Geezer Butler on the Bob Dylan album that “spoke for a whole new generation”
If there was ever a band that truly represented their surroundings, it was Black Sabbath. It’s not just how the band sounded but how they achieved their sound. Everything screams of post-war Birmingham and the harsh reality that they and their peers were living in.
To understand Black Sabbath, you must travel back to 1960s Birmingham. Tony Iommi was working in a steel mill factory, and he was listening to and making a lot of music on the side. Sound had already opened the door to a brighter world because of The Beatles, so people working dead-end jobs took solace in the tunes at local pubs. One of the big performers around the Brummy area was Iommi and the band.
One day, Tony Iommi was in an accident at the steel mill he worked at and lost the tips of his fingers. To continue playing guitar, Iommi fashioned two plastic tips that he used instead of his finger. The strings on his guitar had to be loosened so he could still bend them. As a result, that tuned-down sound couldn’t be a better reflection of Iommi’s life because it is the direct product of things that happened in it.
Another excellent representation of the world at the time was Geezer Butler. Music was at a period when the star of the show was the guitarist, and as such, Butler started playing guitar; however, the band needed a bassist. Butler wasn’t aware of the bass like the pros were; he didn’t write music that complemented a riff; instead, he just mimicked a riff. As a result, a deeper and more layered sound was born, which resulted in what we now refer to as heavy metal.
As an artist who is well aware of what it means to make music that reflects the time it was made, Butler has always looked out for albums that do a similar thing. One album, in particular, stands out to Butler as a record that not only reflects the time it was made but speaks for a whole generation. That album is widely considered one of Bob Dylan’s best, The Times They Are A-Changin’.
“If ever a song summed up an era, the title track of this album spoke for a whole new generation. No electric guitars, bass or drums, just a man with an acoustic guitar with the most incredible lyrics that perfectly encapsulated this post-war era,” he said. “’With God on Our Side’ is still, to me, the greatest anti-war song ever written, and inspired me to write the lyrics for Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’.”
Music can truly be a time stamp and a reflection of when it was made, and this music is always looked back on as a historical artefact rather than just a mix of tracks. Butler was a pro at this and took from the best in Bob Dylan.
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