Osbourne comeback that would serve as their artistic farewell – though between 1970 and 1975, Black Sabbath were quite simply untouchable.

Iommi and his bandmates changed the face of music forever, to the point where even 56 years after their formation, you’d be hard pressed to find a heavy metal band that doesn’t owe them a colossal sense of debt.

The group called it a day in 2017 and are now spoken of in the past tense, though their fearless leader has soldiered on with ventures new. There’s been a slew of reissues spanning each and every era of the band, not to mention a photo book and his own aftershave line with Italian company Xerjoff, where fragrances have been promoted by the release of a new track. The latest offering, Deified, combines screaming wah-wah leads with gothic orchestration and medieval menace.

Given how it would so easily sit on the soundtrack for a horror movie, it’s very much business as usual for this metal master.

“Yeah, I agree, it would work nicely for a scary movie!” he says, talking to GW on a warm summer’s day from his home in Poole on the south coast of England.

“I do like that sort of stuff and always have. But I still feel like I’m experimenting and trying out new things. My approach to music has always been about venturing out a bit and pushing myself further.”

That concept of pushing himself further also can be attributed to the gear he’s used on these latest recordings, which includes the 2021 track Scent of Dark.

For someone who has built a career out of plugging Gibson SGs into Laney amps, it comes as a surprise to hear the metal innovator talking about digital gear – proving that it really doesn’t matter who you are, what you sound like or what generation you’re from; the quality of amp simulation in the modern age is something that just can’t be ignored.

“These latest songs were done in my studio,” he says. “I either used my Jaydee guitar or my main Gibson SG, possibly both. The guitars were going through my Kemper Profiler. I’ve also got a Laney plugged in over there, so it could have been a mixture of the two.

“I have to say, I really like the Kemper. It was my producer Mike Exeter who introduced me to it a while back, and I was very impressed. Especially because you didn’t need to have all the speakers mic’d up; you could sit with it next to you in the control room.

“Mike sampled my Laney tone, and then we improved on that a little bit. I’ve found it to be very useful. And the sound quality is incredible; it can actually be quite hard to tell the difference between the Kemper and a real amp.

“Of course, I do like being in a room with a head and cabinet, just to get that bounce back from the speakers. But as far as new gear goes, the Kemper has been working very well for me in the studio.”

How’s the next solo album shaping up?

“There’s definitely something coming. When it will be here, I do not know. [Laughs] I won’t put Deified and Scent of Dark on the next album. Those are separate things for me. The tracks I’m working on right now are a mixture of styles from acoustic to heavy stuff. There’s a variety.

“I haven’t picked out exactly what I’m going to do with the songs or who I’m going to use or whatever yet, but I’ve recorded quite a few ideas. A lot of them have been done at home. The next thing we’re going to do is put some drums on, so it’s coming along.

“I’m just taking my time with it. I can only work on the new music on certain days because I’ve got other stuff on. I tend to work on a Monday and Tuesday with Mike Exeter. We’ll go in and focus on a particular track while also fiddling around with sounds and whatnot for other stuff. It’s been an interesting process, juggling lots of different ideas.”

Other than the Kemper, what’s the last piece of gear that impressed you?

“Mike gets sent things for me to try, as did Mike Clement – my old guitar tech [who passed away in 2022]. Things would get brought over and I’d say, ‘Oh yeah, I like that one.’ But most of these things are very similar. I must have hundreds and hundreds of pedals at home.

“I’ll try them and think they sound good but also realize they sound a lot like something else I’ve already got. Finding something unique is actually quite hard. There have been a couple that stood out, though. Anything I think is good gets to stay, and then there are boxes full of things that don’t stay.

“Mike Exeter brought me an octave pedal, the Electro-Harmonix Nano POG, a while back. It sounded really great, and we ended up putting it in my rack. I’m always open to trying things; I love doing that. Recently there was a guy from Mustard Effects who tried to copy my original booster and called it the War Pig pedal. I thought it sounded good.

“There was one pedal I got sent that did a ghosting effect, a bit like my old Laney amp. It was originally made by the cheap transformers and weird circuits in the heads, but this gadget – the Origin Effects RevivalDRIVE [overdrive] – recreates that effect really well. I’ve used it a bit here and there.”

Your last major public appearance was at the opening of the London Gibson Garage alongside Brian May and Jimmy Page earlier this year. You and Brian see each other a lot; what was it like reconnecting with Jimmy?

“I’ve seen Jimmy a few times over the years. We’ve gotten together here and there. He’s a really nice guy, I like him a lot. It’s fun to talk about what we’re doing, stuff that we’re working on – we’re both from the same era and still creating. We come from the same sort of stable. I don’t think either of us are into technical stuff; we stick to what we know, the things that work. The same goes for Brian.”

You’re all very multifaceted, mixing heavy riffs and aggressive blues with more psychedelic and acoustic influences. It made some headlines when you turned up together.

“It is great to hook up with each other. We don’t do it enough. Brian and I see each other all the time, but I don’t see Jimmy that much. When I do, we always have a great conversation and enjoy each other’s company. It’s rare to do that with the people from our generation because they’re all popping off. [Laughs] That can make it difficult.”

Let’s go back to the beginning. You were 17 when you lost two fretting-hand fingertips in a factory accident and got told you wouldn’t play again. That is undoubtedly every guitarist’s worst nightmare.

“Oh, it was awful. I just couldn’t believe it, particularly as it happened on the day I was going to leave the job, which is insane. I’d given my notice to leave so I could join a band and go to Germany. It was a good opportunity. I went in on the last day and that’s what happened. It shocked me. I never had any idea something like that was going to happen. I was truly devastated.”

And then somebody told you about Django Reinhardt, which must have felt like a ray of light given how much he accomplished after his injuries.

“It really felt like that. It was actually the foreman at the factory I worked at. He came over to see me afterwards. He knew I had the accident and also knew the machine was wobbly and faulty. I shouldn’t have been on it, really. So he came over with a Django record and said, ‘Have a listen to this.’

“I was down at the time and didn’t want to listen to anything, but he got me to put it on and I went, 'Yeah, it’s brilliant.' Then he told me the story [Reinhardt suffered extensive burns over half his body – including the ring and little fingers of his left hand – in late 1928], and I must admit it really did help and inspire me to work on a way to play with what I had left.”

You were briefly a member of Jethro Tull. What did you learn from them?

“That was a strange meeting. We did a gig with Jethro Tull and it was the night Mick Abrahams was either fired or left – I don’t know what happened there. I saw them passing notes to each other on stage and thought it was weird. After the show, they asked if I’d be interested in joining, which was really surprising.

“On the way home in the van, I said to the other guys, ‘Tull asked if I wanted to join them,’ and they all told me to go for it. Then I had to come down to London and audition, because there were so many guitar players interested. I walked in and saw all these musicians waiting in line and thought, ‘Oh no, forget it.’ But one of the crew saw me and told me to go and sit in a cafe across the road.

“They fetched me when everyone was gone. I played and they told me I’d got the job. It was quite a different thing for me. A big step in them days. It was a big deal for me to even get out of Birmingham. That’s how it all happened. And it certainly was a good experience for me, because I learned a lot about how they worked and how [founding frontman] Ian Anderson would run the band.”

And how was that, exactly?

“They would rehearse at a strict time every morning at nine o’ clock or whatever it was and then break for lunch. It was a bit like going to work, really. In Black Sabbath, we never did that. We’d get together whenever, probably after midday. Those early morning starts were a bit of a shock. It was good to learn about how other people work.

“If you want a career in music, you’ve got to take it seriously. That’s what I spoke to my guys about. After a couple of things with Tull, including The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, I left and said to the Sabbath guys, ‘Let’s get back together – but we’ve got to work at it and put everything we’ve got into it.’ They agreed.”

You’ve said Hank Marvin and Eric Clapton were your main influences early on. Was there anyone else?

“I might have picked up other influences, but I didn’t tend to realize them. As you say, Hank Marvin was the original one, but his playing was worlds apart from what I would go on to do. That was the start for me, though. The Shadows were an instrumental band and I learned to play through their music.

“Then I went from there to Eric Clapton’s take on the blues and the John Mayall stuff, all of which I really liked. It kickstarted a whole genre of heavy blues players. Mayall put forward a lot of guitar legends, from Peter Green to Clapton to Mick Taylor.

“After that, I never thought much about influences. You get into the habit of doing it yourself. Everybody starts off by copying their favorite players and learning from them, and then you do your own thing and venture out. Well, some people. Others are happy copying things perfectly and exactly, because that’s what feels good for them.”

Jeff Beck was another one of the early British blues heroes. Were you a fan of his work?

“Oh yeah, Jeff was great. I met Jeff early on because we had the same manager. He was so different and unique. A truly great player who was just doing his own thing that was 100 percent him. It’s true what they said; nobody could play quite like Jeff.”

Black Sabbath was born out of your fascination with the macabre. Much of its eeriness stems from that tritone interval. When did you first become aware of tritones – and how did you come up with that riff?

“I’ve always been interested in horror films and that type of music. I’m into anything dramatic. We went into rehearsal one day, and Geezer [Butler, bass] was just playing around doing some [English classical composer] Gustav Holst stuff on his bass. I came up with this riff made out of three notes, the second being the same as the first but an octave up.

“But I didn’t know anything about the last note being a tritone. I didn’t know what the term even represented, though I knew I liked the sound of it and the feel we got from it. The mood was like what you’d experience watching a horror film. That’s what I related it to while putting the song together.”

