When Black Sabbath released their debut album in February 1970, they revolutionized the world of heavy music with their doom-laden take on electric blues. Tony Iommi’s instantly recognizable guitar sound, powered by a 1964 Gibson SG, became synonymous with heavy metal, but if it weren’t for a string of misfortunes and a risky gear swap, the band’s pioneering album might have sounded very different.
Iommi’s path to inventing heavy metal was shaped by adversity. After losing the tips of several fingers in an industrial accident at age 17, he had to create leather thimbles to cover his damaged fingers. Despite this, he persevered, eventually finding success with Black Sabbath after a brief stint in Jethro Tull. However, when it came time to record their debut, Iommi ran into problems with his Fender Stratocaster — a guitar he had spent considerable time adjusting to accommodate his injuries.
“I worked on it myself to try and get it right for me to play, because I couldn’t just pick up a guitar like you’d be able to pick up and play,” Iommi explains in an interview with Judas Priest’s Richie Faulkner. “I couldn’t use heavy strings anymore. I had to change everything — change the fretting and lower the strings — because I was using the thimbles. I couldn’t feel the strings.”
As a backup, Iommi had a right-handed Gibson SG, which he had strung upside down to accommodate his left-handed playing. Just before the recording began, he found a proper left-handed SG and swapped his backup for it.
“I heard of this bloke that had a left-handed guitar, and he was right-handed, and he played that upside down,” Iommi says. “Really peculiar! So I got in touch with him, and I arranged to meet him in a car park. It was a bit dodgy… He might have nicked it!”
Though Iommi intended the SG to be a mere backup, it quickly became his primary instrument when his Stratocaster’s pickup malfunctioned during the recording of “Wicked World.”
“I recorded ‘Wicked World’ with the Strat, and then the pickup went,” Iommi recalls. “So, I thought, I’ve got to use the other guitar. It was the first time I’d ever really played it, and I thought, Here I am, doing an album on a guitar I’ve never played before!”
The sound of the SG won Iommi over. “I never went back after that. I’ve stuck with the SG ever since.”
When asked why he didn’t repair the Stratocaster, Iommi admits, “As far as I knew, it was buggered. In those days, you couldn’t just go and buy a pickup. I could have taken the front pickup out and put it in, but I never thought of that.”
Instead, he says, “As soon as I started using the SG, and that was on the album, that was it. I swapped my Strat for a sax. I had this mad idea of trying to play the sax, which I drove everybody up the wall with.”
Iommi is preparing for one last Black Sabbath show this summer, having recently discussed with Guitar Player why “Iron Man” is the Sabbath song he relates to most.
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