Black Sabbath Bassist Insults Rick Rubin

Geezer Butler recently reflected on recording Black Sabbath’s final album, “13” and explained at last December’s Steel City Con that the music had largely been written by Tony Iommi, and reflecting on the chaotic experience of writing the album’s lyrics.

Released on June 10th, 2013, “13” marked the first Black Sabbath album to feature Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, and Ozzy Osbourne since 1978’s “Never Say Die!”, and the heavy metal godfathers’ first studio LP since their landmark 1970 sophomore “Paranoid” to top the UK Albums Chart (according to OfficialCharts).

It was also the last album Black Sabbath ever recorded before delivering their swan song in their native Birmingham last July, and before Ozzy Osbourne passed less than three weeks later.

Geezer Butler talks about Rick Rubin

As such, “13” will remain as an important chapter in the story of Black Sabbath, even though Geezer Butler told the audience at last December’s Steel City Con that the album was mostly Iommi’s work:

“The last Sabbath album that was mainly Tony in his own studio in England; he came up with practically all the music, kind of thing. And then, me and Ozzy got involved. Ozzy came up with the vocal lines, I still wrote the lyrics.”

When it came to doing the lyrics, Geezer recalled things devolving into “chaos” after a misunderstanding between himself and Ozzy:

“I think there was two or three songs on ’13’ that Ozzy wrote the lyrics for. Ozzy left doing all the vocals until the last couple of weeks of ’13’, and then I didn’t want to write the lyrics. I was assuming that he’d write all the lyrics.”

“And of course, I’ll get a phone call saying, ‘Geezer, you come and write the lyrics for me.’ [laughs] Oh, God. And we had like 15 songs done, and I was literally writing them one night, going into the studio, showing them to Ozzy. He’d sing them, then I’d go home, write the next set of lyric, and it’s just chaos. In the end, I don’t even understand what I was writing.”

Apparently, the legendary (and highly controversial) producer Rick Rubin, who was brought to work on the album, was adamant about Geezer writing the lyrics. He added:

“Rick Rubin produced the album, allegedly [laughter]. And he kept saying, ‘No, Geezer has got to write the lyrics. He’s the Shakespeare of heavy metal lyrics.’ I was like, ‘Oh, God,’ somebody wouldn’t let anybody else write the lyrics, apart from the ones that are totally refused to write the songs to. And that was it.”