I'm not sure if you know this band Black Sabbath or not, but their demos have been making the rounds over the years. So much so that one might qualify a few of their tunes as "hits," you know? Pretty big deals. One of their bigger songs, "Paranoid," has been jammed on by a guitarist or two throughout the song's life and has become somewhat of an iconic riff… but did Tony Iommi jack the riff?
Here's a song by Half Life titled "Get Down" from 1969, whose opening riff is eerily similar.
Then there's "Paranoid" from Paranoid, from 1970.
Are these riffs similar? Absolutely. Yet if you're a musician, you know that these riffs are based off ridiculously simple pentatonic shapes and the chances of two bands unknowingly coming up with a riff this similar are great. Plus, would Iommi have even picked this record up by the time Paranoid was becoming an album? I'm not buying it at all.
What say you?
[via Dangerous Minds]
