In a new interview with Planet Rock, Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler looked back on the band’s fifth full-length studio record, 1973’s “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.”
He explained (transcribed by UG):
“That’s probably one of the best periods of my life and the whole band’s life, and strangely enough, it started out really bad. We thought we didn’t have anything else to give any more as a band.
“We did [1972’s] ‘Vol. 4’ in Los Angeles and that was great, really, good time doing that, and ‘Vol. 4’ was the first time that we’ve been introduced to c*caine, so we’ve been whacking that up for a good year or something. [Laughs]
“It came to do ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,’ the new album, and we went back to our line.
“It was horrible, the vibes were terrible between us, and we went back to the Record Plant where we’d done ‘Vol. 4’ – they had this big computer installed, it was the first musical computer thing that anybody had ever seen and it was in our studio where we’ve done ‘Vol. 4.’
“We just couldn’t come up with anything, couldn’t write, was really weird. We thought, ‘Well, that’s it, lads, this is obviously the end of the band.’
“And we came back to England and we just had a few weeks off, freshened up a bit, and we just got together and said, ‘Let’s give it one more try.’
“We got this place in Wales and the very first thing that Tony came up was the riff to ‘Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.'”