Geezer Butler on Black Sabbath’s Early Struggles: Boiling Bass Strings and Tony Iommi’s Jethro Tull Stint

“I couldn’t afford a set of strings, so I’d play the same strings for about six months… and then boil them, so all the crap would come off them, and they’d sound almost new again”: Geezer Butler on Sabbath’s cash-strapped early days

In a candid interview on Matt Pinfield’s New And Approved, Geezer Butler, the legendary bassist of Black Sabbath, opened up about the band’s formative years. Butler, who published his memoir Into The Void last year, revealed the extreme financial hardships the band faced in their early days. One of the more striking anecdotes involved boiling his bass strings to clean them because he couldn’t afford new ones.

“In those days, I couldn’t afford a set of strings, so I’d play the same strings for about six months until they were completely worn out,” Butler recalled. “And then, what we used to do is boil all our strings, so all the crap would come off them, and they’d sound almost new again. And that was the way we did it because we couldn’t afford to buy new strings.”

This period of financial struggle coincided with a significant turning point for the band, then known as Earth. During a gig where they played alongside Jethro Tull, Tony Iommi, Sabbath’s iconic guitarist, caught the eye of Tull’s frontman Ian Anderson. Butler remembers, “Ian Anderson came out into the audience and he was transfixed by Tony. And we thought, ‘What’s all this about?’ At the end of the gig Ian asked Tony to come outside and asked him to join.”

Butler suggests that this event was pivotal in Black Sabbath’s development. “It was the best thing that happened to us because he went down to London, rehearsed with them for a week and said, ‘I’m not going to do this. Ian’s trying to tell me what to play and only I know how I’m going to play.’ He came back and said, ‘Look, to be like Jethro Tull we’ve got to write our own music and take everything really seriously from now on.’”

The financial constraints didn’t end there. The band’s first album was recorded under extremely tight conditions. As Butler recounts, “We had two days in the studio because you only had £500 to make the album, which is like $700. And so, the only way we could do it is just to play live.”

“It was recorded straight away as a live album on day one. And then, the next day, we did some vocal overdubs, and Tony did some guitar overdubs, fixed a few things, and that was it.”

Despite these challenges, Black Sabbath managed to produce a groundbreaking debut that would go on to define the heavy metal genre.

Watch Geezer Butler discuss his new book Into the Void and share more about Black Sabbath’s early days with Matt Pinfield in the interview below:

For a nostalgic look back at one of their iconic tracks, here’s the official video for “Paranoid”:

By detailing the struggles and resilience of Black Sabbath during their early years, Butler’s insights not only highlight the band’s journey but also serve as an inspiration for aspiring musicians facing similar challenges.