Without a doubt.Originally Posted by Rick Robson
Without a doubt.
Tony's an innovator on rhythm guitar, of course, and I think his soloing from 1975-onward is underrated. He's an improviser and is looking more for feel than for perfection. I've always felt that most of his solos fit the music very well.
Also, his sound is so amazing, particularly from Heaven & Hell forward. Less distortion than you'd think (other than on Born Again), and just the right amount of thickness vs. clarity.
Excellent player.
I sometimes see it said he was just a riff guy and while his qualities there seem rarely disputed, i do think he was as good and varied a soloist as any of the other Brit mainly blues\pentatonic rock players of the day.He had that way-especially on the first 4 albums of phrasing high volume distorted blues playing with an almost triplet-swing feel that various players of that era who were mainly blues guys(yet were also into jazz and would play the occasional competent clean tone straight ahead lick\solo) would do like Bloomfield, Alvin Lee, Mick Abrahams, Blackmore etc
There's just a really nice fluidity in his playing and i don't hear a lot of rehashed licks...more simply a coherent rhythmic concept in his playing.
Iommi got me playing the guitar. period.
For Xmas I got a Gibson SG Special, a Gibson G20 amp, a Big Muff distortion pedal and the Black Sabbath Shattering Sounds songbook.
His massive riffs and thunderous power chording were unrivaled in the 70s.
And on Masters of Reality he tuned down to Db!!! I believe he was the first to do that.
He has a handful of solos that are more memorable than others , i.e. Snowblind, NIB, Symptom of the Universe, War Pigs and You Won't Change Me, but most of his improvisations are blues scales riffing with the occasional Aeolian or Dorian mode.
no tunes, no dynamics, no nosebone
You might find this interesting. Ex Ozzy axe Zakk Wilde told me that Iommi's chordal vibrato can't be easily copied due to his unique finger placement, his prosthetics and his own God given talent, all rolled up together.
To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.
I think the "riff king" tag comes mainly because, in that specific area, he's often regarded as the indisputable master. While he certainly holds in his own in other areas, few are going to call him the greatest lead player of all time, for example.
So what some people perhaps not all that familiar with his catalog of work probably presume is that is his real talent is mainly riffs, when in fact that really only tells a part of the story.
I think he's been a brilliant soloist from day one. The thing that is interesting about his work is that, in concert, he would have a roughly 20 minute portion of the show where he would just tear it up. Just unbelievable, ripping lead playing, and this weird sort of Jazz playing he'd do which was stuff really only he could play because while it sounded like he took the inspiration from Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery and so on, like everything he touched, it came out uniquely him. He'd do the finger picking stuff, kind of medieval sounding ala "Wicked World," segue into "Orchid" and just carry a show for a while standing out there by himself. Audience reaction to this was always extremely appreciative, but it's not the kind of thing you hear today. And I don 't know that people would want to hear it today. The 70s was a different era.
And yet on albums, he was typically very much concerned with using the guitar solo as a means to enhance the song. Some people refer to his most blazing solos, but I really appreciate solos like the one on "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath," which to me just fits that song SO well it hurts. And maybe even more impressive is his soloing on "Lord Of This World," where he hits this one note in such a twisted, brilliant way. I've never heard anything like it. It's an upward bend and he is just right in the pocket, plucks it six times and then on the 7th gives it a push up a step and the way it just gets right in there, right on the fuckin' money is a joy to hear. He repeats the formula with a slight variation on the solo at the outro of the song. And none of this is fast playing which obviously he does extremely well. It's really thought out and disciplined. I think he really found a balance for the albums of adding some sizzle and fast playing but not feeling it was appropriate to play like that on every song.
And maybe my favorite solo of all time from him is another slow one; "Junior's Eyes." I find this solo so good that it sends chills up my spine that anyone could even be on this level. The modulations are simply perfect, the bends are absolutely gorgeous and understated to fit the changes, the use of wah pedal is absolutely sublime ... I mean ... the freaking guitar is just flat out crying from the sky!
Makes sense. Interesting, for sure.
He invented a whole musical genre and he is in the second probaly most influential band after the Beatles. So that makes him unique to my ears, no matter how sloppy his soloing might be.
These 2 cats say it all for me. I'm far more interested in feeling than technical. That Iommi is humble makes him even better.Tony is one of those fascinating cases where someone turns a disability into an advantage. Technically he's ok but no more. But he was forced to innovate specifically because of the limitation; otherwise no one would listen to him. And boy did he innovate!
Agreed. Although "sloppy" is not a complaint thrown at him that I've seen; even from people who prefer other styles of playing to his.
IMO, anyone who says that is confusing him with somebody else. Nothing even remotely sloppy in his playing.
Not to get too "geeky" but note the bends here at 0:12 and 0:14 as examples of his ability to accomplish full bends with his pinky. Clearly this developed as a result of his handicap, but I have never seen a rock player do these kinds of bends with a fifth finger. It's like he has opened up strength in the muscle tissue there because of having to use that finger. Just remarkable.
That is a good one, but it reminded me of something about Iommi that hasn't been mentioned in this thread yet and that should've been because its one of the things he's a master of: the ability to play simultaneous rhythm parts and lead/melodic parts....Thats one thing I definitely give him a LOT of praise for - the construction of his phrasing in many songs is designed for the duality of chug-strength and melodics. Black Sabbath's body of work has many many guitar parts like this...The video reminded me of "Shockwave" which has multi-tracked guitar parts but each one is like a seperate song in itself
Take something like "into the Void." A prime example of Tony packing more killer riffs into one song than most others were able to get into an entire album.
