Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler

Episode notes

Geezer Butler is patient zero for heavy metal bass riffs. He played bass for Black Sabbath. One of the greatest rock bands of all time and true pioneers in the heavy metal genre.

Along with playing bass, Butler was also a songwriter for the group. He wrote or co-wrote so many of Sabbath’s greatest tunes: Iron Man, Paranoid, The Wizard, After Forever.

Butler recently released a memoir. It’s called Into the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath―And Beyond.

It’s about Butler’s childhood in Birmingham, and about the story of Sabbath. It’s also one of those books where you can basically open to any page and something completely crazy is happening that you can’t wait to tell someone about.

Geezer Butler joins Bullseye to talk about his new memoir. He also looks back and shares some stories from his time in Black Sabbath. Plus, he’ll get into what it was like to write songs for Ozzy Osborne to sing.

In this episode...

Jesse Thorn

Host

Kevin Ferguson

Senior Producer

Jesus Ambrosio

Producer

Richard Robey

Maximum Fun Producer

Daniel Huecias

Maximum Fun Production Fellow

Daniel Arón Speer

Video Editor

Guests

Geezer Butler

About the show

Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture.

Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney’s, which called it “the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world.” Since April 2013, the show has been distributed by NPR.

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