Geezer Butler became a bass player by seeing Jack Bruce play

The Fender YouTube channel has released a new episode of “Lowdown On The Low End”a series created by bassists for bassists. In the second episode of the series, Geezer Butler of the Black Sabbath And Nate Mendel of the Foo Fighters they exchanged anecdotes about their lives as musicians.

During the meeting, the 76-year-old Geezer recalled, as reported by blabbermouth.netwhat happened to him at a concert of Cream: “The bass player who really showed me what you could do with a bass was Jack Bruce. When I went to see Cream, everyone said, ‘You’ve got to see this incredible guitarist. His name is Eric Clapton.’ At the time, they were playing small clubs around Birmingham. I was right in front of the stage. Jack came on stage with his Fender, and I thought, ‘What the hell?’ I couldn’t believe people could do that with a bass. And that’s when I decided, ‘This is what I want to do. I want to play bass.'”

Nate Mendel Then he asked him what attracted him to the bass, Butler responded by telling how things went from afar: “At first I was a rhythm guitarist. When I was 15, I had a band called The Rare Breed, I thought I was John Lennon, I played rhythm guitar. Then the singer left, so we looked around and found a guy called Ozzy Osbourne for the band. We did a few shows with Ozzy, and he said: ‘This is terrible. I’m leaving the band.’ We wanted to start another band, and we both lived within walking distance of each other in Aston. And Ozzy said, ‘Well, I know this guitarist called Tony Iommi. I went to school with him. Well, we weren’t really looking for a drummer at the time. We asked Tony if he knew any drummers, and he said, ‘Well, Bill Ward is here in the house.’ we explained what we were doing and he said, ‘Well, I’ll join you if Tony comes too.’ Tony said, ‘Yes, I’ll try.’ Then he added, ‘But I don’t play with a rhythm guitarist.’ I want it’s another Fender.’ No other bass had the balance of a P-Bass. It had perfect balance. A lot of other basses had too much neck weight, which is great for me.”