Black Sabbath – “Black Sabbath”
Played By: Tony Iommi
Tony Iommi’s tritone heard round the world
signified a new Dark Age of electric guitar
music. An augmented fourth dimension of
Hell was unleashed upon a world already
blackened by the atrocities of the Vietnam
War. The three notes of The Devil’s Interval
portrayed a nightmarescape of Wagnerian
proportions. Just like today, there was no
longer any excuse for the flowery escapism of
the previous decade. It was time to channel
the intensity of the times and emit a terrifying
wake up call to the disaffected masses. The
riff was conjured from the decapitated nubs
of an ex sheet-metal factory worker as he
painfully rubbed the world’s frustrations into
each vindictive vibrato trill. This is literally a
sound born of pain, metal, fire and a desire
to make a change . . . the sound of metal
from the Iron Man. Only one pedal is needed
to nail the coffin lid down on this tone—the
Catalinbread Sabbra Cadabra.
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