Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler has opened up about his bar brawl arrest back in 2015. According to Butler, he punched a “drunken N*zi bloke” in the face after he spewed some antisemitic beliefs to Butler.
In a new interview with Classic Rock magazine, Butler shared his side of the story for the first time.
“My sister-in-law had just died, and I’d gone to Death Valley in California just to get away from it all,” Geezer says. “Not just that, everything — Christmas, New Year’s, everything like that. I went down to the gift shop in the hotel, and there was this nice Western bar there. I thought, ‘I may as well have one before I go to bed.’ It was the strongest beer I’ve ever had in my life. The next thing I know, this guy started mouthing off about something. He was, like, some drunken N*zi bloke. He recognized me, and because I was in the music business, he started going on about Jews and everything — Jews this, Jews that. My missus is Jewish and I’d just had enough, and my hand sort of met his chin. I whacked him one.”
Geezer continues, “I was absolutely legless at the time. I don’t know what happened, but one minute I was in this bar, and the next thing I was being arrested. I woke up in jail. That was bad enough, but waking up with a hangover was horrible. I was totally ashamed. I should have just walked away. But when you get p*ssed out of your brains, you don’t know what you’re doing.”