Geezer Butler is the bassist and principal lyricist of Black Sabbath, and his contribution to the group goes well beyond the instrument. Born in Birmingham in 1949, he started on guitar and moved to bass when the band formed — which explains his unusual style, full of moving lines that follow Tony Iommi's guitar rather than merely holding down the foundation, a technique that became a reference for generations of metal bassists. As a lyricist, he gave Black Sabbath the material the public mistook for satanism. His interest in the occult and in Dennis Wheatley's novels surfaces in some songs, but the bulk of the lyrics are about something else: "War Pigs" is an indictment of the Vietnam War, "Iron Man" is tragic science fiction, and "Paranoid" describes depression. It was that mix of sonic weight and dark subject matter, with no veneer of teenage rebellion, that set Sabbath apart from the heavy rock of the day. Butler followed the band through all its principal incarnations, including the Ronnie James Dio period and the Heaven & Hell project, and kept a career of his own under the name GZR. He is also a long-standing public advocate of vegetarianism and animal rights.
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