The guy is a monster in every way ... ass pimples aside, that is.
A living legend and seriously class act.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
Here is all I will say on the matter. 1- Wicked World 2 - no other hard rock/metal guitarist swings like this. He swings like a motherfucker.
That's a good point, IMO. The only thing I would add is that his parts almost always add up to my ears. Plus I think he rarely overdoes it. Even "Shock Wave" which has layered guitars everywhere was able to be performed quite well live.
Ditto! That's exactly one of the major approaches that only a Master is capable of. And Iommi not only pioneered with that approach but went further with it by mastering an actually brilliant balance between rhythmic and melodic lines. This, IMO, was essential for him to rendering on the BS songs such a freakin' dynamic chord progressions within the most thought out and disciplined harmonic flow that I ever heard on the Hard Rock world, composition wise.
"Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth. ". Ludwig van Beethoven
"Black Sabbath's first four albums are as imposing a display of new, fully integrated approach as there has been in rock," he wrote. "Iommi played in the full blossom – technically and aesthetically – of the Burlison distortion. The pick on the strings is strikingly audible, and his fingers (partly severed in an industrial accident) screech into and out of each chord...Butler's bass roams around the Sabbath night and syncs up with guitar when it is time to pummel the message home...
"It is not well appreciated that the heavy feel of the music did not just come store bought out of amplifiers, but was worked out musically from a line of tradition that dates back to Muddy Waters' band, and before that to a certain physically dramatic strain of symphonic composition and arrangement. There is no heavy fret on the neck, no heavy circuit in the amp head, and louder does not equal heavier."
Joe Carducci/SST Records
Rock and the Pop Narcotic (1990)
A lot of that is because he uses very thin strings. I use the same string gauges that Tony does (.008-.038), and I have no problem bending with my pinky. It's a regular part of my technique. The difficulty with the really thin strings is bending up into the proper pitch. You really have to practice at it, since it's very easy to overshoot the mark. Also, it's easy to accidentally bend the strings slightly while fingering chords, and you can hear that Tony had problems with that in the early-mid '70s after he started tuning his guitar down three half-steps.
He plays with 8s?!?!! with a .38 on top?!?! Thats bizarre: even with humbuckers (PAFs in his SGs), his rhythm tone should be a lot thinner than what it is. Are you sure its a .38 on top or is it a hybrid set?
Very cool. You don't see it often. And certainly not with the precision displayed in the video clip I linked. Congrats on that accomplishment.
Incidentally, in the video clip, he is in standard tuning. He adopted this again between late 1976 to late 1978.
That brings up another point. Probably the most often heard, yet historically inaccurate reference about how Tony was able to be so heavy is that he was down-tuning. In reality, the first two albums are in standard tuning. While he was experimenting with some Eb tuning live by mid to late 1970, it wasn't until Master Of Reality that he cut loose with the concept on record. Suddenly on MoR he is tuned down to C#, which sounds absolutely insane (exceptions are "After Forever" which is in D and "Solitude" which is in standard tuning).
I remember Leslie West, who is a longtime admirer of Tony's, saying that when he first saw Sabbath he could not figure out how Tony was getting that sound. It's easy for us to think it would be obvious now because so many do it, but nobody did it to that extent then. I can imagine West, maybe with half a buzz on, watching Sabbath when they were opening for Mountain in early '71, and wondering if Iommi had a new effects pedal or some weird guitar or ... ?
I never know BS opened for Mountain. Leslie West is another riffmeister. My favorite guitarist.I remember Leslie West, who is a longtime admirer of Tony's, saying that when he first saw Sabbath he could not figure out how Tony was getting that sound. It's easy for us to think it would be obvious now because so many do it, but nobody did it to that extent then. I can imagine West, maybe with half a buzz on, watching Sabbath when they were opening for Mountain in early '71, and wondering if Iommi had a new effects pedal or some weird guitar or ... ?
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
I saw the Great Fatsby at a keg party in a local VFW hall in the early 80s. He had sunk pretty low by that point.
"And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision."
Occasional musical musings on https://darkelffile.blogspot.com/
I first saw him around 1980 at a New Jersey club named The Shady Lane. He was pretty good, but not in very good shape. Luckily, he cleaned himself up after that and subsequent shows I saw were freaking great. I got some really nice recordings of a couple of killer performances in '89 and '90.
"The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"
I saw him when he sunk lower. Terrible show and I think I nearly cried! Paramount Movie Theater, Staten Island, some time in the 80's.
To be or not to be? That is the point. - Harry Nilsson.
I've always bent notes with my pinky after seeing other guitarists around me (back in high school) doing it. I just assumed that's how it was done, made the change from using my ring finger, and have done so ever since. On the other hand, that particular bend in the video isn't one I'd be likely to use my pinky for. Much easier with down-tuned 0.008's of course.
<sig out of order>
Yes, he's played 8-38s for many years. He might even go thinner than that on the lower strings.
You can absolute get thick tone from 8-38s. Keep in mind that he uses very high-output pickups with no overdrive pedal in front of his amp (for rhythms). As a result, he retains the amp's natural low end, which overdrives often kill. Also, you have to remember that he and Geezer have an almost telepathic closeness in their playing, which naturally makes the low end heavier.
Yes, he switched to the C# Standard tuning in 1971, and I believe the reason was it would be easier for him to play with his mangled middle fingers. Interestingly, while Tony and Geezer tuned down, Bill Ward went the opposite direction and started using a very bright snare to help provide some snappiness to the sound in amidst all that sludge.
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