The faster palm-muted riff toward the end is built off the Aeolian scale. How much were you aware of the modes at this point?

“I knew nothing about the modes. I never read music and don’t know anything about that side of it. For me, it’s all about feel and what I come up with at the time. When we did that section, just like everything I’ve ever done, I started playing something and thought, ‘Oh, I like that.’ If I like what I hear, I use it, and if I don’t like it, I won’t. That’s how Black Sabbath came about.

“I knew I wanted the end section to lift up into this galloping idea. I like tempo changes and felt it needed to go somewhere else. For some reason, that’s something that’s just embedded in me. One riff will take me so far, and then I will think about going into a chorus or another riff. It’s what I’ve been doing the whole time.”

That galloping rhythm is associated with a lot of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands that followed.

“Yeah! I can hear how the up-tempo stuff like the end of Black Sabbath and Children of the Grave affected what came next. It’s almost like this throbbing sort of rhythm.

“A lot of the bands that came after ended up looking up to Sabbath as an influence, because there were very few of us doing that in those early days. It was just Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and ourselves. The heavy groups that came after went back to the three of us and learned things.”

Sleeping Village doesn’t get talked about enough. From the nylon-string intro to the meaty Dorian blues riffs and up-tempo layered solos, it’s very experimental – despite your all being very young at the time.

“I like mixing different moods and styles. If you have a heavy song, it makes sense to have a bit of a rest and go into something more laid-back, like Sleeping Village or whatever. And then go back into something heavy again, just to give it a bit of light and shade. It’s more interesting than having an album stay heavy the whole way through.

“I like to mix these elements on the albums but also within actual songs, like Sleeping Village or Die Young, where we drop down to a quieter part. It’s an important part of the way I write.”

From what you’ve told us in the past, that first album was made with your backup SG into a Laney LA100BL and a Dallas Arbiter Rangemaster boost. But Wicked World was recorded with your Strat, which had a pickup failure during the sessions.

“That’s correct. When the Strat went, I couldn’t bloody well believe it. I’d worked on that guitar myself for a long time, getting the fretboard right, the frets down and the feel just how I like it. I needed to do all of that because of my accident. So we went in to make our first album and the guitar pickup went right at the beginning of the process.”

“In those days, it was a big fiasco getting a pickup changed or fixed. It wasn’t like how it is now, where you can go into any guitar shop and someone will be able to swap it. Not only that; we only had two days to make the album, one of which was for recording. I had to use my SG, which was the backup I kept on the side.

“I hadn’t owned it long, so I’d never really used it. When the Strat pickup went, I had to pick up the SG. From that day on, I never looked back. I stuck with the SGs. But at the time, I’d only used my Strat in combination with my booster and the Laney. That’s what I’d been using to create my sound, so it was quite scary having to improvise with something else.”

As you say, you ended up sticking with SGs for your entire career. Why that instead of, say, a Les Paul?

“I’ve always felt the SG is a comfortable guitar to hold. I really like the look of a Les Paul, but with my injuries from the accident, I always felt I couldn’t get up to the top frets, almost like my fingers weren’t long enough.

“It didn’t feel as comfortable as the SG and it’s very important as a player to feel comfortable. I did have a Les Paul later on but I never played it much. They look great and I love the sound other people have gotten with their Les Pauls, but the SG seemed to suit me best, so I stuck with it.”

Have you ever been tempted to try out an ES-335, a Telecaster or maybe even a superstrat?

“I think I tried a 335 at some point. But the problem was you couldn’t get left-handed ones. I had to get a regular one and turn it upside down, playing it that way. But I never used them much. It was always back to the SG.

“The only other guitar I really liked was that original Strat, which I wish I’d kept. I can’t believe I got rid of it. This was before I knew you could easily change pickups and things. I just thought the guitar had completely had it, so it was time to get rid of it. A big mistake.”

How many guitars do you own in total, and which would you say are the most collectable?

“I don’t really know, but the figure is probably around 70. I’ve gotten rid of quite a few. Some have gone to the Hard Rock Cafe and places like that, or auctions that are raising money for charity. So in terms of what’s left, it’s probably around 70 or 80. I only use so many, to be honest.

“You can have all these guitars but you don’t use them. Some might get pulled out now and again, but I tend to stick to about three or four that I use all the time. That’s the Gibson SG, which is a replica of my original, and the Jaydees, which were great instruments built by John Diggins. He’s passed on now, but he made me a guitar just before that happened, which was a great honor. I have the last guitar he ever made.”

The Monkey Gibson SG is probably the guitar you’re most associated with. Is that still with the Hard Rock Cafe?

“Yeah. I did try and get it back, to be honest. The guy who used to buy memorabilia for the Hard Rock came to England and visited me. He wanted to buy some stuff and I said it should be fine.

“I’d retired the Monkey SG because it was too valuable to me; I didn’t want to take it on the road and risk it getting damaged. He offered to buy it and it seemed like a good idea because the guitar could be displayed for people to see and kept safe, instead of sitting in a case somewhere in my storage.”

“But the deal was if I ever wanted it back, I could let him know and buy it back for the same price. It seemed fair enough, a good deal. Anyway, he passed away, so that was it. We tried to get in touch with Hard Rock to get it back and they knew nothing about the deal. But they allowed Gibson to go in and take the guitar in order to copy it exactly.

“They made the replicas; I think we did about 50 of them and I own two of those. I have to say they are exactly like that one I owned and they are what I use in the studio. They have the same knocks and bumps as the original, plus the little monkey sticker. It’s the same guitar, basically.”

The second album is loaded with hits. Even the lesser-known cuts like Hand of Doom and Electric Funeral are firm fan favorites. What are you most proud of from that album?

“It’s hard to pinpoint because I don’t really think like that. Certainly, as far as riffs are concerned, there’s a lot to like about Iron Man. I’m proud of how all the different changes piece together in that song. To be honest, I’m very proud of Paranoid as a whole. There are a lot of good tracks on that.”

The Iron Man riff uses power chords built off the natural minor scale. But perhaps the real magic lies in the drag of the tempo you chose to play it in. Maybe it wouldn’t have had the same effect sped up.

“Funnily enough, when we used to play live, we’d slow it down even more. When we went into the studio to do that album, we were so hyped up we were actually playing it a little faster. Then you end up sticking to that tempo because that’s what everyone hears on the album.

“But as we carried on playing it live over the years, it got slower and slower, just to give it more depth and power. That’s what you do as a live band. And other songs would end up being faster when we played live. Bill [Ward, drums] would get carried away with the tempo – or I would.”

The E Dorian runs in Planet Caravan are responsible for getting a lot of metalheads into jazz. How did you go about attacking that one, and what influences were you thinking of?

”I’ve always listened to jazz and would say Joe Pass was one of my favorite players from that style. There’s some blues stuff in the mix too. I was listening to the chord movement and thinking to myself, ‘What does this need and what leads would fit best?’ And I’d still happily play in a jazzy style now if the song calls for it.

“I’ve always liked jazz. In fact, for some of the live shows in the past we used to do a bit of a jazzy bit. Bill really loved jazz drumming, so we’d incorporated some of that into our show. Even the debut album, Wicked World had a lot of jazz going on.”

You’ve mainly stuck with the boost and wah pedal over the years, but the Paranoid solo famously features a ring modulator effect.

“I remember trying it out and thinking, ‘Oh, that could work here!’ It’s so easy to fall into the trap of not experimenting. It’s nice to try things out and surprise yourself. If it works, I keep it.”

Early songs like Iron Man, N.I.B. and Fairies Wear Boots have these really melodic vocal-like guitar leads higher up the neck.

“I like that stuff because I don’t see myself as a technically great player. I prefer to focus on the feel. All these amazing guitar players today, I think they’re great, but I couldn’t do what they do. It’s just not my style. I like to improvise and feel it. What I play might not be technically that hard, but it’s the sound I’m going for.”

Who was the last guitarist that impressed you on a technical level?

“The first one was Eddie Van Halen. When they toured with us early on in their career, I thought he was really good and had come up with something very different for its time. Nowadays you can see how all the technical players have learned from Eddie. The funny thing about him was, much like me, he didn’t read music or anything. It was all from feel. He was inventing stuff just using his ears.

“Some of the guitar playing I hear these days is too technical. You have to be precise on this note or that note. I can’t do that – if I do a solo on a record, it’s never the same live. I can’t reproduce what I did in the studio. I’ll do something similar but not exact.”

The respect was mutual. Eddie once said heavy metal wouldn’t exist without you. It must’ve been incredible to see him so early on in his career, witnessing the changing of the guard first-hand.

“He was great. We became really close friends on that tour, because we went out for eight months or something like that. He used to come round to my room in the hotel, because we’d often be staying at the same one, and we’d stay up for hours talking.

“It was lovely, and we stayed friends through the years until he passed. He was a great friend, such a nice guy who did so much for us guitar players. I really liked Eddie.”

Did you ever get to jam together?

“Yes, we did. Van Halen came over to play in England, so he got in touch with me. He was in Birmingham and wanted to meet, but we were rehearsing that day so I didn’t think we’d get together. Then I suggested he came to rehearsal and he said he’d love to. So that’s what he did.

