The Black Sabbath bassist and lyricist shares his fondest memories of the iconic frontman, their unlikely first encounter, and his one regret about Back to the Beginning
(L-R): Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Bill Ward and Ozzy Osbourne in the 1970s(Image credit:
When Black Sabbath founder Geezer Butler thinks about his old friend and bandmate, Ozzy Osbourne, he doesn’t mince words: “I’ll remember him as a very dear friend and a true genius.”
Butler and Osbourne first joined forces back in 1968 and were known to be particularly close – perhaps the inevitable result of the tight relationship between the group’s vocalist and chief lyricist.
The Sabbath bassist admits that since the finish of Sabbath’s The End tour in 2017, he and Ozzy hadn’t done a very good job of keeping in touch. But that didn’t sour things, and Butler regrouped with Ozzy, Iommi and Ward to shake the world one last time on July 5, 2025, in Birmingham, for the triumphant Back to the Beginning show.
“We’ve been through too much together to let things get in the way of our friendship,” Butler says of Ozzy. Instead, he notes his main lament about Sabbath’s final bow is more poignant.
“My only regret is not saying goodbye to his face after the show,” Butler explains. “Because it was absolute chaos backstage, and I obviously didn’t think I wouldn’t see him again.”
While the writing was surely on the wall, the Prince of Darkness had always been bulletproof. Ozzy had to go sometime, but we all collectively hoped that it wouldn’t be so soon.
Of course, the universe had other plans and Osbourne passed away on July 22 – “with his family surrounded by love” – just weeks after the show.
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Butler takes solace in the fact that Ozzy got to do what he loved one last time – and made a difference in the process.
“The courage he had to do that was mind-blowing,” Butler says. “To do that one final time, for the fans and for the charities, when he was so, so ill, was incredible.”
Now, speaking to Guitar World following Osbourne’s death, Butler shares some of his most treasured memories of the Prince of Darkness and the legacy they created together as Black Sabbath.
What are your memories of first meeting Ozzy?
“The very first actual meeting – I’d seen him around Aston occasionally – was when he came around to my house in response to his ‘Ozzy Zig wants a gig’ ad, which he had in the local music store. His house was three or four streets away from mine, and I had earlier gone to his house in response to his ad to see if he would join my band.
“His sister, Jill, answered the door and said he isn’t in, but she would give him my message. Later that evening, there was a knock at the front door, and my brother Jimmy answered it and told me there was ‘something’ asking for me.
“I said, ‘What do you mean by “something”?’ and he said, ‘You’ll see.’ Ozzy was standing there with his dad’s brown work gown on, a chimney brush over his shoulder, a shoe on a dog leash, bare feet, and a skinhead haircut.
“When I stopped laughing, I told him what kind of music we were doing, and he said, ‘Okay,’ and that was that. So yes, I could definitely see he was special.”
Before Black Sabbath, the band was known as Earth. What were your early rehearsals like?
“As Earth, we did mostly blues songs, Cream, John Mayall, that kind of thing. There were tons of ‘blues’ bands around at the time, so we knew that to get a record deal, we needed to write our own material. We rehearsed at the local community centre in Aston from 9:00am to 12:00pm.
“I had always wanted to call the band Black Sabbath after the Boris Karloff horror film, so when we wrote the first doomy song, I called it Black Sabbath, and the rest of the band thought it a good name to have when we had to change the name from Earth.”
Can you recall the first songs you wrote?
“The very first song we wrote was Wicked World. I think Ozzy wrote those lyrics in response to the turmoil going on around that time, particularly the threat of nuclear war and the Vietnam War.
“Most of the first album [Black Sabbath] was written from jamming, when we had to do seven or eight, 45-minute sets in places like the Star Club in Hamburg, and the Hirschen Club in Zurich.”
Black Sabbath – WICKED WORLD (Studio Recording/February 2017
Did you have an awareness that at some point that the music you were making would change the world?
“No, we were not aware of the influence and longevity of the music we were making, especially as the music press hated us. It took seven auditions for various record companies to get a recording deal, and then only because one of the bands Vertigo [Records] had signed had suddenly split up. We just thought we’d try to keep going until we had to get ‘proper jobs’.”
You and Ozzy were particularly close. What was it like writing songs with him?
“He would always come up with great vocal lines. He had this incredible talent of being able to immediately come up with the right vocal lines to the riffs. He didn’t particularly like writing lyrics, so I had to write them, but he would immediately adapt them to his melodies, with a few adjustments here and there. Genius!”
What do you feel was Ozzy’s defining moment as a vocalist from Sabbath’s ’70s heyday?
“He had several defining moments as a vocalist. From the doom and venom that he could put into songs like War Pigs and Hand of Doom, to the soaring vocals on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and The Writ.
“And then, there’s the heartfelt softness of Changes, he could do it all. I think the way he made the lyrics I wrote for him sound like they came from his soul was absolutely remarkable.”
When you think back to those days, what sticks in your mind?
“The fun we’d have. Ozzy would go to any lengths to make us laugh. We were like hooligans on tour, four working-class blokes from one of the most deprived areas of Birmingham, who were let loose on the world. Unfortunately, the drugs and the business side of things wore us down.
“We weren’t businessmen, never pretended to be, but the constant touring and the realization that we weren’t seeing much of the money made us feel like puppets dangled by a greedy management. It particularly hit Ozzy hard, and the booze and drugs and betrayal almost defeated him.”
L-R: Geezer Butler, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi – posed, studio, group shot, at reunion photo shoot
You and Ozzy stayed close and kept working together even after he left Sabbath. How did your relationship evolve?
“With Ozzy, as with Tony and Bill, you could go two or three years without speaking or seeing each other, but when you did, it was as if it was just yesterday. We definitely had our ups and downs over the years, especially these last five or six years, when I hadn’t heard from or spoken to Ozzy since [2017’s] The End tour. But I always knew if I reached out, he’d be there for me.”
How important was reuniting with Ozzy in the ’90s to you and the legacy of the band?
When we came together in the ’90s, we knew there could only ever be one true Sabbath
“To me, Black Sabbath was always the four original blokes from Aston, who defied the odds and saw it all through to the end. So, there could only be one lineup to finish the whole thing off, and luckily, we did it. Reuniting in the ’90s paved the way for that: after the many changing faces of Sabbath and Ozzy’s solo success, when we came together in the ’90s, we knew there could only ever be one true Sabbath.”
What will you remember about Sabbath’s final gig on July 5, in Birmingham?
“It was incredibly strange to have Ozzy sitting in a chair, albeit a ‘throne’. I honestly didn’t know what to do when we finished our set, because usually we would all hug and take a bow. So, I just went over to him and then presented him with a cake – I’m not even sure why. But seeing him literally giving his all for the fans was absolutely amazing.”
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