James Hetfield singled out Tony Iommi as the guitarist who has shaped his playing and his songwriting more than anyone else. The Metallica singer said so on the latest episode of “James Hetfield’s Riff Life”, his show on SiriusXM’s “Maximum Metallica” channel, which aired on 21 September 2026.
“Tony Iommi is the lord of riffs, in my mind, and he is the one who has influenced me more than any other guitarist, both in rhythmic playing and in songwriting,” he said. To explain, he picked “Children Of The Grave” from Black Sabbath’s 1971 “Master Of Reality”: everyone starts with the same riff, Iommi plays over it and then hits the big chords that open the song. He also singled out the drum overdub that anchors the rhythm and the “haunted” guitar sounds at the end of the song.
His relationship with Black Sabbath goes back to his childhood, when he was digging through his older brother’s record collection. In a 1992 interview with Guitar World he recalled: “I discovered Black Sabbath going through my brother’s vinyl. Their covers pulled me in right away… They were everything the ’60s wasn’t. Their music was so good because it was completely anti-hippie.”
In March 2006 Hetfield took the stage at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in New York to induct Black Sabbath, speaking about himself as if he were the nine-year-old boy who took his brother’s vinyl. “Without their signature sound there would be no Metallica,” he said at the time, and he later admitted he nearly broke down in front of the crowd: “I didn’t realise until I had to bring out all those feelings in front of that many people.” At the ceremony Metallica played a medley of “Hole In The Sky” and “Iron Man”.
Nineteen years later, at “Back To The Beginning” at Birmingham’s Villa Park on 5 July 2025, Metallica opened their six-song set with “Hole In The Sky” from 1975’s “Sabotage”, which they had not played since 2009, and in the middle played “Johnny Blade” from 1978’s “Never Say Die!” for the first time in their history. The show, with more than 40,000 spectators, brought Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward back together on stage for the first time since 2005 — it was also Osbourne’s final appearance, as he passed away later that month.
See also: Tony Iommi: Why he rejected the idea of a new Black Sabbath album and Black Sabbath: 56 years since “Paranoid”
Source: https://metal-stop.com/james-hetfield-says-tony-iommi-has-inspired-him-more-than-any-other-guitarist/