“I picked him up at the hotel and we went by the guitar shop so he could bring one along and have a play. It was good. The other guys couldn’t believe it – at the time it was the [Cross Purposes, 1994] lineup with Tony Martin, Bobby Rondinelli and Geezer. I turned up with Eddie and they were like, ‘What’s going on?’ We all ended up having a play together and it was a lot of fun.”

Henry Rollins once described your tone on Master of Reality as like “hearing lava.” You started tuning down to C# to get more of a sludgy feel, which in turn gave birth to a whole movement of stoner and doom metal.

“It did! Again, it came out of experimentation. I’ve never gone by the book, thinking I have to do things a certain way. I always go with what I feel is right, and quite often that might involve stepping out of the regular thing I’m known to do. I’ve had such an ordeal with gear following my accident.

“I made up my own set of guitar strings because the regular sets were too heavy for me. So I got some banjo strings for the first and second, and then dropped the gauge down on a regular set in order to make it lighter for me. That way it wouldn’t be so hard for me to press down.”

“And then I went to companies asking if they could make me a light gauge set of strings, and they told me ‘Oh no, that will never sell – they won’t be good and they won’t work!’ And I argued, ‘Well, they do work – I use them!’

“Of course, years later, you’d have things like [Ernie Ball] Super Slinkys and all sorts of stuff. It’s peculiar, because when I first approached these companies in the early days, they really didn’t want to know. It’s been the same all round for me, even with guitars.”

How so?

“I went to a company years ago and asked if they could make me a 24-fret guitar and got told they wouldn’t because nobody would use it. That’s why I invested in John Birch’s company. He was from Birmingham and had done a couple of repairs for me. When I asked him about making a 24-fret guitar, he said, ‘Let’s have a go!’

“You have to jump out of the box and try stuff. I used that 24-fret guitar for years and then, of course, what happens? Later on guitar companies started making them. That’s what it’s all about, though. You have to come out of the box, experiment and try things.”

It’s funny you say that; it was around this period that you started introducing more acoustics and cleaner tracks like Embryo, Orchid and Solitude.

“People were telling me you can’t put an acoustic track on a Black Sabbath album. And I would say, ‘Why not?’ It’s like there was a law against it. The same people told me I couldn’t tune down on Master of Reality – but why? The reactions were very peculiar in those days. The only way to prove it was to do it, and then it would become acceptable later.”

After Forever encapsulates the fantastic chemistry shared between you and Geezer, especially when he plays up high.

“That’s the thing with myself and Geezer. We could always lock in together. It’s amazing how quickly he could pick onto stuff. I’d play him things and straight away he’d put something to it.

“I never ever questioned what Geezer did because I know he’d always play the right thing. He always knew how to accompany me, it’s almost like he knows what I’m going to play before I play it. I guess that came from us being together so long and creating that sound together.”

Wheels of Confusion kicks off Vol. 4 with some heavy blues that sounds like Eric Clapton on steroids – arguably some of the best tones you’ve ever recorded.

“It’s interesting – my rig never changed much. I’d always go in with my booster. To go back, I started off in the Sixties with this Rangemaster. I lived up in Carlisle with Bill, we’d joined a band up there [the Rest]. There was a guy who lived nearby that worked in electronics and he came up to me one day saying he could make my treble booster sound better.

“I said, ‘Oh, can you?’ and he told me to hand it over and he’d bring it back in a couple of days. So he took it away, brought it back and I really liked what he’d done and how it worked in combination with the guitar and amp. I used the same booster right up to the [1980] Heaven and Hell album.”

“Then there was a guy who came to work for me who used to do Ritchie Blackmore’s stuff. We’d ordered six Marshall amps, and he said he’d put an extra valve stage in them. We had a house in Miami back then and gave him his own room. He started rebuilding these amps for me and did a great job.

“One day I went in and asked, ‘Where’s my booster, by the way?’ and he said, ‘What booster?’ When I told him which box it was, he said he’d thrown it away ages ago. I couldn’t believe it and never saw that pedal again.

“Annoyingly, nobody ever saw what resistors or transistors or whatever else was in it, which means nobody has ever been able to reproduce it exactly for me, though we have tried. The guy who built it passed away. But I’ve stuck with the same concept for my gear since forever – the SG into a Laney via a booster.”

You chose to bring in a major third harmony to add color to the opening riff of Supernaut.

“I realized what might work well there just through trying stuff. You have to remember, some things don’t work out. But that one did, and it really added something to the riff.”

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath could be your heaviest riff of them all, using power chords that snake their way around the second, third and fourth frets.

“Before making that album, we went to L.A. to record and it never worked out. I got writer’s block and just couldn’t think of anything. I was a bit like, 'Oh, shit!' Then we came back to England and had a couple of weeks off. I’d never had a creative block like that before.

“I was really worried because I just couldn’t think of anything. So we decided to create a bit of atmosphere and hired Clearwell Castle. We set our gear up in the dungeons. Bloody hell, straight away the first riff I came up with was that one from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

“I knew I really liked the sound of it, and then we built it up from there. It ultimately comes down to the mood you’re in, where you are, the atmosphere there and what you can create. Being in the dungeons of a castle clearly had the right effect on me.”

The closing track on that album, Spiral Architect, is like a love letter to progressive rock in terms of how it builds from a reverberated acoustic into the full band against an orchestral score. How’d that one come together?

“It’s another example of us trying out different approaches. People used to say we couldn’t use orchestration in a band like Black Sabbath. But why not? Also in those days, the orchestras and classical musicians didn’t look on us favorably. They looked down on bands like us. To have some people [the Phantom Fiddlers] come and accompany us was great. The fact that they enjoyed it was even better.”

Don’t Start Too Late is a solo performance where you use an acoustic with loud repeats. Brian May, Nuno Bettencourt, Yngwie Malmsteen and Joe Bonamassa have done similar things with delay in the time since.

“There are definitely a lot of similarities between Brian May and myself. We’ve been very close since the Seventies. It’s funny, we’ve both been using the Rangemaster since early on. Mine were going into Laneys and his were into Vox AC30s. But it’s the same principle.”

“I used to rely on Brian a lot because I’d constantly have problems with people saying there was too much interference coming through my booster. And I’d have to explain, ‘I know, but that’s part of my sound!’ In them days, you’d pick up bloody taxis and everything. There was no isolation. Brian would back me up and say, ‘That’s the sound – don’t change it.’

“Sometimes you’d get some boffin come along telling me, ‘I can get rid of that for you,’ and I’d say, ‘Oh, can you?’ But it would always change the sound and I didn’t want my sound to change. The only person who understood how I felt in those days was Brian, because he had the same problem. We both had a bit of noise but were ultimately getting the sound we wanted.”

Symptom of the Universe would directly influence the thrash metal bands that arrived the following decade.

“And it was nice to hear those thrash bands paying tribute to us. It’s great how they were able to push it forward into something new and turn it into their own thing. I was just coming up with things I liked.

“So it was brilliant to hear about other musicians liking what I’d done, taking the same kind of idea and improving on it, evolving it into their own sound. Like Metallica, for instance, who probably learned things from us as well as other people.

“What they did with the metal sound, turning it into thrash, was fantastic. They’ve always been respectful toward us and they’re lovely guys. I love their attitude toward things, the way they write and everything. It reminds us a lot of how we were – everyone in one room rehearsing together and taking it seriously.”

The Writ and Megalomania are up there with the most leftfield tracks you’ve composed.

“I have no idea how I came up with ideas like that, but I agree. To be honest, I’m still doing it now. I’ve got hundreds of riffs at home. I’ll put something down and then move onto something else, start working on that and something else comes up. It’s always been that way. I seem to be able to come up with lots of riffs. It’s probably the only thing I can do!”

What kind of exercises helped you most on your guitar journey?

“There weren’t really any exercises. For me, the main thing was getting used to playing with thimbles. That was the difficult bit, that was the exercise, I guess, trying to move my fingers and hit the notes. And it’s probably why I ended up using a lot of trills. Early on, I couldn’t bend the strings that hard because it would hurt my fingers, so I came up with the idea of using trills. I do that a lot and it’s probably become a bit of a trademark.”

You are well-versed in the art of the blues. What’s the secret to playing with heart, soul and authority?

“I can only speak for my own playing, but I love the sound of blues because it’s from the heart. It’s about how you feel at that moment in time. Like I said earlier, I can’t read music or play the same thing twice. It’s all about how I feel right there and then, which is where the blues comes from, when you think about it.

“You have to believe in what you’re doing and play it like you mean it, as opposed to performing the fastest guitar solo in the world or something exactly note-for-note. The guitar should be a part of you. By doing it more and more, you learn from yourself. If I sat down now and watched a video of someone shredding, I’d probably turn it off. I can’t do that stuff, it’s not how I play.”

“I remember doing an instructional video years ago, one of the first ones when they started doing those things. I was in L.A., and they were asking me to play my solos from the records – but slower. It wasn’t natural for me. I can’t play the same solo; it would always be slightly different. If someone’s learning guitar, my best advice would be to use your ears and feel it in your heart.

“Sure, some people watch videos and copy things, and that’s great. The technical players these days are brilliant. Even really young kids in their bedrooms are doing incredible things. But I always go back to the roots of the blues, looking deep inside myself and telling the truth. I don’t think about what can impress people or break speed limits. The only thing that matters in my mind is how it sounds to me.”

One final question. Will we ever see Black Sabbath on stage again? Bill recently said he’d love to join you.

