In a recent piece for The Sunday Times, Geezer Butler opened up about the final time he played with his longtime Black Sabbath bandmate, Ozzy Osbourne: a night filled with emotion, nostalgia, and an unshakable sense that an era had truly ended.
The rehearsals began about a month before the show, in a countryside studio in Oxfordshire. “Tony Iommi, Bill Ward, and I ran through seven songs together,” Butler recalled. “Of course, not having played together for 20 years, it took a couple of days to get rid of the rust.”
Eventually, Ozzy joined the sessions, and Butler was struck by his condition. “I knew he wasn’t in good health, but I wasn’t prepared to see how frail he was.” He described how Ozzy was “helped into the rehearsal room by two helpers and a nurse and was using a cane — being Ozzy, the cane was black and studded with gold and precious stones.” Though they exchanged greetings, “he didn’t really say much beyond the usual greetings, and when he sang, he sat in a chair.” They made it through a handful of songs, but “we could see it was exhausting him after six or seven songs.” Butler noted, “We had a bit of a chat, but he was really quiet compared with the Ozzy of old.”
Despite the heaviness, Butler still sees Ozzy not as the dark figure many fans imagine. “To me, Ozzy wasn’t the Prince of Darkness — if anything, he was the Prince of Laughter. He’d do anything for a laugh, a born entertainer.”
Their relationship dated back long before they shared stages. “I first became aware of him when I’d walk home from all-nighters at a rock club called the Penthouse, in Birmingham. I had long hair down past my shoulders and looked like a hippy. Ozzy would be on the other side of the road on his way from the soul all-nighters in Brum, with his cropped hair and mod suit. Complete opposites of each other.” Little did he know, “within a year, we would form what would become Black Sabbath and create a whole new form of rock music.”
Their actual first meeting was even more surreal. “In 1968, the part-time band I was in was looking for a singer. I saw an advert in a music store in Birmingham centre with the words ‘Ozzy Zig needs a gig’.” Noticing the address was nearby, Butler visited the house. Ozzy wasn’t home, but Butler left his own address. That evening, as the family sat down to dinner, “there was a knock at the door. My brother answered it and said to me, ‘Hey, there’s something at the door asking for you’. I said, ‘What do you mean by ‘something’?’ He said: ‘You’ll see.’” Standing there was the cropped-hair mod he’d seen around, “except he didn’t have a suit on — he had his dad’s brown work gown on, a chimney brush over his shoulder, a shoe on a dog leash, and no shoes on his bare feet. He said, ‘I’m Ozzy’. After I’d stopped laughing, I said: ‘OK, you’re in the band.’”
With Tony Iommi just two streets away, they went to see if he knew a drummer. “He said, ‘Yes, Bill Ward, and he just happens to be here if you want to talk to him’.” Ward was interested, but “he agreed to join us as long as Tony came along.” That’s how Earth, later renamed Black Sabbath, began.
Their early days weren’t smooth. “Our first gig ended up in a massive brawl.” Growing up in Aston meant you had to be ready for that kind of thing. “Certainly Ozzy and Tony in particular were no strangers to fighting.” But the scrappy beginnings forged something stronger. “We became inseparable brothers in arms, always looking out for each other.”
The public image of Ozzy as a wild man never sat right with Butler. “People always thought Ozzy was a feral wild man, but he had a heart of pure gold.” Many of the antics — “the bat saga, biting the head off a dove, pissing on the Alamo, snorting lines of ants, and the rest” — came later in Ozzy’s solo years. “But if you were a friend in need, Ozzy was always there for you.” Butler recalled one particularly personal moment: “When my son was born with a heart defect, Ozzy called me every day to see how I was coping, even though we hadn’t spoken for a year.”
When they reunited for an Aston Villa Adidas promo, it had been years since they’d seen each other. “But there was always an invisible link between Ozzy, Tony, Bill, and me. We had gone through the best of times and the worst of times; the bond was unbreakable.”
The final concert came and went, but left a lingering sense of unfinished business. “The strangest part of that show was the end.” In past performances, “we would all hug each other and take a bow to the audience.” But now, “Ozzy was on his throne and we hadn’t thought that out.” Iommi shook his hand. Butler brought out a cake. “But it was such a strange feeling to end our story like that.” There wasn’t enough time to process it backstage. “I wish I’d had more time backstage with Ozzy, but wishes are redundant now.” As Ozzy used to say: “Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which comes first.”
Just two weeks after that final show, Ozzy was gone. Butler doesn’t dwell on regrets, but rather on gratitude. “I am so grateful we got to play one last time together in front of his beloved fans.” The atmosphere that night was unforgettable. “The love from the fans and all the bands, musicians, singers, and solo artists that night was incredible. Everyone had come to pay homage to the Prince.”
For Butler, those 57 years can’t be easily distilled. “Of course, there are millions of things I will think of that I should have written, but how can I sum up 57 incredible years of friendship in a few paragraphs?” He ends simply: “God bless, Oz, it has been one hell of a ride! Love you!”
