TONY IOMMI INTERVIEW
(Originally aired on November 13, 2008)
Many consider Iommi the father of heavy metal guitar, citing his riffs in Black Sabbath's "Paranoid," "War Pigs," and "Iron Man" as creating the template for the genre's dark, massively distorted sound. Iommi's experiments with light-gauge strings, drop tunings and 24-fret necks have had a lasting influence on modern guitar design, and his high-gain tones have had equal impact on contemporary amp manufacturers.
In the late '60s — before forming Black Sabbath — the young Iommi had an accident that cut off the ends of two fretting-hand fingers. When I interviewed Iommi in 2004, he described the incident and its affect on his life, music and guitar technique. In this clip, Iommi explains how he made his own prosthetic fingertips, and how he found the determination to play again through the music of Django Reinhardt