Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath raised £50,000 for the hospital where he underwent cancer treatment through a raffle to win one of his guitars, as per blabbermouth.net.
A massive thank you to everyone who bought tickets to my guitar raffle these past few weeks. Together you’ve raised over £50,000 for the Heartlands Hospital Charity appeal. What an incredible achievement and only possible thanks to all of you 
– Tony
Keep an eye on your inbox for an email to the winner.
They call him The Iron Man. The Riff Master General. The Godfather of Heavy Metal. Inspiration for many thousands of hard rock guitar heroes. As the lone strand of consistency in the genre-shaping career of Black Sabbath, over a period of more than half a century, the name of Tony Iommi has become synonymous with heavy rock, his innovative, de-tuned, dark riffs a blueprint for successive generations of bands that followed.
Just like the three fellow members of the original Black Sabbath — singer Ozzy Osbourne, bass guitarist Terry ‘Geezer’ Butler, and drummer Bill Ward — Anthony Frank Iommi hails from the Aston area of Birmingham. Back then, born into an industrialised, post-war city, few options were open to those entering the job market, with the youth usually funnelled into one of the city’s many factories… until Tony convinced his parents to buy him a guitar.
“The first guitar that I ever had was an acoustic model, a really cheap thing,” Iommi recalls. “Then my mother bought me a Watkins Rapier electric from a catalogue, a left-handed one. There weren’t many left-handed guitars in those days.”
The young Iommi took to the instrument like a duck to water and, inspired by his early hero Hank Marvin of The Shadows (“I liked The Shadows mainly because they were an instrumental band”) and Eric Clapton, he soon dreamt of a career as a musician. It was whilst working in a sheet metal factory, and on his very last day before turning professional, that Iommi, then 17 years old, lost the tips of the fingers on his right hand – the ones used to fret the strings on his beloved guitar – in an industrial accident.
Iommi’s musical odyssey might have ended before it had even begun. It was an album by the gypsy guitarist Django Rheinhardt, who had the fingers on his fretting hand fused together after a fire in his caravan, that fuelled hope. The resourceful teenager adapted his playing technique, transforming what would have been a handicap to most musicians into an opportunity to create his own style.
“It was bloody difficult,” Iommi relates.
