{"id":639731,"date":"2026-10-24T05:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T05:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/639731\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T05:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T05:56:14","slug":"tony-iommi-on-writing-metals-greatest-riff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/639731\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Iommi on writing metal\u2019s greatest riff"},"content":{"rendered":"

From The Dark<\/a> proves, Tony Iommi<\/a> remains the king of the riff. The Dark Lord laid won the blueprint for an entire genre with the immortal riff that opens Black Sabbath<\/a>\u2019s eponymous 1970 debut album, an he\u2019s not stopped since.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When Metal Hammer conducted a poll in 2018 to find the greatest riff of all time, it was no surprise that he was behind the one that came out on top. To be fair, any number of Sabbath riffs could have stolen it \u2013 Iron Man, Sweet Leaf, Hole In The Sky, Paranoid, Black Sabbath itself\u2026 the list goes on.<\/p>\n

But the actual winner? The monumental riff that powers Symptom Of The Universe, the classic track from Sabbath\u2019s 1975 album Sabotage. We asked the man behind how he created this immortal noise.<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From Louder<\/p>\n

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\"A\n<\/p>\n

Can you remember where you were when you came up with the riff for Symptom Of The Universe?<\/p>\n

Tony Iommi: \u201cOh my god, it was a long time ago. I can\u2019t remember, to be completely truthful. I imagine we would have probably been in rehearsal.\u201d<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Is that how you used to come up with riffs \u2013 in rehearsal?<\/p>\n

\u201cGenerally, yeah. Sometimes I\u2019ve come up with stuff at home and taped it just to remember it, but I don\u2019t really work things out as such.\u201d<\/p>\n

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You make it sound easy\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cDare I say it, but yeah, I\u2019ve not had much trouble coming up with riffs. Now I\u2019ve said it, I\u2019ll probably never come up with another one. But I\u2019ve got hundreds of them from over the years on various CDs. Some of them go back to the original Sabbath<\/a>, some from the Dio<\/a> era, bits and bobs from when [Deep Purple\u2019s] Ian Gillan or [former vocalist] Tony Martin were in the band. I don\u2019t even know what\u2019s on there. I keep threatening to sit down and listen to them all one of these days when I get the chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Tony\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Gus Stewart\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

Back when you were writing Symptom Of The Universe, which guitarists were you in competition with?<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

\u201cMe. I was in competition with myself. I would always try to come up with more and more inventive ideas \u2013 different tunings, changing the amps, just fiddling about with the guitars really. I would constantly be trying to improve things and change things. I didn\u2019t really listen to other people, just in case I started playing someone else\u2019s riff by mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second half of Symptom Of The Universe heads off into weird, prog-jazz territory. Was that you deliberately setting out to write an early prog metal song?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, that was just us jamming together. It was something I came up with and Geezer [Butler, bass] and Bill [Ward, drums] followed, and then Ozzy came in. But then a lot of Sabbath\u2019s stuff went to places you didn\u2019t think they would go. I remember when we had Ronnie Dio with us, I played him the track Die Young [which ended up on Sabbath\u2019s Heaven And Hell album]. It went into this completely different tempo, and he went, \u2018You can\u2019t do that!\u2019 I went, \u2018Of course we can. It\u2019s what we\u2019ve always done.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Symptom of the Universe (2009 Remaster) – YouTube
\n\"Symptom<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

What are your memories of making Sympton Of The Universe\u2019s parent album, Sabotage?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, it was a nightmare. We had a court case with our ex-manager, Patrick Meehan, while we were in the middle of making the album. We\u2019d get a writ and we\u2019d end up having to go into bloody court in the morning, all dressed up, then try to get back to the studio afterwards to carry on working. It was hard to come up with things. You had to have two heads.\u201d<\/p>\n

Did that aggro feed into the album?<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly with Geezer\u2019s lyrics. He wrote one song called The Writ, so it influenced him, that\u2019s for sure. I think the aggression definitely came out in the music when we played together. There is some really heavy stuff on that record.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is it true that The Writ was inspired by a lawyer unexpectedly turning up at the studio to serve you with legal papers?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s exactly what happened. They used to turn up all the bloody time. We never knew they were coming. If we did, we\u2019d have disappeared sharpish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sabotage took nearly a year to record. Was there ever a point where you thought you might not make it to the end?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I\u2019ve never felt like that. We\u2019ve always fought through whatever was there. Without the music, we\u2019d have all gone bloody loony. I think it actually it brought us all together as a band. Whenever we went through problems, we\u2019d just fight through it together.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Tony\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Kevin Mazur\/WireImage)<\/p>\n

The Sabotage album cover. What\u2019s going on there?<\/p>\n

\u201cHa ha ha! A guy who worked for us who was an artist, he came up with a great idea \u2013 us reflected in a mirror, stuff like that. But when it got to the day, somebody said to Bill, \u2018What are you gonna wear?\u2019 And he was, like, \u2018I dunno.\u2019 So he turned to his wife and said, \u2018Can I borrow your tights?\u2019 So he put on this pair of his wife\u2019s red tights. And I think he might have borrowed Ozzy\u2019s underpants, too. It looked bloody ridiculous. It definitely didn\u2019t come out like we wanted it to.\u201d<\/p>\n

When was the last time you came up with a riff and thought, \u2018Ooh, that\u2019s a bit tasty\u2019?<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019ve got a few that I haven\u2019t used yet that were good. There\u2019s about four or five from the last Sabbath album [13] I that we didn\u2019t use. I listened to a CD with them on recently. I thought, \u2018Blimey, that\u2019s good, why didn\u2019t we use it?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve talked about Symptom Of The Universe. But what\u2019s your favourite Tony Iommi riff?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh my god, that\u2019s difficult. I like Into The Void. And I like some of the stuff we did with Dio \u2013 Heaven And Hell<\/a> was a good riff, Neon Knights. There\u2019s so many I like. I like pretty much all the stuff we\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black Sabbath – Symptom Of The Universe (Live at Hammersmith Odeon, London, 1978) – YouTube
\n\"Black<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Apart from your own, what\u2019s the greatest riff of all time?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s even harder. There\u2019s so many great riffs out there from the past, and up to date stuff. But you\u2019ve got to have Deep Purple\u2019s Smoke On The Water. And of course there are a lot of Zeppelin songs. Jimmy Page has some great riffs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Have you ever had a riff come into your head while you\u2019ve been sitting on the toilet?<\/p>\n

\u201cHa ha! Oh yeah. I have riffs that come in all the time at different times, different places. You never know when the magic\u2019s going to strike.\u201d<\/p>\n

This interview originally appeared in Metal Hammer issue 311<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter As his new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-639731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}