“That was a riff that I really liked, and that was Eddie Van Halen’s favorite”: Tony Iommi reveals the Black Sabbath riff EVH was always asking him to play

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).