Get To Know: Rock Gods!

It's time for us to learn again. This time we're dipping into the great Black Sabbath and the guiding voice of early (pre-Dio) Black Sabbath. No not him, but his childhood friend, the true ruler of Black Sabbath, 'Geezer' Butler.

First of all, Geezer's not his real name. It's what is called a nickname. But, it's a pretty cool one. Geezer. Geezer rocks!

Look at that picture. Doesn't he kind of look like Derek Smalls from Spinal Tap? Wouldn't be surprised if he was the visual inspiration for the character. He looked even more like Smalls back in the day, but this was the best pic I could find.

Geezer was the bassist for Black Sabbath. Not only that, he wrote most of the lyrics. All you fools who thought that Ozzy was the be all end all were wrong! Geezer's the man with the occult fetish. He wrote the song 'Black Sabbath' that the band named themselves for!

He has one of the best pedigree's that any metal musician could hope for. He is, are you ready for this?, the seventh son of a seventh son! Yeah, pretty cool right? But check this: he was also born on July 17, '49. That's 7/17/7x7. Holy shit! That's a lot of sevens! Are your minds' blown? Mine is! Did I mention his name is Geezer?

Geezer also did strange, unnatural things with his bass. First, he wah-wah'd it. Pretty original for a bassist at the time. Then he dropped the tuning. The damn thing just wasn't low enough for him! "How low can I go?" is what he used to say!*

Geezer also had the foresight to kick out his good friend Ozzy when the man was just too loaded to be profitable anymore and brought in Dio. And, you know what, I think he was holding back on those Ozzy songs, cause I think he rocked even harder with Dio!**

Geezer is also a vegan proving to one and all that you don't have to eat meat or drink milk to rock hard!***

In preparing this post, I came across this quote from our man Geez,

"I thought that Dehumanizer was a particularly brutal**** album, because Ronnie came in. You see, Tony wouldn't do any of the stuff that I was writing, but Ronnie came in and listened to all of the stuff I was doing and he insisted on doing my stuff as well as Tony's stuff. It was like a breakthrough! Then Cross Purposes came and Tony Martin (current Sabbath vocalist) - who hates all heavy music - came in and said, 'you can't do that, it sounds like Pantera!'"

See how great and egalitarian Dio is. He's like Solomon! "You two are fighting over whose songs we do, we'll do them all! And they'll rock!" Plus, Dio ruined Geezer for any other singer that came after him! Ruined him so much, they're currently out touring again! Take that Ozzy!

*Not really. I just made that up.
**Never Say Die! any one?
***It helps though.
**** In a good way.