Metal THE TOP 10 PLAYERS
01 TONY IOMMI IN HIS OWN WORDS
The legendary Black Sabbath guitarist spoke to TG’s Paul Elliott and explained how he learned to play with missing fingertips, how he writes the heaviest riffs known to man, and why ‘widdly’ guitar leaves him cold.
DJANGO REINHARDT SAVED MY LIFE
“When I had my factory accident and I cut the ends of my fingers off, I thought, that’s it. I was at home moping about, thinking, ‘I can’t play anymore’. I was devastated. And the manager of the factory came to see me. He said, ‘I’ve got an EP here I want to play for you, it’s by Django Reinhardt, can you listen to it?’ I said, ‘No, no, I don’t want to listen to any music.’ He said, ‘Please, just let me play it.’ And he played it and I said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s great.’ And then he told me the story about Django Reinhardt losing his fingers. And it really did encourage me. I thought, ‘God, somebody’s done it, and it really got me on my feet to start playing again and trying to work out how to play gypsy-style jazz. He was a great player. Him and Stéphane Grappelli were really good. And really, Django was so important to me.”
PLAYING BY EAR
“I would have liked to
