He's the founding member, bassist, and primary lyricist of one of rock's most influential bands. Now, Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler has just dropped a memoir spilling all the tea of how it really went down. Into the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath--And Beyond follows the band's early inception as a scrappy blues quartet through the struggles that led to the many lineup changes while touring around London's gritty clubs (Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and The Who). The memoir also details the creation of their unique and iconic heavy riffs, tuned-down guitars, and apocalyptic lyrics that helped create the genre of heavy metal as we know it--to commercial success, leading to more than 70 million record sales worldwide without ever losing their cool. LifeMinute editor-in-chief Joann Butler sat down with Geezer to talk all about it and more. This is a LifeMinute with Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler.
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00:00Hi, I'm Geezer Butler and you're watching Life Minute TV.
00:07He's the founding member, bassist and primary lyricist of one of rock's most influential bands.
00:14Now Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler has just dropped a memoir spilling all the tea of how it really
00:19went down. From the band's early inception as a scrappy blues quartet, to their many lineup
00:25changes, to the creation of a unique and iconic sound that helped create the genre of heavy metal
00:30as we know it. And of course a commercial success that led to more than 70 million record sales
00:35worldwide, all without ever losing its cool. This is a Life Minute with Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler.
00:43It's about growing up. It starts off about being born in Aston. I think it was about four years
00:50after World War II finished and I was born in 1949, so everything around me was still like
00:57bombed out rubble. So basically it's about childhood and then education and then meeting
01:04the rest of the guys in the band who all lived just around the corner from where I was
01:09and so on and so forth. Ozzy and Tony had written their books like years ago and I'd never seemed to
01:16had time or inclination to do my book. When the pandemic hit I was stuck at home for like nine
01:23months with absolutely nothing to do. I couldn't go out anywhere so I thought I'm gonna write a
01:28memoir for my grandkids so they know something about me because the one thing I've always wished
01:34was if I'd have asked my parents about their lives. It wasn't until much later after they'd passed away
01:39that I thought, oh I wonder what they did so and so, I wonder how they met and where they went to
01:45and all that kind of stuff. So I thought I'm gonna write everything about like childhood and
01:51how the band formed just for so my grandkids could read about my life. My wife read it and she said,
01:58oh you should do this as a book and expand it. So I still had another six months stuck at home
02:05so I just carried on writing.
02:14Did you always know you wanted to be a musician? When I saw the Beatles that's what made me want
02:19to do it because Liverpool wasn't far away from where I was born, Birmingham. Liverpool was like
02:2590 miles away and they were the very first band that actually weren't ashamed of their local
02:32accents. So when they were on TV they were talking in the Liverpool accent because up until then all
02:38the English and British rockers were all trying to sound American and it just really inspired me
02:43thinking that you know I'm working class same as them, I can do this and I thought music that's
02:50what I want to do and so my brother bought me a guitar and it only had two strings so I started
02:57learning all the Beatles melodies on the two strings and that's what started mouth. What about
03:03writing did you always know you were a writer? I was good at English language and English literature
03:08at school I was particularly good at it always used to come top of the class you know my essays
03:14and stuff like that that I'd write. The things I'd write about were always different to what all the
03:19rest of the kids would write about so the teachers used to like me because I was so original and it
03:25was what I suppose it was in my blood really. What inspires the lyrics that you wrote? Just life
03:31everything that was happening to me and to the world at the time. We'd been brought up in like
03:37just after World War II in a lot of poverty and stuff and I knew what war could do to people.