“Who knows? You can never say never, and we never have said never. It really depends on everybody’s health and what we’d expect from each other now. Can we still play and sound the same together? I don’t know because it’s been such a long time. It’s in the air.

“By the time it comes around, if it ever does, we’ll have to see what state everybody is in and whether we can climb on stage. If we did, it would have to be good otherwise I wouldn’t do it.

“There’s no point in just getting up, what can you prove by doing that? If it’s not right or as good as it was, then there’s no point in doing it. In my eyes, it has to be as good or better.

Prestigious speaker maker Celestion has announced its debut series of signature impulse responses, with heavy metal godfather Tony Iommi’s collection marking a key expansion of its digital collection.

For the uninitiated, impulse responses capture the essence of a guitar cabinet – typically mic'd up in a room – to bestow that same feel to digital amps that have no cabinet. It's a way of faking the power of a 4x12 stack for digital amp users.

Celestion speakers sit in amps of all shapes, sizes, and budgets, from almighty tube amps to travel-friendly combos and beyond, and, moving with the times, it has been steadily producing IR versions of some of its famed speaker cones. But, until now, the company has never worked on a signature release.

The project sees Celestion teaming up with the Black Sabbath riffsmith for “a collection of IRs that faithfully capture the tones of two iconic closed-back cabinets that have been used extensively by Tony Iommi,” across Sabbath’s history.

The IRs can be used in any digital format, whether that’s powering plugins, amp modelers, and beyond, placing the guitarist’s iconic Laney tones within reach of all.

The collection traces his game-changing career. There’s the “‘60’s grind of a cranked LA100 BL 100W head,” which has been boosted with a modified Arbiter Dallas Rangemaster for extra heaviness, and a capture of his signature GH 100 TI head through a TI412S cabinet, which encapsulates his ‘90s tones.

While the two IRs might seem small for a collection, they are a true reflection of the speakers that have defined Iommi’s body of work in Sabbath and beyond.

He used four 12” Green label Goodmans speakers from 1969 through to the early ‘80s, while the four 12” Celestion G12H speakers partnered with his signature head was the sound of Sabbath’s latter era.

The capturing process saw three different microphones used in six positions, alongside room mics totaling 12 configurations.

Both cabinets are available individually, at £18.98 (approx. $24) each, or for a combined collection price of £22.49 (approx. $29).

Head to Celestion Plus for the full details.

The release follows Iommi's reveal that he has been using Kemper captures of his favorite Laney amps as he continues to work on his new solo album. He has been impressed by their likeness, saying it “can be hard to tell the difference” between the tube and digital versions.

Iommi has released two singles, Deified and Scent of the Dark, this year (and a signature fragrance). However, he's confirmed that those tracks will not feature on the upcoming LP.

The guitar world has changed dramatically since Tony Iommi first picked up the electric guitar.

Perhaps one of the most impactful changes is the rising popularity of amp modelers, and now the Godfather of heavy metal – who has cranked Laney tube amps for the majority of his near-60-year career – has offered his thoughts on such technological advancements.

The guitarist has been getting creative as of late. As well as announcing he was working on an orchestra-laced album last year, Iommi recently released a new track, Deified, alongside a signature men's fragrance. As it turns out, his Kemper Profiler has been his amp-of-choice for this latest batch of recordings.

“These latest songs were done in my studio,” he tells Guitar World. “I either used my Jaydee guitar or my main Gibson SG, possibly both. The guitars were going through my Kemper Profiler.”

While he says some tracks may be a mixture of Kemper and Laney tube amps, he’s been bowled over by the former’s quality.

“I have to say, I really like the Kemper. It was my producer Mike Exeter who introduced me to it a while back, and I was very impressed,” he continues. “Especially because you didn’t need to have all the speakers mic’d up; you could sit with it next to you in the control room.

“Mike sampled my Laney tone, and then we improved on that a little bit. I’ve found it to be very useful. And the sound quality is incredible; it can actually be quite hard to tell the difference between the Kemper and a real amp.

“Of course, I do like being in a room with a head and cabinet, just to get that bounce back from the speakers. But as far as new gear goes, the Kemper has been working very well for me in the studio.”

Kemper released its latest amp profiling tech early last year and has since dropped a real-estate saving floor modeler as it continues to rival the likes of Line 6 and Neural DSP.

Over the years, a growing number of A-list guitarists have been won over by the modeling world. The Edge, Jim Root, and the Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett are chief among them, while Animals As Leaders’ Tosin Abasi has, surprisingly, gone the other way.

Root had admitted it felt “sacrilegious” to make the jump to modelers, having been staunchly against them previously, while Shiflett said “it feels like total blasphemy”.

Iommi, on the other hand, isn't especially concerned about any negative connotations that such a switch can carry. However, he made no mention of his Kemper ever escaping the studio, meaning he’ll most likely continue to play real deal tube amps live.

Iommi also says “there’s definitely something coming” regarding his work-in-progress solo album, but admits he has no idea about its timeframe. He did confirm, though, that his recent singles Deified and Scent of the Dark will not feature on the record.

“Those are separate things for me,” he reveals. “The tracks I’m working on right now are a mixture of styles from acoustic to heavy stuff. There’s a variety. I’ve recorded quite a few ideas. A lot of them have been done; I’m just taking my time with it.”

Tony Iommi’s Gibson ‘Monkey’ SG might be the most iconic electric guitar he’s ever been associated with across his storied career, but – at the time of writing – the Black Sabbath legend no longer actually owns it.

And that’s not for a lack of trying: as Iommi explains in the new issue of Guitar World, he once tried to reclaim his SG from its current custodian, but he wasn’t allowed.

For context, the Monkey SG is currently in the possession of the Hard Rock Cafe, which bought the instrument after Iommi had decided to retire it. Rather than allow it to gather dust in storage, Iommi thought he’d pass it on to an institution that could eternalize it for fans to see.

Apparently, one of the conditions of the exchange was that Iommi could eventually buy back his beloved SG if he ever desired. Unfortunately, things didn't go quite according to plan when Iommi eventually did try to get it back.

“The guy who used to buy memorabilia for the Hard Rock came to England and visited me,” Iommi tells Guitar World. “He wanted to buy some stuff and I said it should be fine. I’d retired the Monkey SG because it was too valuable to me; I didn’t want to take it on the road and risk it getting damaged.

“​​The deal was if I ever wanted it back, I could let him know and buy it back for the same price,” he adds. “It seemed fair enough, a good deal.

“Anyway, he passed away, so that was it. We tried to get in touch with Hard Rock to get it back and they knew nothing about the deal.”

While Iommi couldn’t get his hands back on the guitar he used to record much of Black Sabbath’s early material, he was allowed the next best thing: Gibson could borrow the OG model in order to reproduce a run of painstaking replicas.

Sure, it might not sound like quite the same thing, but Iommi isn’t too fussed. In fact, in his opinion, it almost is the same thing.

“They allowed Gibson to go in and take the guitar in order to copy it exactly,” he goes on. “They made the replicas; I think we did about 50 of them and I own two of those.

“I have to say they are exactly like that one I owned and they are what I use in the studio. They have the same knocks and bumps as the original, plus the little monkey sticker. It’s the same guitar, basically.”

Iommi is synonymous with the Gibson SG, but as he revealed in the same Guitar World interview, he was actually once a Fender Stratocaster player – and he might have remained one had it not been for a studio mishap.

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitar World and read the full interview with Tony Iommi.

Tony Iommi is synonymous with the Gibson SG, but if it weren’t for an electronics mishap on the very first day of recording Black Sabbath’s debut album, he might have ended up playing a totally different electric guitar altogether.

As the heavy metal guitar legend explains in the new issue of Guitar World, he didn’t actually go into the studio that day armed with an SG. The SG he owned then was only his backup.

Instead, he planned on playing his heavily modified Fender Stratocaster – a guitar that, at the time, he viewed as his main instrument, and one he initially picked up ahead of the SG. However, as fate would have it, some electronics failures on the opening day of recording meant he wasn't able to play the Strat.

“When the Strat went, I couldn’t bloody well believe it,” Iommi tells Guitar World. “I’d worked on that guitar myself for a long time, getting the fretboard right, the frets down and the feel just how I like it. I needed to do all that because of my accident.

“So we went in to make our first album and the guitar pickup went right at the beginning of the process. In those days, it was a big fiasco getting a pickup changed or fixed. It wasn’t like how it is now, where you can go into any guitar shop and someone will be able to swap it. Not only that; we only had two days to make the album, one of which was for recording.”

Iommi’s solution was to reach for his backup – the Gibson SG, which he rarely played up until that point. It proved to be a hugely influential chain of events that would change the course of Iommi’s guitar career.

“I had to use my SG, which was the backup I kept on the side,” he continues. “I hadn’t owned it long, so I’d never really used it. When the Strat pickup went, I had to pick up the SG. From that day on, I never looked back. I stuck with the SGs.

“But at the time, I’d only used my Strat in combination with my booster and the Laney. That’s what I’d been using to create my sound, so it was quite scary having to improvise with something else.”

Iommi may have tried other guitars over the years – including Les Pauls and ES-335s – but he always found himself coming back to the SG, which he’s now become synonymous with. Indeed, he's one of Gibson's most notable artists, and has helped produced a range of signature SGs over the years.

However, despite his decades-long affection for Gibson’s devilish double-cut, the guitarist confesses he still longs for his original Strat, which he no longer has.

