"The machine crushed his fingertips on his last day at the factory. His boss said his guitar career was over. Instead, he melted a plastic bottle, built fake fingertips—and accidentally invented heavy metal. "December 1965. Birmingham, England. Tony Iommi was seventeen years old, working his last shift at a sheet metal factory. It was supposed to be his final day. He'd been offered a professional music gig—a real paying job as a guitarist. He was finally escaping the factory, escaping the grinding industrial monotony of working-class Birmingham. One more shift. Eight more hours. Then freedom. At 4:30 PM—thirty minutes before the end of his shift—Tony was operating a metal press. A massive machine that stamped and cut sheet metal. He was tired. Distracted. Thinking about his new life as a musician. The machine came down. Tony's right hand was underneath it. The press severed the tips of his middle and ring fingers on his right hand—his fretting hand. Blood everywhere. Bone exposed. The fingertips were gone. Crushed beyond repair. When Tony woke up after surgery, heavily bandaged, the first thing he thought about wasn't the pain. It was his guitar. And the second thought: My life is over. For a guitarist, losing fingertips on your fretting hand is catastrophic. Those are the fingers that press down on strings, that create chords, that make music possible. Without fingertips, you have no sensitivity. No control. No ability to feel where the strings are. Tony's factory foreman visited him in the hospital. "Look on the bright side," the foreman said. "At least you weren't going to make a living with your hands anyway. "Tony stared at him. "I'm a guitarist. "The foreman went pale. "Oh. Well... I suppose you'll have to find something else to do. "Tony went home to his parents' house, his hand wrapped in bandages, his dreams destroyed. He was seventeen