Iron Man

October 3, 2011
While there are other books that offer more detail about the band, lead guitarist and songwriter Iommi’s chronicle is an important addition to the Black Sabbath story. Even early Sabbath detractors recognized that Iommi’s pummeling riffs in songs like “Iron Man” and “War Pigs”—powerfully delivered by lead singer Ozzy Osborne—defined the Sabbath sound. Iommi’s autobiography is as direct as his music, beginning with his description of losing the two middle fingers on his left hand in an industrial press accident as a teenager in the early days of the band, which, he notes, some people credit with creating “the deeper, down-tuned sound” of the band—“I had to reinvent my style of playing to accommodate the pain.” The book’s main virtue is its straightforward, year-by-year account of the band’s history, from early struggles (“When we recorded Paranoid I still lived at home”) through the band’s breakup with Ozzy in 1979 (“There were so many drugs flying around, coke and Quaaludes and Mandrax, and there was booze and late nights and women and everything else”) to Iommi’s post-Ozzy versions of Sabbath and various solo projects.