03:42My brothers were in the army, had gone into the army. My dad was in the army for 12 years. I was
03:49totally against anything to do with war. I thought that England was going to get dragged into the
03:54Vietnam War so I wrote about that because I met a lot of American soldiers because we used to play
04:01American army bases in Europe and I used to talk to the soldiers who had just come back from Vietnam
04:07and they were on the way back home to USA and they used to tell me all these horror stories
04:12about what they'd seen in Vietnam so I wrote about that in War Pigs and I wrote a lot about religion
04:20because I was brought up a very very strict Catholic. The one thing I didn't want to do is
04:25copy everybody else and sing about I've just finished with me. I've just met a lovely girl
04:31and that kind of stuff and I fell in love and you know the usual pop stuff at the time and I
04:37didn't want I wanted to avoid all that and write about reality. Tell us how did Black Sabbath come
04:43to be? How did you all meet? Me and Ozzy were in a band called The Rare Breed and that band split up
04:51and Ozzy had gone to school with Tony Iommi the guitarist and we were looking for a drummer at
04:57the time. Ozzy said let's go around to Tony's house. I think he knows a drummer and we went
05:03around to Tony's house and Bill Ward the drummer was actually at Tony's house that day and we asked
05:09Bill if he wanted to if he was interested in joining a band and he says yeah as long as
05:16Tony comes with me. So we went okay yeah that sounds good. Bill Ward came up with the name Earth and we
05:22were a 12 bar blues band. We used to play at all the blues clubs mainly around the midlands of
05:28England and up north and in Scotland. We built up a big reputation anywhere up north but not so
05:37much in London because London was a bit too snobby for us and then one day we played this gig
05:43still called Earth. We were playing away and we noticed all these people coming in in long dresses
05:48and suits and everything. We thought this is a strange crowd for us. We started playing and
05:55this guy came up and said no no no stop playing play what you usually play and we're going
06:00this is what we usually play and he says we'll play you play the single that's in the charts and
06:06we went what are you talking about we haven't got a single out and it was another Earth and they
06:12were like out in our pop band and so we said well we've got to come up with a new name and and I
06:18said how about calling it Black Sabbath. The second song that we'd written I called it Black Sabbath
06:24so I said let's call the band after that song that we just wrote Black Sabbath and so that's
06:30that's the way it all formed. The rest is history. How did the heavy come in? How did it get heavy?
06:36Tony Iommi said we've got to start coming out with our own original songs if we want to get
06:43anywhere. We all went back to Birmingham and I was playing the Holtz Planet suite at the time on my
06:50bass and Tony says oh that sounds good and he went down down down which is the first chords of Black Sabbath
06:58and we went that sounds great and that's sort of paved the way for the way we wrote songs.
07:04So it was mainly Tony that would come up with the riffs and stuff and then I'd come up with the
07:08lyrics and then then Ozzy would come up with a vocal line he'd come up with a vocal melody
07:15and then I'd write the lyrics to his vocal melody.
07:23So you said you didn't think of yourself as a heavy metal band so what did you think you were?
07:28There was no such thing at the time as heavy metal music it was just hard rock so we just
07:34assumed that we were a hard rock band. The first time I heard the phrase heavy metal was when we'd
07:40played somewhere in America and we had this terrible review the next day from the gig
07:46and the guy said I think it was some old guy had come to the concert to review us some obscure
07:54local newspaper and he said this isn't music it just sounds like a load of old heavy metal being
08:00smashed together and we took it as an insult but somehow that got back to England and the
08:06music papers in England started calling us a heavy metal band. I think it was a bit of an insult at
08:12first but then it just stuck, stuck to the genre of music. Amazing. When did you guys know like
08:19wow this is something special? When we first wrote the Black Sabbath, the first song
08:25and we used to play this blues club called the Pokey Hole Blues Club near where we lived
08:32in Litchfield and we were sort of regular there. We played there like probably every other Friday
08:38night and we'd just be playing like 12 bar blues stuff and this one night people were just like
08:46totally ignoring us just standing at the bar having a drink and talking amongst themselves
08:52and we said let's play that song that we wrote today and we played the song Black Sabbath and
08:58the whole place just went absolutely crazy and we realised then that we were onto something good
09:07and that gave us the confidence to carry on writing our own stuff. What's your favourite
09:12Sabbath song? Oh god, it depends what mood I'm in. Sometimes I like War Pigs.
09:24Then I like National Acrobat.
09:34Or Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
09:37It depends what mood I'm in. Not that I play it every day.
09:44Yeah do you ever get sick of them? I don't play them until it's time to go on tour then I have
09:49to remember try and remember what I played. You said in your book you thought some of the
09:53songs were cringy. Which ones did you think were cringy? One called that I wrote called Gypsy.
10:07Why is it cringy? Maybe because I wrote it and I hate listening to the stuff that I've written.
10:14Just the whole thing about it is just I don't know it's weird. Did the lyrics just come to you?
10:20In the old days yeah but when we did the last album 13 it was like pulling my hair out trying
10:25to think of something because you know when you're successful and you got out of the
10:30swimming pool out the back and everything and it's hard to get inspired by things. A lot of the
10:38stuff was misinterpreted I think just because of the name of the band Black Sabbath. The song
10:44After Forever was purely it's like the most Christian thing you could ever listen to.
10:55It's about losing your faith. People think that they've lost the faith and then on the deathbed
11:01what are they going to do on the deathbed? Are they going to get the faith?
