“We picked up microphone stands and guitars, went out and beat the absolute hell out of them”: Geezer Butler recalls the time Tony Iommi led a fight against skinheads
Geezer Butler has spoken about the time Black Sabbath “beat the absolute hell” out of a bunch of skinheads under the lead of bandmate Tony Iommi.
Recounting the wild moment in a recent chat with Matt Pinfield, Butler says that the incident took place during the band’s early days when they were playing a gig in Weston-super-Mare, a seaside town in England.
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“There were three different varieties of skinheads in England. The first was the mods, who turned into townies, and the townies turned into skinheads. Their sworn enemy was anybody with long hair, or bikers,” the bassist explains.
“And, as usual, this was with our first manager. We’d do these gigs, and we’d go to get the money for the gigs, and [they’d] go, ‘Oh no, we’ve already sent it to your manager.’ So, with this gig we did, our manager promised us that we’d get the money at the end of the night. So, we did our show, [and] I went to the guy that was putting the show on, and I said, ‘Where’s our money?’ He says, ‘I’ve already sent it to your manager.’”
As the band’s accountant at the time, Butler headed out to the telephone box to call their manager, all while the skinheads “surrounded the telephone box, chanting, ‘Kill the greaser, kill the greaser!’”
“Because, if you had long hair, they used to call us ‘greasers,’” he continues.
“So I’m going, ‘Oh no, I got no money, and I’m going to get kicked to death now by the skinheads.’ So, I pretended to keep talking on the phone, pushed the door out, and ran back into the gig, told Tony and Ozzy I couldn’t get through to the manager because all these skinheads just threatened to kill me.”
“And so, Tony went, ‘Come on, let’s get ‘em!’ Tony would never back away from a fight. And so, we picked up microphone stands and guitars and all that, went out and beat the absolute hell out of them.”
The post “We picked up microphone stands and guitars, went out and beat the absolute hell out of them”: Geezer Butler recalls the time Tony Iommi led a fight against skinheads appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
