Black Sabbath bassist recalls ‘most incredible journey' with Ozzy Osbourne

Black Sabbath’s bassist, Geezer Butler, just recalled his times with pal and band’s front man, Ozzy Osbourne.

Butler's recollections come in an essay penned for The Sunday Times, where he called his friend "the Prince of Laughter," an ode to the metal legend’s popular nickname: The Prince of Darkness.

"I first became aware of him when I’d walk home from all-nighters at a rock club called the Penthouse, in Birmingham,” Butler began.

The War Pigs hitmaker continued, “I had long hair down past my shoulders and looked like a hippy. Ozzy would be on the other side of the road on his way from the soul all-nighters in Brum, with his cropped hair and mod suit.”

“Complete opposites of each other. Little did I know then that within a year we would form what would become Black Sabbath and create a whole new form of rock music,” Butler further mentioned.

Then recalling how in 1968, he saw an advert in a Birmingham music store that read, “Ozzy Zig needs a gig,” with the singer's address included.

When Butler called around to the address on the ad, “Ozzy Zig” wasn't home, so the bassist left his own address with the artist’s sister.

"Later that evening," he writes, "as the Butler family were sitting down to dinner, there was a knock at the door. My brother answered it and said to me, 'Hey, there’s something at the door asking for you'. I said, What do you mean by ‘something’?” He said: 'You’ll see.’”

"It was the cropped-hair mod I’d seen walking home from the all-nighters," Geezer Butler  recalled of his meeting with Ozzy Osbourne and added, "except he didn’t have a suit on — he had his dad’s brown work gown on, a chimney brush over his shoulder, a shoe on a dog leash and no shoes on his bare feet. He said, ‘I’m Ozzy’. After I’d stopped laughing, I said: OK, you’re in the band. So began the most incredible journey of our lives."