Latest news with #Iommi
Forbes
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Tony Iommi Charts His First Solo Top 40 Hit Thanks To An Unlikely Feature
Tony Iommi joins Robbie Williams on 'Rocket,' earning his first solo top 40 hit in the United ... More Kingdom on multiple sales charts. Guitarist Tony Iommi is shown performing on stage during a live concert appearance with Black Sabbath on August 8, 2013. (Photo by)"n Tony Iommi is regarded as a god in the rock world, and has been for decades. He first rose to prominence as one of the founding members of Black Sabbath and, for years, he helped bring heavy metal to the masses with his signature guitar sound. While he's primarily known for his work with that group, Iommi does occasionally release music under his own name. The superstar scores a hit song in his home country of the United Kingdom this week by teaming up with a somewhat surprising figure. Iommi earns a top 40 hit on both the Official Singles Downloads and Official Singles Sales charts this frame. He joins Robbie Williams on the track "Rocket," which opens at Nos. 34 and 36, respectively, on those tallies, becoming a top 40 bestseller in the nation. It appears that "Rocket" is Iommi's first solo hit on both of those rankings. As a member of Black Sabbath, he's only reached the lists once, as "Paranoid" spent one frame on the rosters in August 2022. Of course, it's worth mentioning that these tallies didn't exist during the heyday of the heavy metal act. Iommi has landed more than one solo placement on the Official Rock & Metal Albums roster with his solo collections, but those titles didn't produce any hit songs across the Atlantic. "Rocket" serves as the lead single from Williams's upcoming album Britpop. It's interesting that the first taste of a full-length named after a style of pop music from the U.K. wouldn't typically be classified under that genre, and would feature one of the most recognizable figures in metal — but that's Williams, playing another one of his jokes. While Iommi may be new to these rankings, Williams has already scored a number of hits. The pop icon has racked up a dozen smashes on the Official Singles Sales chart and well over two dozen on the Official Singles Downloads list. A top 40 start is impressive for Iommi but rather low for Williams, one of the most successful pop stars in U.K. history. The tune doesn't reach the main list of the most consumed songs — the Official Singles chart — at least not yet, which is a bit disappointing.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Gymnasts make remarkable return to competition bringing home 17 medals
Seventeen gymnasts from Legacy Elite Gymnastics Academy made a remarkable return to competition, bringing home an impressive total of 17 medals. The event marked the club's first competition of 2025. The young athletes, aged between six and 13, showcased their skills with enthusiasm and determination, much to the delight of their coaches and supporters. Scroll through the photos above Among the standout performances, Emma, Eden, Holly, Sienna, Alex, Ellie, and Iommi were crowned Overall Champions, each demonstrating exceptional talent. Notably, for eight of these gymnasts, it was either their first-ever competition, or returning after a year away from the mat. Belle secured second place overall in her category, while Millie and Poppy achieved third place, marking commendable efforts in their respective events. Evelyn, Matilda, Gwyneth, and Mary also excelled, earning runner-up and second-place finishes, showcasing the depth of talent within the team. Special recognition was given to Daisy for winning the award for the Best Number, and Evie, who bravely participated despite initial nerves, received praise for her outstanding performance. Iommi's perfect score on floor was a highlight of the day, reflecting the hard work and dedication of the gymnasts. The coaches expressed pride in each gymnast's achievements, emphasising the importance of teamwork and perseverance. A heartfelt thank you was extended to the parents for their unwavering support. As the Legacy Elite Gymnastics Academy looks ahead, the team is eager to build on this success in future competitions.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tony Iommi reveals how Black Sabbath fought power to get its signature heavy guitar tone on record