11:04Suddenly believing in the whole thing again or not and the song Black Sabbath was against because
11:11there was a big black magic thing going on in England at the end of the 60s. Everybody was
11:17getting into black magic and satanism and all that kind of stuff. So the song Black Sabbath
11:23was actually warning people about getting into black magic and satanism and nobody really cared
11:29about it in Europe and England. So when I got to America I couldn't believe that how big
11:35Christianity still was and all these people that were trying to turn pro-Christianity lyrics.
11:43They were trying to make it against us and they completely misinterpreted us.
11:48In the summer of 77 you were fired and rehired. What was that all about?
11:53I have no idea because everybody was totally out of their brains all the time. We'd sold
11:59millions and millions of albums, sold out thousands of gigs and stuff like that around
12:06the world. We still hardly had any money to show for it and we'd sort of been realized that we were
12:12being ripped off by the management. I think that people just wanted a scapegoat for the whole thing.
12:18It just happened to be me at the time. Bill Ward came to the house and says oh by the way
12:22you're fired. I said oh thanks very much. Why? He said you don't seem into it anymore. I was
12:28actually relieved because we were under so much pressure at the time. Probably the best two weeks
12:35that I've had for three years because I could just relax and not think about the business or
12:40getting albums together or anything like that. Then about two or three weeks later Bill calls
12:47me up and says where are you? I said what do you mean where am I? He said we've just been here
12:51rehearsing. I said I thought I was fired. What do you mean fired? You told me I was fired
12:58from the band. Oh yeah I forgot about that. So I went down to rehearse. Nobody said anything about it.
13:05Just carried on as normal. Think there'll ever be a reunion? I very much doubt it. Maybe a one-off show.
13:12Ozzy was talking to me about when he does his farewell concert which he still wants to do.
13:18He's dying to still get out there and play and he suggested at his very final concert for the
13:26four of us to get up on stage and maybe do three or four songs together and then that would be it
13:32finished. But definitely no more tours. It'd be just like a one-off thing. What were some of your
13:37favorites to tour with? Van Halen were good. We got on great with them. We used to have
13:45parties like you wouldn't believe every night because Van Halen at the time they were like a
13:50big MTV band. So they used to attract tons of women and Sabbath never did. But Van Halen
13:59when they went on there'd be like half the audience would be girls and so you can imagine what the
14:05parties were like after every night. What about Eddie Van Halen's playing? Fantastic. He was so
14:12humble as well. He used to come into our dressing room every night. Thanks for having us on tour and
14:17everything. He was such a nice guy and we maintained, especially Tony maintained friendships with him
14:24until he passed away. When Van Halen were playing in England, Eddie came down to our rehearsals
14:31and helped write one of the songs that was on an album. But we couldn't say that he
14:36was half the composer because of publishing commitments and stuff. So yeah, he was a great guy.
14:51To so many, you are the godfather of bass. Any bassists you think are really good today?
14:57Oh, there's tons of them. I mean, some of the guys on YouTube, I had to switch them off because
15:03it's like, what? How the hell does he do that? But I still love bass players like Jack Bruce,
15:10Paul McCartney. And with the bass, you just picked that up and started playing it too,
15:15right? You just went right from the guitar to the bass. Yeah, it was almost like, this is what I've
15:20always been meant to do. I just fitted in, picked it up, fitted in straight away. I think because
15:27we were a 12-bar blues band, it helped. You just played the same thing over and over.
15:33Who were your other influences?
15:34One of my big influences was Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. His lyrics were absolutely
15:41out of this world. Hendrix, Taste, Rory Gallagher. Gosh, so many.
15:47Anything you would have done differently? What would your current self say to your younger self?
15:51To get an accountant and to get a lawyer before signing your own contracts, which is what we did.
16:00We forged our own signatures in the old days and we heavily paid for it. We didn't see any money
16:06until the end of the 70s. I mean, obviously, we had a good lifestyle. The management certainly
16:15did well out of it. And you guys still hang out, right? You still see Ozzy and the guys
16:20or the other guys too?
16:22Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what Bill does. He's not on the internet. I hate using the
16:28telephone. Me and Ozzy are in touch with each other every week. I occasionally email Tony or
16:35he emails me.
16:36That's nice. And I thought it was funny. You said you guys are ruled by your wives. And you guys
16:41have been married so long, you and Gloria. It's such a beautiful testament. How do you manage that?
