Ritchie Blackmore or Tony Iommi

It's kinda like Dio or Ozzy... But that wouldn't really be prog.

So who, Tony Iommi who if wrote a riff for a song for your band would make you double platinum in a week, or Ritchie Blackmore, who... is Ritchie Blackmore.

When Pete Townshend was a kid he went to the house of a local musician and asked for guitar lessons.  The man pointed to a kid walking down the street with his guitar case and said to ask that lad, even though the boy was only 15 years old, the man said, he'd be able to teach you twice as much as anyone about the guitar.  That kid was Richie Blackmore.....Townshend believes it was Blackmore who first played "heavy metal".  At the same time, Townshend said that Blackmore was one of the most sullen, backward motherf**kers he'd ever encountered.....leave it to Pete to lay out such a backhanded compliment.

For the record all of you at Progressive Archives... Ritchie Blackmore (of Deep Purple ((... even though I like Rainbow better)) ) is progressive Rock.

Tony Iommi (of Black Sabbath) isn't. But I like his riffs better.

Interesting to see how the voting will progress. Went with Blackmore, the early Rainbow albums are simply outstanding.

While Iommi is a impressive guitarist on his own, I have to go with Blackmore.

The reason is simply because of back in the early Deep Purple days like from 69-75ish, Blackmore was with purple doing 15,20, even 30 min live songs and often times were very improvised with solos and stuff.

Tony Iommi by far! He´s one of creators of Heavy Metal. His riffs, dark sound and player technic are shortly congenial and difficult to copy. As regards relationships with Prog, many sogs of Black Sabbath are very close to this one, see also:

Tony Iommi has a very distinguished riffing and soloing style which I've also liked. I'm a bigger Deep Purple fan though, so many of Ritchie's solos and riffs are also faves of mine.

Hmmm this was a good one.

I like both but Iommi for sure.

Iommi really. He's had to put up with all those Blackmore rejects on vocals and all did better. Gillan and Born Again haters may disagree as Gillan was already great.

Blackmore always seemed to have a great moment (Stargazer, Catch The Rainbow) while Iommi had great moments (Hand H, Tyr, any Ozzy era album)  though not that many on Eternal Idol or Forbidden. Shame that. Though I hear the demos of the former might be released soon - with Ray Gillen on vox. They're good too The Forbidden ones are better than the album as well. Doesn't say much for Tony Martin yet he's a fine singer for Iommi. IMHO of course. Which reminds me the Born Again demos are often more popular than the album. Hopefully they will see the offical light of day.

Neither seem to have done anything less than fine though. But Iommi's orchestrations, riffs (even though he's gone quite close to Blackmore's style at times...)  are just great. Even an unfortunate result like She's Gone isn't so bad - just wish that had been instrumental,

Blackmore has said he's been quite influenced by Tull. Iommi was in Tull, for about 5 mins 42 years ago...

Personally, I go for Jethro Tull's ex-guitarist - here seen playing Blackmore's guitar...





And here, his own: