Tony Iommi + Brian May Contemplate Releasing Guitar Pieces to Fans for Recordings

Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi and Queen's Brian May are no strangers to collaboration, but their next project could potentially find them musically teaming with fans. According to the Birmingham Mail, the veteran rockers are discussing the idea of taking recorded pieces of Iommi's music and then turning it over to fans for their own recordings.

Iommi says, "When I was first ill, Brian May came to visit me at my house in Lapworth. I played him some of my stuff, rock riffs that I never quite got round to developing or decided not to use. He said I ought to do something with them."

The guitarist says that with his attention solely on Sabbath for the immediate future, he and May debated what to do with the licks. "One of the ideas we had is that we could make the riffs available, get fans to use them in songs of their own, and see what they come up with," explains Iommi. "That way they’d effectively be recording with Brian and myself.”

May adds, "I heard some of the hours of unreleased guitar jams Tony has on tapes and hard drives. I thought it would be great to make a compilation out of them. The idea was to put all these riffs out in some form so that people could build their own songs from them. You could make your own music with Tony Iommi on guitar! How great is that?!"

As for Iommi's immediate future, as reported, that belongs to Black Sabbath. The band's new '13' album arrives June 10 with plenty of touring on the horizon. Fans will get their first taste of new music when they perform their new single on the season finale of CBS' hit series, 'CSI,' on May 15.