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. In February 1970, Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath changed the future of heavy music when they released their self-titled debut album. Armed with a 1965 Gibson SG Special and a slow, ominous take on the blues, Iommi brought a new flavor of guitar-driven music to the masses. As Guitar Player's former music editor Jesse Gress once explained 'Iommi recontextualized the same blues-based licks and riffs everyone else was playing at the time into a much darker and heavier oeuvre that soon became Sabbath's calling card.' But, as bassist Geezer Butler says, they weren't straying from their blues roots. 'To me, we were always just a really heavy blues band,' he explains. 'That's all we were — an out-and-out 12-bar blues band. We just took these blues roots and made them heavier, because we were into Hendrix and Cream, who were the heaviest bands around at that time. We wanted to be heavier than everybody else!' It was that quest that led them down a more extreme sonic path. Black Sabbath opens with a dark and dreary riff that outlines the tritone, or devil's interval, so called for its dissonance and ability to unsettle listeners. It adds a flattened fifth — a blue note — to a G octave, which is a standard blues move. But in this context, it takes on a whole other feeling. 'When I first played the riff to 'Black Sabbath,' that set the standard for the rest of the album,' Iommi says. 'When you heard those doomy guitar notes behind Ozzy, the hairs on your arms prickled. We knew it was good and different.' The band recorded live, tracking the entire album in a day. But while the production was fast, it wasn't easy to convinced producer Rodger Bain of the importance of Geezer Butler's bass tone. 'The biggest problem we've had is explaining to the people who recorded us how we have our sound set up,' Iommi explains. 'My guitar and Geezer's bass have to very much agree with each other, to make the wall of sound. 'All of them just see a bass as a bass; clean and neat. But Geezer's sound is more crunchy, more raw, and he sustains stuff and bends notes the same as the guitar, to make it fatter. Some of them would try to get him to take the distortion away, and it would be like 'Fucking leave it! It's a part of our sound!'' Undoubtedly, Iommi needed Butler's low-end assistance due to the accident he suffered aged 17 while working in a metal shop. It cost him the guitarist the tips of the middle and ring fingers on his fretting hand. He was encouraged to continue to play after he heard about Django Reinhardt's handicap after an accident burned the fourth and fifth fingers of his fretthing hand, forcing him to rethink his approach to guitar. . As you might expect, creating music so different from what was standard at the time didn't make Black Sabbath an instant success, not even in Birmingham, England, the band's hometown. 'Birmingham didn't want to know us," Iommi toldThe Telegraph in 2023. "We got slammed by the press. In America, they called us Satanists. Nobody understood what we were doing, because it was so different. 'When we started, there was no template for heavy metal,' he adds. 'We didn't even call it that. We liked blues, jazz, dramatic horror movie scores, even a bit of classical, [Gustav] Holst's 'Mars', when it gets really dum-diddly-dum, I love all of that.' As the band progressed, Iommi continued to push the heavy metal template to new reaches. On "Iron Man," the Sabbath song Iommi says he relates to the most, he dove deeper into the band's horror-film pastiche, painting gruesome pictures from the sounds that came out of his Laney amps. 'I was in a rehearsal room and Bill started playing this boom, boom, boom,' he remembers. 'I just saw this thing in my mind of someone creeping up on you, and it just sounded like the riff.' A year later, on Master of Reality, he downtuned his guitar to C#, F#, B, E, G#, C#, which gives 'Into The Void' its guttural punch. That directly inspired Eddie Van Halen , and set the ball rolling for the current metal trend of downtuning and using extended-range guitars.
