A poll of 2000 music fans votes was carried out to find out the nation’s favourite riff, and the top choice was revealed as "Sweet Child O’ Mine" by Guns N’ Roses.
In the exclusive clip below from Sky Arts' Greatest Guitar Riffs, Queen guitar legend Brian May solos over Black Sabbath's "Paranoid", accompanied by his friend Tony Iommi. Greatest Guitar Riffs is available to stream here.
Tony Iommi has confirmed that he is working on new music which he’s “very happy with” in a New Year’s video message posted to his official YouTube channel.
Iommi also reflected on his favourite moments of 2023, from working on the Black Sabbath Ballet, to releasing a track alongside Gibson’s Cesar Gueikian and Serj Tankian of System Of A Down as part of the Gibson band.
After beginning the video by stating that he hopes that everyone had a great Christmas, Iommi goes on to announce that a boxset celebrating the Black Sabbath albums released when Tony Martin fronted the outfit (The Eternal Idol, Headless Cross and Tyr) will be released in 2024 following delays.
In a brief three-minute video recorded at his home, Iommi directly spoke to fans, stating: “Hello all, I hope you’ve had a great Christmas. We certainly have here. It’s been good fun. Plenty of food and drink. Marvellous, absolutely marvellous.”
Last year when I did my message, I did say we’d have a box set coming out. Well, now I’ve been informed that it’ll be out in May… it’s been held up with paperwork and legal stuff. But anyway, it’s coming out in May now, if you’re interested, and I hope you are.”
He added: “But it’s been an interesting year again this year, great, great fun. A lot of different things happening. I was working with the Birmingham Royal Ballet with Carlos Acosta on doing the Black Sabbath ballet, which was absolutely marvellous. I mean, they’ve done such a brilliant job. And the dancers are fantastic. Just all the people involved in it were just so into it, and it was great fun.”
As he looks forward to 2024, Iommi concludes the message by assuring fans of updates on his plans and adds: “I am writing and doing plenty of stuff and it’s sounding really good. I’m very happy with it. I might use some orchestration, I might not. So we’ll see how it goes.”