“The only other guitar I really liked was that original Strat, which I wish I’d kept,” he admits. “I can’t believe I got rid of it. This was before I knew you could easily change pickups and things. I just thought the guitar had completely had it, so it was time to get rid of it. A big mistake.”

Visit Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitar World and read the full interview with Tony Iommi.

On December 27, 1969, just a few days before the dawn of the new decade, the music world witnessed an extraordinary changing of the guard as Led Zeppelin II reached Number 1 on the Billboard charts, dethroning the Beatles’ final full-on studio effort, Abbey Road.

After hearing Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant proclaim “I’m gonna give you every inch of my love” on their hit, Whole Lotta Love, the Beatles probably realized their days of singing sweet harmonies in an octopus’s garden were numbered.

And if the cover of Abbey Road is any evidence, the Fab Four apparently saw no other choice but to immediately vacate their recording studio and march, single file, into the streets of London, never to be heard from again.

Zeppelin would go on to dominate the sound and psyche of the ’70s. Their first four albums created templates for almost everything that was to follow in the next decade, including riff rock (Whole Lotta Love), heavy metal (Immigrant Song), prog (Dazed and Confused), power balladry (Stairway to Heaven), arena blooze (The Lemon Song), glam (Black Dog) and country rock (Bron-Yr-Aur-Stomp).

They even paved the way for late-’70s punk and the first Van Halen album. Guitarist Johnny Ramone once confessed that he honed his pioneering punk-rock skills by playing Zeppelin’s Communication Breakdown repeatedly. And Edward Van Halen told Guitar World in 2008 that, “I think I got the idea of tapping [while] watching Jimmy Page do his Heartbreaker solo back in 1971.”

But perhaps Led Zeppelin’s most important contribution to the ’70s was their fierce, uncompromising attitude. The band revolutionized the music industry when they negotiated their game-changing record deal with Atlantic Records that allowed guitarist Jimmy Page to produce their albums without any label interference. Additionally, the group retained control of all jacket artwork, press ads, publicity pictures and anything else related to their image.

As Page explained, “I wanted artistic control in a vise grip, because I knew exactly what I wanted to do.”

And what Zeppelin wanted to do was… everything and anything! They had this crazy notion that musicians should have the artistic freedom to play what they want — and that their fans might enjoy it. As it turned out, people did indeed love their wild experimentalism, and so did the record companies, who discovered they could make a ton of cash by allowing the band to have their own way.

Zeppelin’s example opened the floodgates to an intensely creative era that ushered in dozens of astonishing new genres of music, all played on adventurous FM radio stations.

Just a tiny sampling of the albums released in ’70s is enough to make any guitar nerd choke on their Ernie Balls – The Dark Side of the Moon, Sticky Fingers, Hotel California, Marquee Moon, Night at the Opera, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Van Halen, Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols, Machine Head – the mind boggles.

Given the vast scope of music made during the ’70s, trying to sum up guitar playing in the era is like attempting to solve a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded while riding a roller coaster in sequined bell-bottoms. It’s damn difficult! But let’s give it a shot…

The rise of heavy metal

You could argue that heavy metal was forged in the Sixties by bands like Cream, Jimi Hendrix, the Jeff Beck Group and, of course, Led Zeppelin. But you’d be wrong.

Sure, those bands started the ball rolling by chugging power chords through big-ass 100-watt Marshalls, but most of what they were playing was just amplified blues mixed with a bit o’ weird hippie psychedelia.

To make real heavy metal – 100 percent certified heavy metal – they were missing two ingredients: the devil… and Tony Iommi.

Hailing from the sooty factory town of Birmingham, England, Black Sabbath, featuring guitarist Iommi, along with vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward, set the world ablaze in 1970 with two groundbreaking albums, Black Sabbath and Paranoid. Their ominous riffs and occult-inspired lyrics on anthems like Iron Man, The Wizard and Electric Funeral would inspire thousands of bands, including Judas Priest, Van Halen, Slayer, Metallica and Ghost.

Given their preoccupation with the supernatural, it’s no surprise that their backstory reads like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales… but a whole lot grimmer. On the day Iommi was quitting his sheet metal factory job to become a full-time musician, catastrophe struck – he lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his right hand in a gruesome industrial accident.

A machine press came down and caught his fingers, and when he recoiled, the ends were ripped right off! (If there was ever a sentence that deserved an exclamation mark, it’s that one.)

However, Iommi wasn’t going to let a little thing like a couple of severed fingers stop him from playing guitar. Resourcefully, he used his machine-shop skills to custom-make special fingertip pads out of plastic and leather. Then, to make his guitar easier to play, he set his instrument’s action as low as it could go and detuned his strings to lessen the tension even further.

To Iommi’s surprise, when he plugged in his guitar into his Laney amp and cranked up his Dallas Rangemaster overdrive pedal, those elements coalesced into a deep, gut-rattling sound unlike anyone had heard before.

As Iommi later observed, “Some people believe the accident invented heavy metal, and it probably did. It helped me invent a new kind of music – a new sound and different style of playing.” He probably should’ve added, “But kids, don’t try this at home…”

Southern Harmony

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so while Black Sabbath were busy serving up doom and gloom in U.K. in 1970, the Allman Brothers Band were spreading good vibes and magic ’shrooms throughout the southern United States.

Formed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1969, the Allman Brothers Band migrated to Macon, Georgia, where they began building a reputation for their incredible live shows that combined elements of rock, blues, jazz and country music into memorable songs and explosive improvisations.

Their exciting smorgasbord of influences was unlike anything audiences had ever heard, but what really made the six-piece band unique were the soaring, harmonized twin lead guitars of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts.

Traditionally, when you had two guitarists in a rock band, one played rhythm and the other played lead. Betts and Allman threw that playbook out the window, trading leads and orchestrating tight harmony parts similar to the way jazz horn sections worked together.

The concept wasn’t completely new. Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck briefly experimented with the idea when they were both in the Yardbirds in 1966, but Allman and Betts elevated their two-guitar attack into a brilliant artform – one that would influence and shape dozens of Southern bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, the Outlaws, 38 Special and the Marshall Tucker Band throughout the ’70s.

It helped that both Allman and Betts were terrific musicians with distinct sounds and approaches to their instruments. Allman brought a new level of virtuosity and aggression to the electric slide guitar that remains influential today, while Betts added a sophisticated sense of composition and melody to the duo.

Their landmark live album, At Fillmore East, released in July 1971, sent shockwaves through the guitar community. It not only changed the way blues and metal guitarists thought about two-guitar bands and improvisation, but it also influenced the sound of country music in ways that can be felt today.

The Allmans were primarily a U.S. phenomenon, but British blues rock legend Eric Clapton took notice. After seeing the Allmans play in Miami, Clapton was so blown away by Duane’s slide technique, he invited him to play an equal role on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, one of the greatest albums of the ’70s and one of the most exciting blues rock albums of all time.

“The Allman Brothers were unbelievable,” Clapton told journalist Sam Hare. “Duane and Dickey Betts were in such harmony. Their playing was very strong and well thought out. When Duane came to the studio [to play on Layla], I was so taken with him that I started ignoring my own band.

“I just tried to keep thinking of songs we’d both know so we could duet. We’d play blues standards like Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out and Key to the Highway. All these things were just really vehicles so we could play – just excuses to jam with one another.”

Tragically, on October 29, 1971, Duane Allman, then 24, was killed in a motorcycle accident. But despite the loss, the band miraculously carried on, recording their most commercially successful album, Brothers and Sisters.

Without Duane, guitarist Betts flourished, his sunburst Les Paul planting the seeds for modern country artists like Chris Stapleton, Eric Church, Lucinda Williams and the Zac Brown Band, all of whom have covered Allman songs in more recent years.

Just say Yes to prog rock

They say the best comedy is based on the truth, and that certainly goes for the one guitar joke that everybody knows:

Q: How many guitarists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: One to screw it in and another dozen to say, “I could do that.”

Guitarists have always been competitive, and that was certainly true in the ’70s. It was no longer enough to write great songs and look good – you also had to have serious chops.

Musicians playing under the banner of “progressive rock” or simply “prog” turned technique into a religion, and the result was some of the strangest and most ambitious music to ever grace the Billboard Top 20 charts. The most interesting prog bands were King Crimson, ELP, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Rush, Kansas, U.K. and Gentle Giant, but it was Yes who were the most commercially successful exponents.

Each member of Yes was an exceptional musician. Singer Jon Anderson – with his sweet tenor – had one of the most distinctive voices in rock; and virtuoso keyboardist Rick Wakeman – who wore sequined capes on stage – was flashy both visually and technically.

But the real star of the group was guitarist Steve Howe. Howe thrilled audiences by playing in a formidable assortment of styles on an astonishing array of electric, acoustic and steel guitars… often during the same song. Some critics accused him of being excessive, but for the most part, he was tasteful and generous, allowing his Yes compatriots to shine and take turns in the spotlight as evidenced by the band’s biggest hit, Roundabout.

During the band’s heyday, which lasted throughout the ’70s, his work on The Yes Album (1971), Fragile (1971), Close to the Edge (1972), Tales from Topographic Oceans (1973) and Relayer (1974) opened huge doors for guitar players looking to expand the techniques and colors they could use within a rock context.

Howe experimented with flamenco, Chet Atkins-style fingerpicking, classical harmonies and exotic chord voicings while shredding some of the speediest, harmonically advanced soloing ever heard on a rock album.

