During an interview with The Rock Experience with Mike Brunn, bassist Geezer Butler talked about Black Sabbath’s ’70s era and the band’s emergence of new music back then, whether Black Sabbath were “a little bit more of a follower as opposed to a trendsetter.”
Here’s what Butler said:
“I think we were running out of ideas. I think what caused it was when we found out we were being ripped off so badly. We’ve done all these massive tours, sold millions and millions of albums, and we had nothing in the bank to show, for it was all gone.
”The lowest point came when the taxman sent us a bill for all this money that we’ve never seen, then we had to put everything into paying back taxes for money that we’ve never seen. So I think it just wore the band down. And trying to get away from the management we had to go through…” […]
He added:
“When we were doing the ‘Sabotage’ the album, which is why we call it sabotage, because lawyers coming into the studio every day, and we’ve been subpoenaed for this, and subpoenaed for that, and sued for this, and sued for that. It’s just destroyed us, and I think the music started to suffer.”
But around this same period, it turns out that Geezer was also fired from the band for a few weeks. Or at least that’s what he said in the new autobiographical book, along with saying that he and Ozzy were actually planning to do something on the side. Asked about this, Geezer replied:
“Yeah, it’s just me and Ozzy, thinking what we’re going to do. Because we weren’t happy with the Sabbath situation at the time. We didn’t have any money in the bank. We were just thinking ‘Well, we’ve done all these tours and sold all these albums, and there’s nothing to show for it. So what’s the point in going on?'”
“We were just talking about, maybe doing something. Me and him together, just something different to get away from the chaos that was Sabbath at the time. But he went his own way, and I went back to Sabbath.”