James Hetfield has been singing the praises of Tony Iommi, describing the Black Sabbath guitarist as “the riff lord”.
The Metallica frontman appeared on his own show, James Hetfield’s Riff Life, on Sirius XM’s Maximum Metallica and spoke about what the Sabbath guitarist means to him. “Tony Iommi is the riff lord, in my mind,” he declared. “He is the one that has inspired me the most out of any guitar player for my rhythm guitar playing and songwriting.”
He continued, making reference to the track Children Of The Grave. “Obviously, Tony is the riff lord and everyone starts the song together on the one riff…. Basically, Tony plays off that riff, goes in to hit the big giant chords, which opens the song up.
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“I really love the drum overdub that they did to help with that percussion of the riff and the real cool ghostly guitar sounds at the very, very end.”
Metallica have long given due reference to their metal forebears. They inducted Sabbath into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2006 and have sung their praises in countless interviews over the years. And of course they appeared at last year’s Back To The Beginning event at Villa Park, Birmingham.
Talking of which, a concert film of Ozzy and Sabbath’s final show will be out next month. It’s been confirmed that Ozzy And Black Sabbath: Back To The Beginning will open worldwide on October 28.
The movie is produced by Mercury Studios and while it’s certain to feature the full sets of its main attraction, it’s not known yet what other excerpts from that day will be included. As you know, the one day event featured virtually every prominent name in the world of metal and hard rock, including Alice in Chains, Anthrax, Guns N’ Roses, Lamb of God, Mastodon, Pantera, Slayer and Metallica.
In a statement about the film, Sharon Osbourne has said: “Back to the Beginning came about because I asked Ozzy what would really make him happy. And he said the only thing that would make him happy was if he could perform again and say goodbye to his fans. That’s all he wanted to do. He wanted to say goodbye and thank you.”
