Geezer Butler Says Having Grandchildren Motivated Him To Write A Memoir

Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler is well into work on a memoir.

Butler might keep the lowest profile of his Black Sabbath co-founders Ozzy Osbourne and Tony Iommi, but as the band's primary lyricist on its classic albums, the bassist is known to have a way with words.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer says he began work on the book sometime last year. He tells Cleveland.com that his lack of knowledge about his parents' life motivated him to start assembling his life's story.

"I started out because when my parents died, I always wished I'd asked them a lot more things than I knew about," he explained. "I don't really know much about my mum and dad, 'cause they were always just there. So, I started writing a memoir for my grandkids to read, and that's been fun going through stuff — old times and growing up in Birmingham and all that. I'm right in the middle of doing that at the moment."

He explained this past fall that his book would deal heavily with his youth in England and the formative days of Black Sabbath. He told Wall of Sound that Black Sabbath had modest ambitions from the beginning because "any form of popular music was seen as a passing fad — people even thought The Beatles would be forgotten about after they broke up, but nobody then [realized] how powerful the nostalgia effect would be."

With his post-Black Sabbath supergroup Deadland Ritual on ice, Butler also mentioned this winter that he's in the early stages of crafting another solo album from material that went unused.

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