How Tony Iommi Of Black Sabbath lost his fingers & it made him an inventor

As a musician, one’s hands are crucial to the craft, especially if you are a guitarist. However, there is one Birmingham-born guitarist who has had to relearn how to play the guitar after a mishap.

Toni Iommi, born Anthony Frank Iommi, is the co-founder of Black Sabbath - of which Ozzy Osbourne was the frontman. Iommi, 74, is not only the band’s guitarist but also the leader and primary composer. He had been making music for the last five decades and is still performing live.

Throughout his career, he has had to play the instrument without having the whole use of his hands because of an accident in his teens.

Iommi, born and raised in Handsworth, had envisioned a career as a bouncer in a nightclub, he wrote in his book Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath. He went to Birchfield Road School, where Ozzy Osbourne was a year behind him.

However, that dream changed and he wanted to play the drums but picked a guitar later because of excessive noise. He played the strings left-handed. His first guitar was at the age of 13 and he also played the accordian since all his family played it too.

After graduating from school, he worked as a plumber for a short time and also in a factory. He was doing welding when the accident happened.

“I actually liked the job but my main thing was music,” he said in an interview to RadioX.

On the last day of his work, he went home for lunch and told his mother that he was not going back but she insisted that he does. When he did, they let him operate a machine he did not now how to and the machine came down with a force.

It cut the top of his two fingers off. “I pulled my hand back and there was blood going all over the place. I don’t even remember how I got to the hospital. Somebody arrived with my fingertips in a matchbox,” he added.

He was concerned that he would never play again. “I was extremely depressed. The manager from the factory came to visit me at home and he told me the story of Jean Reinhardt who had lost his fingers and it really inspired me to get on with it,” added the Black Sabbath guitarist.

His fingers were still sensitive and painful so he melted a washing up bottle and made them into balls that could be worn on his fingers. It was very difficult for him since he couldn’t feel the strings.

“Losing my fingertips was devastating but in hindsight it created something,” he said.

Iommi created his own light-guage strings because the strings back then were very heavy. He made his own invention because of his disability.

“It made me invent a new sound and a different kind of music,” he said.