He was an amazing technician, but his lead playing also had an appealingly jagged edge that always kept the music rooted in rock ’n’ roll, no matter how complex it got.

Howe pushed the boundaries of popular music about as hard as any musician in the Seventies, and he did much of this on electric f-hole guitars like the Gibson ES-175, which was more associated with jazz players.

“The decision to buy the ES-175 set me on a course,” Howe said. “I didn’t consider myself to be someone who played solid bodied guitars at the time. It’s helped me to forge an identity as a guitarist with a full sound that isn’t reliant on distortion or tremolo or other gadgets.”

He was so dominant in the ’70s that he won “Best Overall Guitarist” in Guitar Player magazine an unprecedented five years in a row, influencing players as diverse as Alex Lifeson (Rush), John Petrucci (Dream Theater) and John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers). But unlike Jimmy Page or Eddie Van Halen, few people attempted to sound like him, probably because it was so difficult to do.

His lasting impact has been more about his grand concept than his style. He is the guy you can thank for introducing the idea of owning dozens of guitars for different colors and sounds. So, the next time anybody gives you shit for buying yet another Les Paul Junior or Epiphone Casino, just blame it on Steve.

Lighting the fusion

Guitarists like Howe, Frank Zappa, Tommy Bolin and Jeff Beck shaped the sound and style of Seventies rock by incorporating elements of jazz into their arsenal of licks. But just as significant were a new crop of young jazz players who started experimenting with the volume and aggression heard in rock music.

Guitarist Larry Coryell, sometimes called the “godfather of jazz-rock fusion” summed it up when he said, “We loved [jazz trumpeter] Miles Davis – but we also loved the Rolling Stones.”

Starting in the early ’70s, a gang of extraordinarily gifted young jazz shredders like Coryell, Pat Metheny, Al Di Meola and John Scofield scared the bejeezus out of rock’s greatest players with their command of the electric guitar. But the jazz shredder who made the most impact was the fast and furious John McLaughlin, who played a double-neck Gibson EDS-1275 through a 100-watt Marshall amp “in meltdown mode.”

Starting his career as a session musician in England, McLaughlin moved to the U.S. in the late ’60s, where he played with jazz drummer Tony Williams’ group Lifetime.

He then performed with the legendary Miles Davis on several pioneering electric jazz fusion albums, most notably In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson. But it was his work in the ferocious Mahavishnu Orchestra that made him a superstar in the rock world.

The five-piece Mahavishnu Orchestra combined elements of metal, jazz, funk and Indian classical music into their compositions, which they performed at lightning tempos. As Guitar World once put it, the band left you feeling as if they “were always on the very edge of exploding into a thousand pieces, so far did they push and extend themselves and each other.”

Guitar legend Jeff Beck was particularly floored. “Things took a funny turn for me in the early ’70s,” Beck recalled. “But it all turned out well after hearing John McLaughlin play on Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson album and with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Every musician I knew was raving about him, and I thought, ‘I’ll have some of that.’ The mastery of his playing was unequaled.”

Soon after hearing McLaughlin, Beck turned down a spot in the Rolling Stones and began experimenting with his own jazz-rock band. He was warned that playing fusion was commercial suicide, but ironically, it resulted in his most commercially successful album, Blow by Blow, released in 1975.

In the early ’70s, the radical Mahavishnu Orchestra recorded two brilliant studio albums, The Inner Mounting Flame and Birds of Fire, and performed more than 500 shows, playing unlikely bills with straight-up rockers like Aerosmith, Blue Öyster Cult and the Eagles.

While many rock audiences were confused by their weird, explosive music, others were intrigued, catapulting 1973’s Birds of Fire to Number 15 in the Billboard charts. However, just as it looked as though they were about to achieve the impossible by bringing avant-garde, freak-out jazz to the masses, they imploded.

“It was fantastic that we had popularity, but I think we had too much success too quickly,” McLaughlin said. “The band ended very acrimoniously, and that upsets me to this day. I have great relationships with all the musicians I worked with. Except that bloody band.”

Despite their brief lifespan, Mahavishnu left a lasting mark. Not only did they influence classic rockers like Beck and Carlos Santana, but their albums have also inspired current avant-garde heroes like Guthrie Govan, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (the Mars Volta) and Ben Weinman (Dillinger Escape Plan), proving that musical boundaries are meant to be shattered.

Glam bam, thank you, ma'am

While it was exciting that bands like the Allman Brothers and Yes were stretching the boundaries of popular music with their technical skills, many musicians were less than enthusiastic about prog. It was too damn complicated, and besides, who was going to piss off parents, disrupt social norms and have fun while looking cool? It didn’t take long to find out.

The answer came slinking out of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1971 when the Alice Cooper Band rose to fame with the hit single I’m Eighteen. Featuring a male singer with a woman’s name, the five-piece group were notorious for their theatrical stage shows, androgynous outfits and playing loud, obnoxious rock.

Boring old farts called them “degenerates,” but the press referred to them as “glam rock,” and it wasn’t long before the glitter craze took off, especially in England where David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars, T. Rex, Slade and Queen became mega-stars.

Glam was primarily about “the look,” but the bands also shared a common approach to their music. Unlike the progressive movement, glam rockers kept their songs tight, danceable and catchy. Instrumentally, their tunes were often powered by chunky heavy metal guitars and short, memorable guitar solos.

Mick Ronson, the iconic blond guitarist for David Bowie’s Spiders from Mars band, made no bones about being more interested in composing great riffs than diddling around with weird scales or playing 30 different guitars. Ronson believed if you wanted to play like John Coltrane or Mozart, go fuckin’ do it – but leave rock ’n’ roll out of it.

He had a point. It didn’t mean Ronno was a primitive musician. In fact, he was quite sophisticated. In addition to providing killer guitar parts to memorable rockers like Bowie’s Suffragette City, Panic in Detroit and Jean Genie, he was also a deft arranger, composing the dramatic orchestral parts on Bowie’s 1972 glam rock classic, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

One sterling example of his artistry can be heard on the album’s classic, Moonage Daydream. He begins the song with a couple thunderous power chords, then slowly layers parts on his blonde 1968 Gibson Les Paul Custom through a half-cocked wah-wah pedal, until the song reaches a soaring, spiraling conclusion of ascending strings and tape-delay guitar.

While his parts aren’t particularly difficult to play, they are beautifully constructed, executed, and perfect for the song. In other words, totally rock and roll.

Ronson’s smart, economical playing (and glittering stage outfits!) helped create the template, not only for glam rock in the Seventies, but also Eighties hair metal. Ozzy Osbourne guitarists Randy Rhoads worshipped Ronson, meticulously imitating his look and use of a blonde Les Paul.

“Randy was a big fan,” said his brother, Kelle Rhoads. “That’s where his obsession with polka dots came from. He saw Mick Ronson with polka dot knee pads and Randy took it to another level.”

However, it would be wrong to imply that Ronson was the only influential glam guitarist in the ’70s. There were plenty of others including Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, Marc Bolan of T. Rex and Glen Buxton of the Alice Cooper Band. But perhaps the most famous and fairest of them all was Queen’s tall and elegant Brian May.

Queen have become so ubiquitous in our modern music culture that it’s easy to forget that in the ’70s they were originally a huge part of the same glam movement that spawned Bowie and the likes of Roxy Music and Sweet. But it might also be because Queen didn’t really sound like anybody else, and that was primarily due to May’s unique approach to playing and recording.

Far more ambitious than his fashionable contemporaries, his multi-layered guitar orchestrations on songs like Killer Queen and Bohemian Rhapsody ventured perilously close to being “prog.”

But May also knew how to boogie and always balanced his excesses with some good old-fashioned hard rock, as on We Will Rock You, Stone Cold Crazy and Keep Yourself Alive. Yes, Brian May could go over the top, but with Queen, he also knew when to kick royal ass – even while wearing flowing silk blouses and crushed velvet trousers.

Never mind the bollocks here's punk

Given how disheveled the typical punk rock musicians appeared with their ripped-up jeans and spiky hair, it was almost comical how much in they had in common with their glam rock counterparts. The Clash, Dead Boys and the Sex Pistols also believed that rock music should sound gritty, dangerous and close to the streets.

Punk guitarists didn’t just dislike progressive rock – they actively hated it. They were repulsed by what they perceived as the bourgeoisie snobbery of bands like Yes and Genesis. As for the Mahavishnu Orchestra… they couldn’t even pronounce it.

Punk musicians wanted to return rock and roll to its “everyman” fundamentals, so that anyone wanting to master three chords could take the stage and become a star. No one represented this attitude more singularly than the Ramones, a raucous four-piece juggernaut from New York City.

All members of the Ramones looked the same (shaggy hair with bangs), wore the same clothes (jeans, leather jackets and Converse All-Stars) and even shared the same surname.

Their songs all sorta sounded similar and their lyrics were hilariously moronic with titles like I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend and Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue. From a guitar perspective, it was the same story: every song consisted of an interchangeable series of power chords played with the same jack-hammer downstrokes by Johnny Ramone on his cheap Mosrite guitar.

On paper the Ramones sounded stupid and one-dimensional – and they were – but it’s also what made them great. They say the hardest thing about making great art is deciding on a direction and sticking with it. If that’s true, then the Ramones were the Picassos of punk.

They did one thing, and they did it incredibly well, and in concert, the band was as direct and as powerful as a locomotive. (I was tossed around so much during an out-of-control Ramones show that I lost one of my shoes after the third song and never saw it again.)

