GEEZER BUTLER Recounts 1980 Riot At BLACK SABBATH's Milwaukee Concert

Jeff Muendel of Wisconsin's Maximum Ink music magazine recently conducted an interview with legendary heavy metal bassist Geezer Butler (BLACK SABBATH, HEAVEN AND HELL). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Maximum Ink: You have three new songs on the new best-of CD, "Black Sabbath: The Dio Years": "The Devil Cried", "Shadow of the Wind" and "Ear in the Wall". Was the writing process more-or-less similar to the way things were in '79?

Butler: Completely different, actually. Tony [Iommi] went to see Ronnie's [James Dio] band in 2005. They got to talking, jammed about a couple of times just for old time's sake, and then the record label got involved. They started asking if we had any unreleased material, which we really didn't have. Then I got involved and those songs started coming together from that point on.

Maximum Ink: Did the band select the tracks on the new CD?

Butler: We left it to the record company. If it'd been up to us, you know, we'd never have gotten a list together. Each of us would have had a different list. So, we left it to neutral input, which was the label. We're quite happy with it, a good representation, I think.

Maximum Ink: As I'm sure you recall, in October of 1980 there was a riot in Milwaukee during a Dio-era BLACK SABBATH concert. Has that incident has any affect on SABBATH playing in Milwaukee?

Butler: Oh no, that doesn't affect us deciding to play Milwaukee or not, no not at all. I mean, you've always got some idiot somewhere, right?

Maximum Ink: All of us in Wisconsin are apologetic for that idiot's behavior…

Butler: Well, thank you. Could've happened anywhere, though.

Maximum Ink: Can you recall any details of the incident?

Butler: It's all a big misunderstanding, really, The lights were down, first of all, so unless the fellow was some sort of incredible quarterback, I don't know how he could have hit me on purpose. But I was knocked out, and the band was busy getting me off the stage and to a hospital. When the lights came back up, there was no band on stage. And of course, the crowd freaked out. Someone should have gone out and explained — the promoter or someone. I mean, the band was worrying about getting me to the hospital, you know? So the crowd freaked out because there was suddenly no band on stage, and things got worse from there.

Maximum Ink: Has anything like that happened elsewhere?

Butler: It was worse back in the '70s, because no one was going through metal detectors and you didn't have as much space between the band and the front of the crowd as you do nowadays. People threw a lot of beer cans in the '70s. Once, in San Francisco, someone threw a huge iron cross on the stage. It bounced up, cut three strings on my bass, and the end of it poked me in the eye. Luckily, I didn't lose my sight or anything. But that was quite an incident.

Read the entire interview at www.maximumink.com.