Geezer Butler
Terence Michael Joseph "Geezer" Butler (born 17 July 1949)[1] is an English retired musician and songwriter. He is best known as the bassist and primary lyricist of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath. He has also recorded and performed with Heaven & Hell, GZR, Ozzy Osbourne, and Deadland Ritual.[5]
Geezer Butler
Early life[edit]
Butler adopted the nickname "Geezer" at an early age. "It came because when I was at school, my brother was in the army, and he was based with a lot of Cockneys. And people in London call everybody a 'geezer.' [It means] just a man — like, 'Hello, mate.' It's just like somebody calling you 'dude' over here (in the United States). In England, it'd be 'geezer.' So my brother used to come home from leave from the army, and he'd be going, 'Hello, geezer. How are you, geezer?' So because I had looked up to my brother when I was about seven years old, I'd go to school calling everybody a geezer. So that's how I got cursed with it."[6]
Butler grew up in a working-class Irish Catholic family, the son of James and Mary Butler. He had six siblings.[7] His father had served in the Royal Scots Regiment and later settled in Birmingham, where he worked for an engineering company. Mary had worked as a nanny in her younger years and became a housewife after marrying James in 1929.[7] Both of his parents were born in Dublin.[7] [8] The family had seven children and were poor, typically having "no money whatsoever".[9] He was born in the family house on Victoria Road in the Aston section of Birmingham, a house that had been damaged by Luftwaffe bombs during World War 2. When he was just one day old, his older sister Eileen tried to toss him out a bedroom window in a fit of jealousy.[7]
Butler has said that he enjoyed an "incredibly loving, happy childhood".[7] The family home had no telephone, hot water or bathroom, and considered itself lucky to have their own outside toilet.[7] Two of Butler's older brothers had been called upon to serve in the army and Butler feared that he would be next. However, mandatory national service was ended in the United Kingdom a couple of years before he was due to be conscripted.[9]
At the age of ten, Butler passed a test and was invited to attend Birmingham's prestigious Holte Grammar School in 1960. Learning English literature such as Shakespeare and Homer furthered his love of reading, and he says "I never went a day without reading something." He credits this education, along with his vivid imagination, for the composition skills he would later utilize as Black Sabbath's lyricist.[7] He was later heavily influenced by the writing of Aleister Crowley as a teenager.[8]
By his late teens, he had stopped attending Mass. He cited a loss of belief, and feels that everyone should sooner or later decide for themselves what to believe in. By the end, Butler was "going to Mass every Sunday just to take a look at all the nice girls that were going there", he recalled years later.[9] After growing his hair long as a teenager, he would encounter a nun every Sunday at Mass who found it humorous to refer to Butler as "miss", and he soon decided to never go back.[7]
Butler became obsessed with The Beatles and The Kinks, and later Cream and Jimi Hendrix. When The Beatles appeared on a Birmingham television program called Thank Your Lucky Stars in January 1963, Butler waited outside the studio to get a glimpse of them. It was here that he met another Beatles' fan, John "Ozzy" Osbourne, for the first time.[7]