When the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, it was said that their first album, Ramones (1976), saved rock from becoming “bloated and narcissistic.” While that’s not completely true – there was certainly plenty of bloat and narcissism to go around – they did provide a compelling alternative.

AOR in the USA

Punk wasn’t for everyone. But neither was metal, Southern rock, glam or any of the junk we’ve been talking about. That was the great thing about the ’70s. A lot of the music was kinda weird or extreme in some way. Even the biggest bands were odd when you really examined them closely.

The Wall by Pink Floyd was psychotic. Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin was fantastic, but totally wacky. And let’s not even get started on progressive bands like King Crimson and Jethro Tull.

Was there anything that was normal in the ’70s? Well, yes, there was plenty of meat and potatoes to be had. About halfway through the decade, many of the FM stations that were adventurous during the early part of the ’70s discovered they could grab more listeners and sell more advertising if the music they played was a little shorter and a bit more conventional. The stations shifted gears, and so did many rock bands who discovered they could sell more records if they did the same.

Suddenly, bands that appealed to more mainstream tastes started popping up like toadstools in Pennsylvania. Some called it “pop metal,” but most referred to it as Album Oriented Rock or AOR.

Platinum-selling bands like Foreigner, Journey, Boston, Styx, Eagles, REO Speedwagon, Steve Miller Band, Kiss, Toto, Pat Benatar, Kansas, Heart, Triumph, Bad Company and Fleetwood Mac were not particular innovative, but they wrote catchy songs that sounded great in the car.

While that might sound like an insult, it isn’t. Much of the music was very good and featured incredibly skilled guitarists like Neal Schon, Joe Walsh, Rick Nielsen, Ace Frehley, Steve Lukather and Gary Richrath, among others.

Now mix a bit of AOR with some Led Zeppelin, a bit of Pink Floyd and the more accessible “hits” of some of the more adventurous bands we’ve mentioned, and there you have the ’70s in a nutshell.

But wait… wait, wait, wait. What about Van fuckin’ Halen? Weren’t they part of the ’70s?

Well, the truth is – and this is highly classified information – that even though Van Halen’s first two albums came out in 1978 and 1979, they did not belong to the ’70s – they belonged to the ’80s. It was all a big mistake.

Eddie Van Halen insisted on arriving two years early, so he could gently guide guitarists to the next decade, where he would rule like a king for the next 10 years.

But you gotta promise not to tell anyone! If you do, I’ll deny everything. You know, conspiracy theorists, they’re all 5150…

Tony Iommi has returned with a new, doom-laden instrumental track, Deified – and he's launched another new fragrance to mark the occasion.

The release finds the heavy metal pioneer repeating his feat of three years ago, when he unveiled Scent Of Dark – his first new music in eight years at the time – alongside an accompanying cologne.

Deified is littered with Iommi’s signature dark melancholia, with thick, slow-motion riffs trading off screaming blues-y leads. An emphatic choir and purring, orchestral strings add an extra thump of cinema to the instrumental track. It arrives after Iommi teased “really good”, orchestra-laced new material at the start of the year.

The track also sees Iommi reunite with long-time collaborator Mike Exeter, who played keyboards and handled production, with Laurence Cottle (who played on Black Sabbath’s Headless Cross record) on bass. The band is rounded out by Feeder and Robbie Williams drummer Karl Brazil, with Ben Andrews scoring the sweeping orchestrations.

Asked what he was looking for in his assembled band as part of an accompanying interview video, Iommi said: “Good players, which I know they are. Laurence is a fantastic jazz player, he can adapt to all sorts of music. Karl Brazil is the same. Mike is an all-rounder.”

Of the song itself, Iommi says: “Deified is a heavier, more medieval track than Scent Of Dark. We've added voices and beefed up the overall sound."

At the time of Scent Of Dark’s release, Iommi teased he had “four or five hundred” unused riffs on his phone, with one of those cuts making their way onto this sludgy affair.

Thankfully, unlike Kirk Hammett, who lost a phone containing 300 Metallica riffs, Iommi has kept hold of those ideas and has slowly been hammering them into shape.

The new song releases alongside a new “leather and spice” fragrance from Iommi, made in collaboration with Xerjoff Blends.

Sergio Momo, the firm's CEO, is an electric guitar player in his own right, and helped with the song’s creation, Iommi reveals.

“I put the main riff down and Sergio came up with these other parts that were really good and I wouldn't have done,” he says. “He looked at it in a different way.”

Head to Xerjoff to learn more about the collaborative new fragrance.

During his annual New Year message back in January, riff godfather Tony Iommi teased fans about a “really good” solo album that he's been cooking up in the studio – and now he's offered an update on its progress. 

The good news is it's coming along nicely, and “might use some orchestration”. The not-so-good-news is there isn't a timeline for its release. 

In an interview with Full Metal Jackie, the Black Sabbath legend says he's written “a lot of stuff” for the album, which would be his first solo record since 2005's Fused, and his first new music since featuring on Ozzy’s latest album, Patient Number 9, in 2022.   

“I am writing stuff now for my own album,” he says. “That’s exciting. And there’s no pressure. I just do stuff when I feel like it, because, obviously, I’ve got a life to live and I like to do all the different stuff.

“But I’ve really enjoyed doing this stuff, as I did with Ozzy when I’d done a couple of tracks for his last album. And I’m quite open [to] all that now. Whatever comes, and I like it, I do it.

“I’ve got a lot of stuff [written],” Iommi adds of the upcoming album. “But now we’re actually getting around to sort of putting it together, myself and the engineer. So it’s been good fun. 

“As I say, there’s no pressure. I can just do it – I don’t have to do it by next week. And because of everything else [that has] been lurking around, I have to take my time in doing things.

“But it’s been fun, and that’s what it’s all about, really. And I’m looking forward to actually doing it and an album coming out.”

Last month, Iommi remembered the time he co-wrote a Black Sabbath song with Eddie Van Halen, although the band was not able to credit the guitar legend for his contributions.  

In related news, Iommi's former bandmate Geezer Butler revealed plans for one final Black Sabbath show are afoot, and he and Osbourne are already onboard.

Tim Henson has said learning Black Sabbath’s Paranoid by ear played a huge role in his development as an electric guitar player – and every beginner guitarist should take the time to study it.

The Polyphia string-botherer has turned the guitar world upside down with his brain-melting virtuosity and mind-blowing techniques, but he was once a young, inexperienced, and aspiring guitarist. 

In a recent conversation with Avenged Sevenfold bass player Johnny Christ alongside Polyphia bandmate Scott LePage, Henson opened up on his early days as a guitar player, which were heavily influenced by Sabbath.

“My dad taught me the pentatonic scale and the G, C, D, A, B, and F chords – basic shapes,” he recalls (via Ultimate Guitar). “Then he pointed me in the direction of Black Sabbath and said, 'Go learn by ear.'”

Henson and LePage then set about mastering the riff to Paranoid, which heralded from a larger record rich in riff royalty.

“Honestly, that record is such a wonderful thing for a beginner guitar player, because [it has] lots of cool-sounding riffs, and they're easy to figure out. And there's gratification [for] a new player there.” 

For the pair of budding riffers, there was something accessible about Iommi’s riffs when it came to navigating their fretboards by ear. It also gave them a greater appreciation of his playing style. 

“Those guitar parts are incredible and they're cool as hell, and they make sense on the fretboard,” Henson goes on. “There's a clear path to follow, in the way the fingers move in relation to the fretboard. 

“Scott and I have all the respect for everything that Black Sabbath has done. We wanted to learn the music because it was sick. As a beginner guitar player... most of the riffs are pentatonic.

”I think it's just a great starting point if you want to learn something by ear, and you're just starting out with guitar. Paranoid is a great one to go with. Like, how many people's first riff is Iron Man, right?” 

Having tackled Iommi’s riffs, Henson then started to dissect the music to figure out what made them sound so good – and Iron Man was particularly scrutinized. 

“Dude, the fifth from that power chord, it brings a sense of finality,” he beams. “It just locks it into the one and the five. [It’s] just awesome.” 

Henson also gave an additional tip for guitarists starting out on their path. While learning to rely on his ear was a valuable exercise, so too was watching other players. 

“YouTube really taught me how to play guitar,” the guitarist concludes. “I'd get on YouTube, look at people playing guitar, and mimic their movements. Prior to that, I don't know what people did – you'd have to buy DVDs, right?” 

In other Henson news, he recently guested on a new single from fingerstyle acoustic guitar virtuoso Marcin, contributing some fiery licks to Classical Dragon.  

Over the decades, Tony Iommi has written riffs forever etched in rock history. On the latest episode of Loudwire Nights, he was asked to name his favorite riff he wrote and pick those he instinctively knew were special – and he also revealed which was Eddie Van Halen's favorite. 

“Well, without sounding big-headed, [there were] a few,” he says (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).  “When we'd first done the Black Sabbath riff, straight away I knew – it just had this vibe and a feeling and it was something so different in them days that you'd never heard that sort of thing before. And I don't know how it all happened. It'd just sort of come out. And that was the benchmark for that album.”

Iommi mentions that once they'd done Wicked World and Black Sabbath, the rest of the songs on the band's debut album “flowed along.”  

“And the same with Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. And also Into The Void,” he adds. “That was a riff that I really liked, and that was Eddie Van Halen's favorite, to be honest, Into The Void. He'd always say, 'Oh, play Into The Void.' So it was great to hear that. 

