How a Factory Accident Created a Musical Genre

A note to young leaders.

Don’t be too quick to curse your imperfections. They are part of what makes you an original.

Long before Tony Iommi became the lead guitarist of Black Sabbath, he worked in a Birmingham sheet metal factory.

On what was meant to be his final shift before pursuing music full-time, a machine sliced off the tips of the middle and ring fingers on his fretting hand.

The doctors were certain: he would never play guitar again. Iommi wasn’t so certain.

He melted down a plastic soap bottle and fashioned homemade prosthetic fingertips. They allowed him to play, but they robbed him of touch. Pressing and bending strings became an agony.

So he started looking for lighter strings. When he couldn’t find them, he used banjo strings instead. Then he tuned the guitar right down, loosening the tension to make it easier on his injured fingers.

What began as a workaround became a signature sound – lower, darker, heavier – the sound that became the hallmark of heavy metal music.

Eddie Van Halen would later call Iommi the creator of heavy metal, without whom the genre wouldn’t exist.

Most people spend their lives trying to sand down their rough edges. But originality lives in the rough edges.

Originality is authenticity – and authenticity sells.