Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath)

Geezer Butler (Black Sabbath) - Portrait Painting

Terence Michael Joseph Butler, better known by his stage name of Geezer Butler is a retired musician and songwriter. He is best known as a founding member, bassist and the primary lyricist of the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath, performing on fourteen of the band's nineteen studio albums and coining the band's name. Along with his tenures with Sabbath, Butler has also recorded and performed with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne's solo band, his own solo project commonly known as GZR and Heaven & Hell with the Dio-era lineup of Black Sabbath. Recently he had performed with the rock group Deadland Ritual.

Butler is noted for his melodic playing, and as being one of the first bassists to use a wah pedal and to down-tune his instrument (from the standard E-A-D-G to the lower C#-F#-B-E), as exemplified on Black Sabbath's Master of Reality album, to match Iommi who had started tuning his guitar to C# (a minor third down). During the band's Ozzy Osbourne era, Butler wrote most of the band's lyrics, drawing heavily upon his fascination with religion, science-fiction, fantasy and horror, and musings on the darker side of human nature that posed a constant threat of global annihilation.Geezer's distinctive playing and lyricism at the time would help to lay the groundwork for the heavy metal genre as a whole.

Butler is widely considered to be one of the greatest bassists of all time by several publications and has been cited as an influence by numerous key bassists such as Billy Sheehan, Steve Harris, Jason Newsted, Cliff Burton and Les Claypool just to name a few.

Since his career started in 1965, Butler has played on fourteen studio albums with Black Sabbath, three albums with his own solo project GZR and one album each with Ozzy Osbourne and Heaven & Hell. He would retire from music in 2023, ultimately having a music career spanning seven decades and nearly sixty years. -Riffipedia