Tony Iommi recalls how he came up with the riffs of “Black Sabbath”

In 1970, Black Sabbath gave birth to Heavy Metal with the release of their groundbreaking self-titled debut album. Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler, and Bill Ward changed the course of Heavy Rock with that amazing record, which was recorded in only 12 hours. In an interview with Guitar World, the legendary guitarist recalled how he came up with the two main riffs of the song “Black Sabbath.” The song featured a note called the tritone (interval between two notes), which was considered something of the devil during medieval times.

Tony Iommi recalls how he came up with the riffs of “Black Sabbath”

“I’ve always been interested in horror films and that type of music. I’m into anything dramatic. We went into rehearsal one day, and Geezer was just playing around doing some Gustav Holst (Classical composer) stuff on his bass. I came up with this riff made out of three notes, the second being the same as the first but an octave up.

“But I didn’t know anything about the last note being a tritone. I didn’t know what the term even represented, though I knew I liked the sound of it and the feel we got from it. The mood was like what you’d experience watching a horror film. That’s what I related it to while putting the song together,” Tony Iommi said.

Black Sabbath is one of the most influential bands of all time that not only sold millions of records, they simply created a new music genre. They were active from 1968 until 2017 with many line-up changes along the way. The guitarist and co-founder Tony Iommi was the only member of the band who was part of the band in every record they made. Besides Ozzy Osbourne, the band also had other singers like Ronnie James Dio, Glenn Hughes and Tony Martin.