Before bands like Metallica, Slipknot and Rage Against the Machine – before the term “heavy metal” even existed – Black Sabbath’s colossal riffs and pure power set metal’s mood, with Terry “Geezer” Butler’s brooding basslines stoking the fires of metal’s foundry.
Black Sabbath didn’t invent the rock riff, but Butler and guitarist Tony Iommi used it in a way that defined a genre. Bending strings as if they were made of putty, Butler’s loud and gritty attack underscored the earnestness of his dark lyrics, sung with spine-chilling intensity by Ozzy Osbourne.
“A lot of producers told us we couldn’t play like we did,” Butler told Bass Player. “They’d come to see us and walk out halfway though the song! We were told to write proper music.”
Butler also found it hard to find a like-minded producer when it came to his trademark bass tone, which he achieved by blasting his Fender Precision Bass through a blown guitar cabinet: “Every producer we played to said, ‘You can’t have that sound – it’s a bass, not a bloody guitar!’”
“When we recorded Black Sabbath, I had a 70-watt Laney guitar amp and a Park 4×12 cabinet with only three speakers in it – and two of them were wrecked! That’s how I got that really distorted sound. I didn’t have any alternative; I couldn’t afford to buy new speakers.
“We had only two days to record, so we just plugged in and performed our live set in the studio. We were allowed one take for each song and stopped only if someone made a horrible mistake. No time to dial in the perfect bass tone.”
The following interview from the Bass Player archives took place in July 2004.
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Which Sabbath album captured your favorite bass tone?
“So many people ask me how I got the bass tone on the first album. It was by accident! At times I have hated my sound, and I’ve tried to dial in whatever sounded modern at the time. It never worked. I remember trying to sound like Chris Squire.
“Ozzy’s reaction was, ‘What the hell is that?’ I was attempting to get a sound I liked to listen to, but it didn’t fit my playing style. My favorite tone would probably be on Master of Reality.”
What did you use for effects?
“I had two Tycobrahe pedals. With their wah-wah, which was a big blue pedal, you could get a weird sub-bass effect. Combined with their flanger, it created a really ethereal sound. I used that on the beginning of The Writ and on Zero the Hero. People think it’s a keyboard making those sounds, but it’s bass through the Tycobrahe pedals.”
Since you stopped using fried speakers, how do you get a distorted sound?
“It’s almost impossible to get a natural distorted bass sound, especially now that amps are built so well. It just comes down to sheer volume. When recording, we would have to put the bass cabs in a different studio completely. It was deafeningly loud. You have to crank it up, but Ozzy doesn’t understand that – it drove him nuts. He would never stand in front of the bass rig. He told me to turn it down one night, so for a laugh I turned it up.”
You tend to pluck near the neck, sometimes directly on top of the fingerboard. How and why did that style develop?
“Probably because I didn’t realize that I could take the pickup covers off of my P-Bass. Also, I am relatively small in height, and it just felt natural that way. I think every player gets to a comfortable position onstage and keeps with it.”
You also hit your strings rather hard.
“Oh yeah, ridiculously hard. I have to consciously pull back. Producers always tell me to back off in the studio, because when I play hard they hear more of the strings against the frets – metal bashing on metal – than the actual note.”
Your plucking hand is extremely fast. Are you using two or three fingers?
“I use primarily two fingers, though I use three fingers on some songs. I sometimes use a pick for clarity, to make the bass stand out a bit more. Sometimes I’ll go a whole night without using a pick, but if I have blisters or am playing a repetitious part, it’s more comfortable to pick. I vary It depending on how my arm is feeling.”
Which Sabbath riffs stand out as personal favorites?
“I’ve always loved Black Sabbath, because it was the first song we wrote. But there are so many of them. Sweet Leaf, Hole in the Sky, and of course, Iron Man. Symptom of the Universe is one of the best riffs of all time. There are a lot of songs that I can’t even remember writing or recording!”
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