Guitarist Tony Iommi on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Tony Iommi was born on this day in 1948. He co-founded the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, and was the band's guitarist, leader, primary composer, and sole continuous member for over five decades. Iommi was ranked number 13 in Rolling Stone magazine's 2023 list of greatest guitarists of all time.

On his last day of work in a sheet metal factory, as a teenager, Iommi lost the tips of the middle and ring fingers of his right hand in an accident. This led to him having to create makeshift thimbles and tuning his guitar down making it easier to play while also giving the band a unique sound. He briefly left Black Sabbath (then known as Earth) in 1968 to join Jethro Tull, but did not record any material with the band, and subsequently returned to Black Sabbath in 1969. In 2000, he released his first solo album Iommi, followed by 2005's Fused, which featured his former bandmate Glenn Hughes. After releasing Fused, he formed Heaven & Hell, which disbanded shortly after the death of Ronnie James Dio in 2010 (they toured on Black Sabbath songs when Dio was in the band but changed the name for legal reasons).

In 2011, Iommi published his autobiography, entitled Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath. 

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Eddie Van Halen on This Day in History

 

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This day in history: Rock guitar legend, Eddie Van Halen, passed away after a stroke on this day in 2020 at age 65.  

I recently read "Runnin' with the Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and the Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen" by Noel Monk and the book certainly made me like Van Halen a lot less. However, there was a strange story in the book relating to Van Halen's mother Eugenia:

“I liked their mother, Eugenia, but she was a complicated and unhappy woman, and my affection was born largely of compassion. You see, she suffered from what I can only assume was a type of mental illness, represented most glaringly by an irrational and sometimes paralyzing fear of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now, I understand that Jehovah’s Witnesses confuse nearly all of us who are not of their particular Christian faith and interpretation, but Eugenia’s feelings about them went well beyond annoyance; she was inordinately terrified of them. I don’t know the origin of this phobia....Eugenia firmly believed that Jehovah’s Witnesses had followed her from Amsterdam and were trying to destroy her. She would pull you aside as if she had a secret to tell you; then she would reveal her fears and suspicions, and eventually get around to asking whether you were 'one of them' and intended to do her harm. The first time this happened to me, I mistakenly presumed that she was joking. She wasn’t. Instead, once assured that I wasn’t a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses dispatched to hurt her, she would ask if I had seen any of 'the' on my way to her house. Were they lurking nearby? Hiding in the trees, perhaps? I didn’t know how to respond; I simply felt sorry for her. It was clear from the look of abject terror on her face that this nightmarish scenario was entirely real to her. And it was crippling." 

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Two Seminal Moments in Rock and Roll on This Day in History

On this day in 1956, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash got together for the first and last time for an impromptu jam session consisting of mostly Country and Gospel songs.

An article about the session was published in the Memphis Press-Scimitar under the title "Million Dollar Quartet". The recording was first released in Europe in 1981 as The Million Dollar Quartet with 17 tracks. A few years later more tracks were discovered and released as The Complete Million Dollar Session. In 1990, the recordings were released in the United States as Elvis Presley: The Million Dollar Quartet. This session is considered a seminal moment in rock and roll history.

Also on this day, in 1971, during a concert of Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention at the Montreux Casino, an audience member fired a flare gun into the venue's ceiling, causing a fire that destroyed the venue. The rock band Deep Purple, who were to use the Casino as the site for the recording of their next album, witnessed the fire from their hotel; the incident would be immortalized in their best known song, "Smoke on the Water".

In a 2004 publication by Rolling Stone magazine "Smoke on the Water" was ranked number 434 on its list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time", Total Guitar magazine's ranked "Smoke on the Water" number 4 on its "Greatest Guitar Riffs Ever", and in March 2005, Q magazine placed "Smoke on the Water" at number 12 in its list of the 100 greatest guitar tracks.

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