Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler: “We used to have bucketloads of cocaine”
Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler also reflected on the band’s Ronnie James Dio era and talked about the hardship they went through while replacing Ozzy Osbourne.
Geezer Butler talked about the old days in an interview with Cleveland. In the interview, he reflected on many things like replacing Osbourne, Black Sabbath’s impossibility to do more tours, and the band having bucketloads of cocaine. Butler also told an odd story of the band with cops while they were living together.
Geezer Butler talking about Ozzy Osbourne’s dramatic absence:
“Yeah, having to replace Ozzy was a massive task. But the songs were so good, even though Ozzy didn’t like them, and the record company loved it.
Tony met at a party and invited him over for a jam — nothing to do with Sabbath at that time, just a jam. We tried the songs again with Ronnie and he did an incredible job on them.
The manager at the time didn’t want Ronnie in the band — he said he was too little! He used to call him “the dwarf” and all this stuff. And we said, “That’s ridiculous. He’s got a great voice, his songwriting’s brilliant, he’s doing great with the band and that’s it. We’re keeping him.”
Butler on what Dio brought to Black Sabbath except for his voice:
“He brought massive enthusiasm back to the band. We were on our last legs kind of thing after Ozzy went. We were almost thinking about breaking up.
But Ronnie brought incredible enthusiasm with him. He could play guitar and bass and put over his ideas instrumentally as well as vocally. He was brilliant to write with, too.”
Black Sabbath bassist Butler telling a drug story from while the band was living together:
“It was mental. Completely mental! We used to have bucketloads of cocaine there, and we had this big bowl in the middle of the table, full of cocaine.
One day Ozzy noticed this button below one of the windows; He kept pressing it, “I wonder what this does?” The next thing, the police turned up — it was a panic button. And there was us with this great big bowl of cocaine in the middle. So, we dumped all the cocaine down the toilet and ran upstairs to get rid of our own stashes. The coppers went, “What’s the problem?” “Oh, nothing…” “OK, see ya…” And we’d dumped about five grams of cocaine down the bog!”
“It’s definitely the end for us”, said the bassist of Black Sabbath, when asked about whether they think of touring again
“Nope, definitely not. We went out on top — why ruin it? We’re all old — really old. I don’t think we could last a tour these days.
Tony has had his cancer; He’s in remission but he doesn’t want to chance going out on the road. God knows what Ozzy’s doing. He was waiting to do his final tour for the past three years. I don’t know if he’ll ever go out on the road again.
So no, Sabbath, it’s definitely the end for us.”
