TONY IOMMI Talks New Music, Writing 'Paranoid' In Second Part Of New Interview

December 21, 2010

Issue 210 of the U.K.'s Total Guitar magazine (on sale December 24 - January 20) features legendary BLACK SABBATH guitarist Tony Iommi on the cover and contains 11 pages of Iommi coverage, including an in-depth interview and a complete tab of "Planet Caravan". A couple of excerpts from the second part of the chat follow below.

Total Guitar: Does new music influence your playing or writing in any way?

Iommi: "I suppose there must be things you pick up but I couldn't tell you where from. I tend to play what I think. There are albums I'd like to listen to but I don't tend to get around to doing it. I don't listen to other guitar players that much. There are some great guitar players around, there really are, but again, being a great player, you've also got to be a great writer. However great you are, you're only as good as your song is. Some people tend to overplay in songs. That's my opinion. When they sound good, they probably try to show off a bit."

Total Guitar: "Paranoid" is arguably your most famous guitar riff. Legend tells it that the song was a very late addition to the album?

Iommi: "In those days, you didn't have tape recorders. You had to play riffs, keep playing them and remember them. We were recording the album ['Paranoid', 1970] and the label suddenly said, 'You don't have enough songs!' We didn't know what to do and they asked us to come up with another song. Within a few minutes I came up with the riff to 'Paranoid', played it to the other guys and they liked it, so off we went. That's how simple 'Paranoid' was — we wrote and recorded it in a day."

Total Guitar: Yet that simple song went on to become one of your biggest hits…

Iommi: "Yes, it did. We really didn't want a hit single with 'Paranoid' because in them days, to have a hit single was selling out. We didn't want a hit single and we didn't expect it to be a single. We just did it as a filler track. Most of the tracks on the album were quite long and a lot of people probably wouldn't have played them because they were too long, so 'Paranoid' was an ideal track to release, being short and up-tempo. It just took off. We were as shocked as anybody when that got in the charts. We thought, 'Bloody hell, there's all this stuff here we're trying to do musically and then something as simple as 'Paranoid' gets in the charts and everybody remembers it!'"

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