Tony Iommi, Black Sabbath
Did you know that Tony Iommi, guitarist of Black Sabbath fame, lost a couple of his fingertips on his right hand? His index and middle fingers, to be exact. Being left-handed, this would have been his fretboard hand. He worked in a sheet metal factory and accidentally cut them off. Ouch! It almost stopped Iommi from playing guitar, but a friend, seeing Iommi's depression from not playing, played Iommi a record of Django Reinhardt. A guitarist of Jazz fame. Iommi didn't know until after hearing Reinhardt that Reinhardt had severely burned his ring and index finger on his left hand but kept playing. Iommi was impressed by the jazz great. His friend then revealed that Reinhardt could only use two fingers on his fretboard hand.
This got Iommi inspired and back on the saddle again. Tony used light guitar strings and even banjo strings, dropping the string tension to make them looser. He dropped his tuning to C# Standard and D# Standard for you guitarists in the know. This helped Tony deal with the pain of using the fingers where the tips had been cut off. He also experimented with covering his fingertips with various materials to help with the pain. He settled on leather from an old jacket because leather could grip the strings. The decisions Iommi made regarding tuning significantly impacted heavy metal guitarists. But that's for another time.
Check out their debut album cover. Talk about capturing the essence of the band visually. Imagine Iommi's scary, heavy, doomy sound. It all started from downtuning because of his finger pain. Crazy cool, baby! It's near Halloween in Salem, MA, right now. I live a city over, so I thought this post was apropos.
Sabbath's debut album (pictured here) features Iommi playing in E Standard tuning. You won't hear his "doom" sound just yet. Check out Sabbath's third album, Master of Reality, to hear Iommi tuned down to C# and D# standard for that "doomy" sound.
