BLACK SABBATH bassist Geezer Butler, who took on the role of the band’s primary lyricist from its inception, told Goldmine in a new interview that he had no qualms about letting Ronnie James Dio take over in that department once the singer joined SABBATH in 1979. “Oh, I was just really glad to have somebody else do the lyrics,” Geezer said. “I heard Ronnie‘s lyrics, and it’s nothing like I’d write. I felt like I’d come to the end of my lyrics, on the ‘Never Say Die’ album. I just had nothing else to write about. So it was an incredible relief to have somebody come in and do that. His stuff, I think it’s more fantasy and dragons and all that kind of stuff. Mine was more a lot of politics and everyday occurrences, while his were more surreal and out-of-this-world kind of thing. When it came to the second album, the only thing that was said to him was, like, no rainbows and no dragons. [Laughs] That was it. He got the message and did what he did.”
A founding member of BLACK SABBATH, Butler is also the lyricist of such SABBATH classics as “War Pigs”, “Iron Man”, “Paranoid” and others.
Butler, singer Ozzy Osbourne and guitarist Tony Iommi reunited in late 2011 and released a comeback album, “13”, in June 2013.
In February 2017, SABBATH finished “The End” tour in Birmingham, closing out the quartet’s groundbreaking 49-year career.
“The End” was SABBATH‘s last tour because Iommi, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2012 and is currently in remission, can no longer travel for extended amounts of time.
Two months ago, Butler confirmed to Cleveland.com that he is writing a memoir. “I started out because when my parents died, I always wished I’d asked them a lot more things than I knew about,” he explained. “I don’t really know much about my mum and dad, ’cause they were always just there. So, I started writing a memoir for my grandkids to read, and that’s been fun going through stuff — old times and growing up in Birmingham and all that. I’m right in the middle of doing that at the moment.”
Last fall, Butler told Australia’s Wall Of Sound that his book would be “about growing up in Aston, Birmingham and how SABBATH came about.” The 71-year-old also reflected on everything he has achieved in this past half a century, saying: “It’s a great achievement to still be relevant 50 years after we recorded our first two albums. We honestly thought we’d last a few years, then be forgotten about. Fifty years ago any form of popular music was seen as a passing fad — people even thought THE BEATLES would be forgotten about after they broke up, but nobody then [realized] how powerful the nostalgia effect would be.”
