During a recent appearance on the Lipps Service With Scott Lipps podcast, Kerry King revealed his 5 favorite guitarists with a twist.
“I would have a hard time numbering them, but I can come up with five,” the guitarist said before giving the names. “[Deep Purple and Rainbow’s Ritchie] Blackmore, [Black Sabbath’s] Tony Iommi, [Van Halen’s] Eddie Van Halen, without question.”
King added, “Probably my favorite one all time is [Judas Priest’s] Glenn Tipton. And I think he’s the most overlooked. ‘Cause if you look at the leads he was doing and when he was doing ’em, he kind of innovated a lot of that stuff.”
“Okay, so who’s five? I’ll go with a super-heavy hitter that’s my bro and say [Pantera and Ozzy Osbourne guitarist and Black Label Society frontman] Zakk Wylde,” the musician lastly picked.
King previously spoke to Rolling Stone about Ritchie Blackmore and Deep Purple’s impact, explaining, “As for Blackmore, I love Deep Purple and I love Rainbow until Dio left and he really started trying to go the pop route with Graham Bonnet and Joe Lynn Turner. I would credit his work in Deep Purple as an influence on thrash.”
He continued, “If I [was to pick my favorite Deep Purple album], I probably would have gone with [1972’s] ‘Machine Head.’ On ‘Highway Star,’ it seemed like Ritchie was more interested in playing faster rhythms than Sabbath.”
“It took Sabbath quite a while to get anywhere remotely fast. I would say that happened probably in the Dio era with like ‘Neon Knights’ and stuff like that; that’s thrashy to me, but Blackmore was way before that,” Kerry also noted.
King also presented Tony Iommi at the Classic Rock Awards in 2006. “And I was presenting Tony with an award, and I was nervous as f*cking all hell. I was out of my environment. I’ve done metal shows, I’ve done the [Revolver] Golden Gods billions of fucking times, but at the Classic Rock Awards, I was out of my element,” the guitarist told Metal Hammer Greece’s TV show ‘TV War.’
“I’ve had a lot of heroes, be it from [Judas] Priest to Sabbath and whoever the hell, [Deep Purple’s] Ritchie Blackmore. But, yeah, Tony was the one. I had to climb that mountain and get over it,” he stated.
After touring with Lamb of God and Mastodon, King and his new band will start a 28-date North American tour in early 2025. Municipal Waste and Alien Weaponry will join as special guests. The tour begins in San Francisco on January 15 and ends in Las Vegas on February 22.
