Geezer Butler: "We thought it was going to be the end of the band"

Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler talked about Dio’s addition to the band and the general sentiment of his band around that time.

While he speaking in The Eddie Trunk Podcast, Black Sabbath‘s bassist talked about when Ozzy left Black Sabbath, also mentioning his own reason to leave the band. He mentioned what was going on when he rejoined and named a song on the album ‘Heaven and Hell’ that he did not like. Butler also named his favorite song on that album, also explaining why. Here’s what Geezer Butler had to say.

Butler on Ozzy Osbourne leaving Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath apparently thought they were going to end, but that was before Dio joined them.

“Well, we started off, with Ozzy in the band, we were in Los Angeles, and Tony and me and Bill were coming up with a lot of music, and Ozzy just didn’t seem to be interested in anything we were coming up with.

And eventually, Ozzy left the band. And it was either call-it-a-day time or – Tony said that he’d met this guy called Ronnie James Dio, which sang with Ritchie Blackmore in Rainbow, and we were inviting him up to see if he could do anything with the music that we’d written so far. And Ronnie came up, and he was really, really enthusiastic, which is what we all needed because we thought it was going to be the end of the band.

Ronnie came in, sang to the three music ideas that we had. I think it was first on ‘Children of the Sea,’ and he sang it great, and I think ‘Walk Away,’ or something like that.”

Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler talks about the reason for his brief absence

Revealing why he had to leave the band briefly, Butler praised the songs that were written while he was away.

“I had to leave the band because I was having divorce problems back in England, so I left for a while. And meanwhile, they’d written the song ‘Heaven and Hell’ and ‘Die Young,’ and I came back, and I heard ‘Heaven and Hell’ and ‘Die Young’ for the first time as a fan would hear it, and I was just absolutely blown away with it. And the rest is history. ”

Geezer Butler’s favorite tracks on ‘Heaven and Hell’

The bassist apparently likes ‘Heaven and Hell’ because of its riff, especially while performing it live.

I love playing ‘Heaven and Hell,’ it’s a great song to play live because you can extend it for as long as you want it to and have a really good jam on it when we’re doing it live. I think ‘Children of the Sea’ is one of my favorites, and ‘Neon Knights.'”

Butler’s least favorite song on that album

Geezer Butler just said the name of his least favorite song, without elaborating why.

“‘Walk Away.'”

What was already done when Butler rejoined the band?

“Everything was recorded except ‘Neon Knights,’ that had yet to be written. And I came back, and I already knew three of the songs anyway that were written before I’d left.”

“So it’s just ‘Heaven and Hell’ and ‘Die Young’ I hadn’t really had any part of, and I just listened to them without any bass on and then put my bass to them all, and then we wrote ‘Neon Knights’ in Paris.”