Yahoo
01-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tony Iommi almost launched Black Sabbath's heavy metal crusade with a Fender Stratocaster
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. With their doom-laden take on electric blues, Black Sabbath turned the world of heavy music upside down when they released their debut album 55 years ago, in February 1970. A 1964 Gibson SG propelled Tony Iommi's instantly recognizable guitar sound, but if it weren't for a bad pickup and a risky gear swap, the band's change-making album might have sounded very different. Iommi had a few misfortunes to thank for his title as the inventor of heavy metal. He'd lost the ends of several fingers on his fretting hand in an industrial accident when he was 17, requiring that he devise leather thimbles to cover his damaged finger tips. . He then had a brief, unsuccessful run in Jethro Tull, after which Iommi returned to Sabbath with a fresh drive and greater work ethic. But as the band went in to record their debut album, Iommi found his Fender Stratocaster — which he can be seen as he plays with Tull on the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus — was having some issues. It was especially bad luck because, as Iommi tells Gibson TV, he'd worked hard to make the guitar suitable for his damaged digits. '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,' he tells his interviewer, 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." His backup guitar was a right-handed Gibson SG that the left-handed guitarist had strung upside down. As luck would have it he was able to swap it for a proper left-handed model shortly before recording began. '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 adds. 'He might have nicked it!' Although Iommi intended the SG to be nothing more than a backup guitar, it quickly became his main guitar when the Strat developed a problem with one of its pickups. 'I recorded 'Wicked World' with the Strat, and then the pickup went,' he 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!' Yet, something about the SG won him over. 'I never went back after that. I've stuck with the SG ever since.' Asked why the Strat was abandoned rather than repaired, Iommi says, "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." Besides, 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 set for one last Black Sabbath show this summer, having recently spoken to Guitar Player about why 'Iron Man' is the Sabbath song he relates to the most.
Yahoo
05-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ozzy Osbourne to reunite with original Black Sabbath line-up for his final show
Ozzy Osbourne is to reunite with all his original Black Sabbath bandmates for his final performance. The Back To The Beginning show on July 5 will see the 76-year-old singer deliver his own short set before Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward play together for the first time in 20 years. The all-day event at Villa Park in Birmingham, the city where the heavy rock pioneers formed in 1968, will also feature sets by a host of major metal bands including Metallica, Slayer and Alice In Chains. 'It's my time to go back to the beginning… time for me to give back to the place where I was born,' Osbourne said. 'How blessed am I to do it with the help of people whom I love. Birmingham is the true home of metal. Birmingham forever.' The band played its 'last' gig in 2017 in Birmingham with Osborne, guitarist Iommi and bassist Butler but without Ward on drums. Osbourne's wife Sharon and Iommi announced the news on Wednesday at Villa Park, the home of Aston Villa FC, of whom the Sabbath frontman has been a fan of for many years. In 2020, Osbourne revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and he paused touring 'for now' in 2023 after extensive spinal surgery. He had a fall at home in 2019 which aggravated injuries from a near-fatal quad bike crash in 2003, stopping his No More Tours 2 shows from going ahead in Europe and the UK. The tour had previously been rescheduled several times because of illness, the Covid pandemic and logistical issues. The show in July will also see performances by Pantera, Gojira, Halestorm, Lamb Of God, Anthrax and Mastodon. Other musicians on the line-up include Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, Guns N' Roses' Duff McKagan and Slash, Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst, Halestorm's Lzzy Hale and Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello. Anthrax's Frank Bello and Scott Ian, Disturbed's David Draiman, Korn's Jonathan Davis, Faith No More's Mike Bordin, Ghost's Papa V Perpetua, guitarist Jake E Lee, Judas Priest's KK Downing, bassist Rudy Sarzo, guitarist Sammy Hagar, Wolfgang Van Halen, Zakk Wylde and Sleep Token have also been confirmed for the day. Music director Tom Morello said: 'This will be the greatest heavy metal show ever.' Black Sabbath's story began in Birmingham where Osbourne, Iommi, Butler and Ward were looking to escape a life of factory work. Their eponymous debut album in 1970 made the UK top 10 and paved the way for a string of hit records. They went on to become one of the most influential and successful metal bands of all time, selling more than 75 million albums worldwide. The group were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, and Osbourne was added for a second time last year. He previously celebrated his home city in 2022 when he helped close the Commonwealth Games. He rose to further fame alongside his wife Sharon – who he married in 1982 and with whom he has three children, Aimee, Jack and Kelly – through their reality TV series The Osbournes. All profits from the July 5 show will go to charities including Cure Parkinson's, Birmingham Children's Hospital and Acorn Children's Hospice, which is supported by Aston Villa. Tickets go on sale at 10am on Friday February 14 at and more names will be announced shortly.
