Tony Iommi is one of the founding fathers of heavy metal. It’s hard to believe that, growing up in Birmingham, England, Tony’s first musical instrument was the accordion. Before long, he had started learning the guitar. Tony left school to work in an engineering workshop, while also playing guitar in a band. Tony was about to turn professional, and tour Germany with his band, when he lost the ends of two fingers on his fretting hand in an accident with a metal press at work. Despite being told he would have to give up the guitar, Tony persevered and made some fingertips from a melted plastic bottle. By glueing leather to the tops of these fingertips, and changing his technique, he was able to carry on playing.

Tony remembers his early influences as the Shadows and Django Reinhardt. In Birmingham, he met up with Bill Ward and eventually Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler, who would form the band Earth and then Black Sabbath. Initially Earth was a blues band, and Tony left for a while to work with Jethro Tull. When Tony came back to Black Sabbath, the band members’ shared interests in horror films, the occult and sorcery led them away from the blues towards a more unique sound and stage show, what would become known as heavy metal.

Tony’s first guitar was a British made Watkins model, then another British Burns model, but he always yearned for a Fender strat. Eventually he found a left handed one which was his main guitar for years until the first Sabbath album, when it broke after recording only one track. He happened to have a spare guitar, a Gibson SG, which he used to finish the album, and since then he has used SGs heavily.

Sources :

• Wikipedia
• Wired for Sound: a guitar Odyssey. Melhuish and Hall,1999