Baroness’ John Baizley: Sabbath Taught Me the Power of the Riff

On May 7, Baroness kick off a tour celebrating their first two records, 2007’s Red Album and 2009’s Blue Record. Ahead of the Red and Blue Tour, frontman John Baizley joined Loudwire Nights on Tuesday (April 29) to talk about it.

Listen to the full conversation in the player near the end of this article.

“It became obvious that we could take this thing out and tour with it,” Baizley told host Chuck Armstrong about Baroness’ perspective on the tour following two sold-out shows in Philadelphia where they played both albums in full.

“It was just a matter of figuring out exactly how we wanted to present it. We had talked about certain ideas, doing focused markets and making the shows sort of a big, grandiose deal where we do Chicago, L.A., New York, Austin, something like that.”

What Baroness ended up deciding, though, was to scale back production and venue size and focus on making the Red and Blue Tour an intimate experience for their fans, similar to the shows they played in their early days.

“It seemed like it would be kind of a cool thing to do in the spirit of those tours — in other words, play in venues that we maybe had played during that era of the band or venues that we would have played in 2007-2009.”

As Baizley explained that, he admitted there is something nostalgic to getting ready to hit the road to celebrate Baroness’ first records in small spaces.

“When we were touring, that’s how the crowd always was,” he shared.

“The crowd was always a foot-and-a-half away from me and there was this very deep sort of personal connection that we as a band had with our audience through those years.”

How Black Sabbath Changed Everything For John Baizley

In addition to discussing the’ tour, Baizley shared a bit about his respect for a band that often gets compared to Baroness: Black Sabbath.

“I grew up in a very rural community and I say that just to explain the fact that where I grew up was very, very much like deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains,” Baizley said.

“We weren’t part of the national touring circuit so we didn’t get a whole lot of live music and we certainly didn’t get a whole lot of contemporary live music anywhere near us when we were growing up.”

One of the ways Baizley was exposed to music, though, came through record collections of his friends’ parents. Namely, his friend Mike who he played drums with, had a dad who gave Baizley guitar lessons when he was young.

“[He] was the only guy I ever really took guitar lessons from,” he said.

“One of the first things that he taught me was the riff from ‘Paranoid’ because that was an important riff to Steve when he was younger and it also sort of spoke to my generation of kids. We were of the generation that had Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden … Any of those bands that had just an ounce of heaviness…that was all coming from Sabbath.”

Baizley said he spent a lot of time with LPs and cassettes when he was growing up and it was Black Sabbath’s first two records that really impacted him.

“I thought they were great because — and I think it’s hard to understate how important this was — you could listen to the riff and as a young musician, you could sort of figure it out,” he recalled.

“You didn’t need to be shown. Steve kind of got my foot in the door. Here’s ‘Paranoid.’ But then after that, ‘Iron Man’ and so many of those songs were songs that you could apply the sort of Beavis and Butthead idea to, which is that I can sing the riff.”

READ MORE: Maynard James Keenan Says ‘The Reason I’m On a Stage At All Is Because of Black Sabbath’s First Album’

And for Baizley, it’s all about the riff.

“I [might] think it’s a great riff, but more importantly, my brain, my heart and my hands could connect those riffs,” he said.

“Sabbath said to me, you can write music like it’s not inaccessible … You can play this. That was the big lesson I learned from Sabbath and from Nirvana, that I could play music. Once I realized that, it was no turning back. It’s hard to understate how important Sabbath is to riff-based guitar music.”

What Else Did Baroness’ John Baizley Discuss on Loudwire Nights?

• What’s on the horizon for the band: “Before we had decided to book the Red and Blue Tour this year, this year was meant to be entirely a year of writing, so it’s just a matter of now finding some time after this tour to get the next thing started.”
• Why he thinks the Red and Blue Tour will help Baroness write their next album: “I think being very well versed in Red and Blue and then coming straight off tour and then writing something new is going to lend a little bit of flavor, a little bit or direction.”
• Why he liked creating Baroness’ 2023 album, Stone, without a producer: “It gives us perspective and it gives us this sort of attitude…to create as a DIY band feels exhilarating and every failure has no one to blame but itself … If the intention of your band is to create and to be artistic and to only be bound by the confines of your own imagination, then acting independently just helps us confidently say this is who we are.”

Listen to the Full Interview in the Podcast Player Below

John Baizley joined Loudwire Nights on Tuesday, April 29; the show replays online here, and you can tune in live every weeknight at 7PM ET or on the Loudwire app; you can also see if the show is available on your local radio station and listen to interviews on-demand.