How Jazz and Banjos Gave Us Heavy Metal

The origins of Heavy Metal can be traced back to a couple of bands. The most average ones that get name-dropped include Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Blue Cheer and many other contemporaries. 

Dear reader, in this writer’s opinion, the only band that can be defined as ground zero for Heavy Metal, as far as sound and style are concerned, was Black Sabbath, a band from Birmingham, England.

Tony Iommi, the band’s guitarist, has been the only consistent member in many line-up changes over their 50-year history. Though much came from necessity, he’s been credited as the architect of the heavy riff. 

For those who don’t know Iommi’s story on how he crafted his signature sound and approach (which led to a whole new style of music), a chain of events led to this, starting with one pivotal moment that snowballed everything.

An Unfortunate Accident

When Iommi was 17, he had rock n’ roll dreams, much like most other youngsters and was planning on pursuing them in earnest to break away from the daily grind. He was working his final shift at a sheet metal factory before making the plunge when an accident occurred, resulting in the tips of his ring and middle fingers of his fretting hand being cut off.

Being told he would never play again, Iommi found inspiration to give the guitar another go from an unlikely source.

From Jazz To Metal

A foreman at the factory visited Iommi shortly after the accident, bringing an album by famed Gypsy Jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. For those unaware of the famous guitarist, Reinhardt mainly played with his index and middle fingers on his fretting hand after severely burning his ring and pinky fingers in a fire. To listen to him play, you would never think that Reinhardt had a disability.

Learning this, it would seem that the doctors lost all excuses in thinking that Iommi would never play again:

While I was down in the dumps though, a friend of mine, who happened to be my foreman at work, brought me a record of [world-renowned Gypsy jazz guitarist] Django Reinhardt who, at the time, I'd never heard of before. My friend said, "Listen to this guy play," and I went, "No way! Listening to someone play the guitar is the very last thing I want to do right now!" But he kept insisting and he ended up playing the record for me. I told him I thought it was really good and then he said, "You know, the guy's only playing with two fingers on his fretboard hand because of an injury he sustained in a terrible fire." I was totally knocked back by this revelation and was so impressed by what I had just heard that I suddenly became inspired to start trying to play again. (Source.)

Iommi would soon make some homemade thimbles out of a plastic bottle and leather to compensate for the missing bits of his fingers. However, another challenge presented itself.

It’s a String Thing

The thimbles had one drawback: Iommi could not feel the strings under his two affected fingers, making the heavy strings (the only ones available at the time) difficult to play. Searching for lighter strings, with no company making light gauges for guitar, he created his own set using banjo strings. These allowed him better maneuverability and playability, considering his fingers.

Wanting to sound bigger, Iommi also gradually began down-tuning his guitar from the usual standard of A440 over time, even going down to C# for the albumMasters Of Reality. This, mixed with a more saturated sound from his amplifiers, was the spark that lit a thousand powderkegs for Heavy Metal bands everywhere.

In the face of utter disaster, some people move on to something else, while others find ways to prevail. Iommi himself has said that this negative turned into a huge positive, and it’s inevitable that without that initial moment, the Heavy Metal landscape (if it existed at all) might be very different.