“So there's a few that sort of – for me, Iron Man. Oh, there's a lot that really meant something. Well, they've all meant something, but they're the ones that sort of stood out initially.”

In a 2010 interview with Guitar World, Eddie Van Halen called Iommi “the master of riffs.”

“I’m not knocking Ozzy or his singing, but listen to Into the Void,” he said. “That riff is some badass shit. It was beyond surf music and jazz. It was beyond anything else I had ever heard. It was so fuckin’ heavy. 

“I put it right up there with [sings the four-note intro to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony]. Listen to the main riff, where he chugs on the low E string. It hits you like a brick wall.”

Black Sabbath have just released the long-awaited Anno Domini 1989–1995, a box set of Tony Martin-era albums, with reissued versions of Headless Cross (1989), Tyr (1990), Cross Purposes (1994), and Forbidden (1995). 

Tony Iommi has opened up about how Eddie Van Halen helped co-write a Black Sabbath song in the ‘90s.

The electric guitar legends first crossed paths on the 1978 Never Say Die! tour, with Van Halen picked to support the British heavy metal icons. During this time, the pair struck up a friendship and they remained close until Van Halen’s passing in 2020. 

Speaking alongside vocalist Tony Martin to promote the newly remastered Tony Martin-era Black Sabbath box set, Iommi shed some light on how Van Halen ended up shredding on the 1994 track, Evil Eye. 

Iommi recalls, “He had a day off, and I said, 'We're having a rehearsal, do you want to come?' I picked him up in Birmingham, at the hotel, and then we drove by a music shop.

“I said, 'Do you want to pick a guitar up,' and we did – one of his Eddie Van Halen ones. Then we went down to the rehearsal. We started playing a new song we were working on. He started playing a solo.” 

The track, from the album Cross Purposes, features numerous guitar solos, and there are some distinctly Eddie moments in it. However, despite his contributions to the track, an existing contract with Warner Bros. reportedly prevented him from receiving credits. So, it remained a secret for some time. 

But as Iommi reveals, even Eddie Van Halen was capable of getting things wrong on the guitar. 

“We played a couple of old Sabbath songs first,” he remembers. “And I said, 'You're playing that wrong.' I think it was Into the Void. 'Cause [Van Halen] used to play Sabbath stuff, before they were known. That's the sort of relationship we had. We stayed friends until he passed away; I spoke to him just before.” 

The conversation with Martin, which is being released in stages, has already revealed some interesting anecdotes, including how Iommi once dressed his guitar tech up as himself and sent him on stage.  

The interview series continues to celebrate the upcoming Martin-era box set, Black Sabbath: Anno Domini 1989-1995. Two singles – including the Van Halen-propelled Evil Eye – have already been released, with the full package set to arrive on May 31. 

That era of the band may not have produced classic anthems like the Ozzy and Dio-fronted chapters of Black Sabbath’s history, but as Guitar World scribe Rich Davenport writes, it featured some of Iommi’s greatest guitar playing. 

The Anno Domini 1989-1995 box set is available to pre-order now.

Brian May has made another special appearance at Slovakia's STARMUS festival, following his “challenging” collaboration with Jean-Michel Jarre last week. This time, he joined punk rock legends The Offspring for a special performance of Gone Away and Queen's Stone Cold Crazy.

The audience was treated to an orchestral arrangement of the band's 1997 hit Gone Away, which accompanied Dexter Holland's solo vocals. Midway through the song, the rest of the band, along with May, joined Holland on stage. As expected, the Queen guitarist put his own spin on the song's original guitar solo, with a little help from his trusty Red Special.

In the video recorded by fans, Holland is seen saying: “Brian, so nice of you to join us. So nice [of you] to hop in on this one! What a treat." The Offspring plus May then went on to perform Queen's Stone Cold Crazy from the 1974 album Sheer Heart Attack.

“OFFSPRINGMANIA !!!! I am so happy !!! If it never gets any better than the dressing-room run-through we just did, it will STILL be one of the most joyous moments of my ol' life !!! STARMUS and Bratislava are in for a treat,” posted Brian May.

In an interview with Total Guitar, May revealed how Stone Cold Crazy, known for its punk-rock drumming and quasi-thrash metal sensibilities, came about and unexpectedly gave birth to a new subgenre.

“Freddie had written the lyrics with his old band, and the original riff was very different – it sounded like the riff in Tear It Up [from 1984 album The Works]. So that original version of Stone Cold Crazy sounded like a lot of other things which were around at the time.

“But I thought: these lyrics are kind of frenetic, so the music should be frenetic as well. So I put this riff on it, which people are telling me is the birth of thrash metal or something! I don’t know about that. But was unusual at the time to play at that pace.”

The Offspring now join the ranks of punk and metal bands that have covered Stone Cold Crazy. Metallica famously covered the song, plus a few expletives, for Elektra Records' 1990 compilation album, and later used it as Enter Sandman's B-side, subsequently winning a Grammy.

Two years later, James Hetfield performed the song at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium, with Queen and Tony Iommi.

In 2024, after triumphant post-1997 reunions with both Ozzy Osbourne and Ronnie James Dio, Black Sabbath’s cultural significance is such that their home city of Birmingham has honoured the band with the Black Sabbath Bridge – fashioned from appropriately heavy metal. This present-day appreciation stands in stark contrast to the band’s perilous position in the mid to late ‘80s.

The band’s new Anno Domini 1989-1995 box set exhumes four long-deleted albums in remastered form, recorded during a period characterised by Tony Iommi in his Iron Man autobiography as a “lost era” which was overshadowed by the Ozzy and Dio formations.

“There’s the Ozzy thing and the Ronnie thing, and then there’s this. It’s like these albums belong to a lost era,” he wrote. “I am even struggling to remember stuff from that time because in a way it’s wiped from my mind.”

Nevertheless, those of us who stuck with the band recall how Iommi steered a reconfigured Sabbath to a lesser-known renaissance with Headless Cross (1989) and Tyr (1990).

He did so in the wake of a disastrous chain of rapidly fluctuating line-ups, precipitated in 1986 when then-label Warner Brothers forced him to release solo album Seventh Star under the Sabbath name – leaving the band’s reputation in tatters after The Eternal Idol (1987).

As a 13-year-old metalhead in 1985, I’d been too young to witness Sabbath’s classic line-ups. But their reputation loomed over my beloved loud and hairy genre, prompting a tentative punt on Black Sabbath’s Greatest Hits. 

As a novice guitarist, it was Iommi’s unique ability to craft monolithic riffs and fret-melting solos that immediately hooked me. Some fans refused to entertain anything other than the classic line-ups – but I stayed the course due to the fact that, unlike some of his ‘70s peers, Iommi wasn’t coasting on his reputation.

Instead he came out fighting – not only as a bandleader, but also as a lead guitarist and songwriter. As a result, the albums gathered in Anno Domini showcase some of his most vicious riff along with searing solos full of fluid phrasing, blazing bursts of speed and fiery attack.

Iommi’s beguiling way with a riff was always central to Sabbath’s sound, and this period is no exception. When Death Calls (from Headless Cross) erupts from clean arpeggios into a pulverising riff that blends vintage Sabbath doom with Dio-era melodicism. Psychophobia (from Cross Purposes) reboots the prog-tinged feel of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, melding deft tempo twists with brute force.

Similarly, Iommi’s solos frequently scythe dramatically through the songs – Heaven In Black (from Tyr) features ferocious, wah-drenched note flurries and a head-turning ascending chromatic climax; while on the Headless Cross title track, he flips dynamically between emotive, bluesy bends and warp-speed runs.

The Headless Cross album came the year after Sabbath had been counted out in 1988. It’s the strongest record to bear the band name since the Dio era.

Recorded by a new lineup featuring Eternal Idol vocalist Tony Martin, premier-league drummer Cozy Powell and long-time keyboard player Geoff Nicholls, it scored them their first top 30 placing since 1983. It belongs in any list of essential Sabbath albums.

With the addition of Powell’s former Whitesnake bandmate, bassist Neil Murray, for Tyr – another top 30 hit in 1990 – Sabbath’s resurgence continued. Impressive on record, the combination of Martin’s soaring range and power, over the concussive chemistry between Iommi, Powell and Murray, was all the more thunderous onstage, as I witnessed at Manchester Apollo that September. 

Despite their success across Europe, their label IRS lacked US clout. A lucrative offer from Warner Brothers led to a short-lived reunion of the Dio line-up for Dehumanizer (1992, not included in the new box set), torpedoed by Dio’s refusal to join his bandmates for the final dates of Ozzy’s first farewell tour.

Iommi persevered, releasing two more creditable albums: 1994’s Cross Purposes, with fellow founder Geezer Butler and a returning Martin; then 1995’s Forbidden, with the reunited Tyr formation. The latter record’s potential was blunted by weak production – but that’s remedied with a forceful Iommi remix, enhancing the doomy, old-school Sabs charms of buried gems like Get A Grip.

Though there are more storied chapters of Sabbath history, Anno Domini puts an impressive, overlooked body of work from Iommi back in circulation, showcasing his striking development as a soloist and songwriter in the company of a stellar cast of collaborators. Guitarists seeking pointers on how to mature while still melting faces are urged to investigate.

• Anno Domini is out now in 4 LP vinyl and 4CD editions, with a super-deluxe vinyl version to follow on May 31.