(Credits: Far Out / TIDAL)
Tue 30 December 2025 19:30, UK
The power of the guitar can not be understated. If innovative musicians were responsible for the rebellion categorised as rock ‘n’ roll, the guitar was the sword they wielded.
One of those innovative musicians was Tony Iommi. Simply put, heavy metal would not be the same as it is today if you didn’t originally have the riffsmaster at the helm. He was responsible for creating this sound that was adjacent to rock but more layered, laced with doom and agitation. It inspired and continues to inspire generations, and his uncompromising mindset is what led to such musical vigour.
The average guitar player would lose the tips of their fingers and think it would be detrimental to their career, but not Iommi. The unfortunate guitar player found himself in a heap of bother when, following an accident in the factory he was working at, he lost the tips of two of his fingers. As he saw his potential career as a guitar player fleeing before it had officially begun, Iommi decided to latch onto it with both hands and fight for it. In doing so, he came up with a way around his predicament.
He fashioned two plastic tips to his fingers that sat comfortably where the accident had happened. They were enough for him to press down onto the strings and play again, but they didn’t have enough purchase to allow him to bend strings like the greatest blues and rock musicians did. As such, he tuned his guitar down a step, which is a sound that was pretty unusual at the time but now sets the precedent for the majority of metal music. Without such an act, the style of Black Sabbath could well have been very different.
Of course, Iommi isn’t the only musician that we can praise as some form of innovator. The ‘60s were flooded with extremely talented artists who took to the six-string like a duck to water, and one of them was Jeff Beck. When you speak to a lot of people about how Beck influenced rock music, chances are, they’ll defer you to his showmanship, and rightly so.
When you think about the critical components that make up a rock band, even though every member is of equal importance, there is no escaping the fact the eye is immediately drawn to the lead singer and lead guitarist, given these are often the most eccentric. Of course, this eccentricity didn’t always exist, and for the modern guitar player, it started with Jeff Beck. When he played with The Yardbirds, he wasn’t happy being confined to the shadows of the stage, and instead opted to come to the front and make his presence within the band known.
That attitude was an important part of Beck’s legacy, and something which still resonates with guitar players today; however, it wasn’t the only thing he contributed towards the genre, as he was also an exceptional, technical musician.
Nobody could tap into emotion through instrumentation quite like Beck did, as his solos seemed to have genuine feelings attached, with the guitarist able to tell a story through the power of a Fender alone. His actual music is sometimes overshadowed by his stage presence, but real fans know just how impactful he was.
“Oh yeah, Jeff was great,” recalled Tony Iommi when discussing the former Yardbird, “I met Jeff early on because we had the same manager. He was so different and unique. A truly great player who was just doing his own thing that was 100 per cent him. It’s true what they said; nobody could play quite like Jeff.”
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