16:46I think just not trying to control each other. Although she does control me, but there's no
16:51control in her. She does whatever she wants to do. But I don't know. It's a good, great
16:57relationship.
16:58What does music do for people?
17:00For me, it calms me down. And I love old 60s stuff. I'm so nostalgic about music. I mean,
17:08I've just been on a road trip up through Montana, up to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone.
17:15I always have like my old nostalgic records to play, so-called records, songs to play.
17:23And you have a beautiful real name, Terrence Michael Joseph. Where did the name Geezer come
17:28from?
17:30From school. My eldest brother was in the army with a lot of Cockney people from London.
17:38Londoners call everybody Geezer. All right, Geezer, how are you, Geezer? And all that kind
17:42of thing. And my brother used to, when he came home on leave, he'd call everybody a
17:48Geezer because he picked it up from these Londoners. So then I do, because he was like
17:53my big brother and my hero kind of thing. I used to start talking like him. So when I
17:58was at school, I'd go, all right, Geezer, how are you, Geezer? Like at school. And then
18:03I got cursed with the name. And it's stuck ever since.
18:09Did your parents see you become famous?
18:11Yeah, yeah. They never thought that I would, obviously. They always thought that I was,
18:16because I was the first one in the family to get like an office job, which was like
18:21a step up from everybody else. And I started learning to be an accountant of all things.
18:29And to them, being an accountant was like, yes, that's a great thing. That's a lifelong
18:35thing that you can have. You're going to earn good money and all that. And then I got fired
18:40from my job for never turning up. So then when I said I'm going to do music full time,
18:45they were like, what? They just thought I was a lunatic. And that's when I left home.
18:52I couldn't stay in the same place as my dad because he thought I was a disgrace to the
18:58family for not having a proper job. And so I left home. And they still didn't believe
19:05me until the first album actually went into the charts. And I actually took the record
19:10to show them. And they finally believed that I was doing something right. They didn't really
19:16believe it until my dad came down to London to see Sabbath at the Festival Hall in London,
19:23which is like the most prestigious place you could ever play in England. He actually went
19:28to that show. Then he started believing that I was going to do something with music.
19:33So did he say, Okay, I'm glad you did that.
19:38But it never ever take one penny off me. I used to try and buy them stuff.
19:44And this one time I went, and I said, Okay, I'm gonna buy you a new house,
19:49trying to get them away from because I was still in living in the same place that I
19:54was born in. And it wasn't the greatest place on earth. And my dad went absolutely nuts. What
20:01this place isn't good enough for you anymore. No, I didn't mean it like I just wanted to do
20:05something for Well, I'm the father I do or, you know, if I want a new house, I'll provide my own
20:13stuff. Oh, proud. Proud of you, too. What's your biggest life lesson? Believe in yourself,
20:25I suppose, because we got told so many times that we would never do anything with our lives.
20:34We got turned down by six record companies before we got signed by the seventh one,
20:40got slagged in the press when we finally did do an album got slagged off in the more
20:46think that our album got more slagging than any other album in history. But we believed in what
20:52we were doing. And our fans believed in us. And I think that's why the fans stuck with us
20:58for so many years, because it was like, it was like a family. We were the only ones that believed
21:03in our music. Do you play a lot still? Do you just pick up the guitar and start doodling on things?
21:09Not as much as I should. I still Yeah, because I'm a collector as well. I still collect guitars
21:16and basses and stuff. And I've got a new bass coming out that Lakeland are putting out a new
21:23signature bass. To be honest, I never ever rated myself as a bass player because I've never had
21:29lessons. I couldn't read music. And I just did what I thought was, you know, was appropriate
21:34for each song. And then when people started saying, Oh, yeah, he's a great bass player. What?
21:40I've always thought I'm very an average bass player. And I probably am compared with bass
21:45players these days because they're like some of them are so technical. Do what's natural to you.
21:50And I've tried to do go do things that I just can't do. I start with the stuff that I know that
21:56I can do properly. You know, you try to do other like thumb bass and stuff like that. It's not
22:01my natural thing to do. So just stick with what I'm good at, I suppose. What do you think you're
22:08good at? Playing bass, writing lyrics, going on road trips, reading books. I'm addicted to
22:16reading books at the moment. Well, you're awesome. You're amazing. Thank you so much for your many,
22:21many gifts. To hear more of this interview, visit our podcast Life Minute TV on iTunes
22:27and all streaming podcast platforms. Transcribed by https://otter.ai