In a recent chat with The Eddie Trunk Podcast, Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler talked about Ozzy Osbourne and the time he left Black Sabbath back in 1979, where the band was joined by Ronnie James Dio.
Below you can read a few excerpts of the interview.
Asked if Sabbath was “shocked” about the massive success of Ozzy’s first two solo albums – featuring Randy Rhoads on guitar – and “how closely were you guys watching what he was doing,” Geezer answered:
“No, I mean, Ozzy had already left the band before the [1978] ‘Never Say Die!’ album [Ozzy briefly quit in ’77], and he was always going on about doing his own thing back then.
“In fact, in one of the Sabbath photos, he’s got a ‘Blizzard of Ozz’ t-shirt on, so he just fell out of love with what we were doing in Sabbath.
“I wasn’t really paying much attention to what he was doing, to be honest, and then, he came out probably bigger than Sabbath ever was.”
You ended up going to play in his band for a little bit, not too long after that [Geezer was in Ozzy’s band in 1988,1989, 1995, and 1996, performing on 1995’s ‘Ozzmosis’ album]. So there wasn’t a rivalry, there wasn’t looking at chart positions, there was none of that?
“No, we all loved Ozzy. We were so glad that he got himself – because he was killing himself. The state that he was in when he left Sabbath, he really was on the verge…
“If it wasn’t for Sharon, I think he’d topped himself eventually, he’d OD or something, and she pulled him out of it, got him straight again.”