Black Sabbath (Ozzy Osbourne & Geezer Butler)

0:00I'm Ozzy Osbourne from Black Sabbath. I'm Geezer Butler. You're watching MSN Exclusives. The 13 starts off with the line, or the question almost. Is this the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?

0:45So in Sabbath's chapter, is this the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? Well, I'm sorry to think that if this is... I don't know whether there's going to be another album or not, but saying that, there might be. There might not, you know. So it could be the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end. And if that's the case, I would be much happier with it. And in the Sabbath thing with this album than I did when I left in 1979, we'd never say die. Speaking of leaving in 70, Rick Rubin said something in an interview I was reading about you wanting to push yourself harder this time around because you felt like you almost needed to redeem yourself. No, I abide what he said. If he said, try this, I'd try it. I wouldn't... You don't have a producer and want to do your own production.

1:32And I let him be the producer. And some days you'd let me sing for four or five hours. I mean, try singing for four or five hours in a soundproof box. It's hard work. But I respected him because over the years, when I'm running into him, he's always said to me, if you do a Black Sabbath album, I want to do the production. So I'm going back to the early 80s, you know, I'd see him from songs around and go, you've got to get back together with the band now. And so he's a fan first. And so I'd go around to his house and he would be playing Bollywood for a while and he would be asking me questions when I'd go around there. What are you doing? What kind of comedy you decided it is? And to be honest with you, I couldn't really answer a lot of them

2:19because you just do it naturally, you know. And so when we come down to his album 13, he had done all his homework and he knew he had a plan of what he wanted to do. So the first thing he did when we first met him for the talks on his album, he played the first Black Sabbath album. I couldn't understand what he was saying, you know. Take it away from me, please. What was it like listening to that first record? What? What was it like listening to that first record as a group? It was great because, well, it was different because it was probably the first time that the four of us sat in a room and listened to that album since we'd recorded it. And you just realise all the little quirks and stuff and it's not like a one-track album. Each track is like totally different music to the other track.

3:07So it was sort of surprising. You realise how live it was in the... When we recorded it and how far we got away from just going in the studio and doing a live recording in the studio, because we got into the habit of doing it layer by layer, put the drums on, then you put the bass on, then you put your guitar on, and the vocals go on last. So this time it was more of a live band effort. Just because we were talking about that first record, I'll go to the second record just because during doing the research for this, Fairies Wear Boots, seems like that was the first tune that you guys wrote collaboratively, at least lyrically. No, well, I'd rather lose. I'm not used to that one. It was just about something silly, you know? And it ended up being something even sillier.

3:56But that song, it was one of my favourite songs to play live. Great for the audience, love it. We'll talk about the collaboration of writing together lyrically. You coming up with ideas and you saying, I like these lines, how does that work, lyrically at least? I usually start the ball rolling. I'll come up with a name, a title, a phrase or something, and then I'll start singing it when we're doing the structure of the song. I've also got a melody line, but like, God, he's dead or Fairies Wear Boots or, you know, and Geezer fills the gaps in, you know? Once I've got a melody line, a tune, if you like, he's very good at putting words around my melodies. What on this record, when you wrote something for Oz,

4:44that you just were blown away by? I need to sing these words. I just do it instinctively because he has never let me down. He's never given me a little, I can't fucking sing that, you know? I mean, I can't sing that. No, I'll bleep it out. People love it when you swear. It's funny, like even last night, every time you curse, the crowd goes crazy. It's become a thing. No, you know, he's never ever let me down. I mean, I might not understand what I'm singing about. Is there any tunes on this record? You don't understand what you're singing about? Everyone. No, I mean, I'll get the gist about five years later. Oh, yeah, it's about that, you know? God is dead. I like how there's a question mark, but God is dead as a definitive statement at the same time,

5:29and there's a question mark at the end of it. Yeah. So what I also find interesting is, had you released a song called God is Dead in 69, 70, people would have been like, whoa, too far, too far. But nowadays, you can do it. The provocation's not there anymore. But he was very good at giving me something right at the very end. But is he dead? You know, so you can't sing, but at the end, can you sing? And that statement has been around for 200 years anyway, from Nietzsche, and you know, Communist Party adopted it. So it's not really anything new. No, but I just like, I feel like radio would have banned and BBC would have gone crazy had you done that in the 60s. And I almost want to attribute it to you guys of changing the culture to say,

6:15no, we can say these things, it's okay to question. Do you agree with that? Do you think staff has had a part in that moment? It's not even a shock, it's not even a democracy. It's always the church or some guy doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, giving his advice, you know? I mean, why can't you say that? Why can't we question? We've always been abandoned, questioned the establishment, you know? I mean, if you send somebody from your country, and I send somebody from my country, and we have a battle, and we get both killed, we've lost, whoever is alive and kills the most on the other side of the world. And we've always questioned the establishment, you know? And like, what's the difference between shooting someone in a war or blowing someone in a war?

7:00And yet, you get a medal for that, but if you kill someone in a civilian thing, you get one in jail, what's the difference? The guy's still dead. I had a conversation with a friend about that exact same thing last night, but it's probably getting a little too heavy for what we're here to talk about, because you got the record and a tour coming up. And I was looking at some of the set lists from the Australian leg in New Zealand. Warpig's Opens, Paranoid Closes. What makes those two tunes a good opener and a good closer? What we've gone with, and I bear it one time, we've gone with lots of different songs. It's just what we've got. We can't not do Paranoid, and we can't not do Warpig's. So somewhere in the set, those two songs are gonna be, we've tried doing it in all different ways, and we've tried, for our own sound, and we've done it for years doing that.

7:46We never always opened up with Warpig, but it's my anthem, Paranoid. I always do Paranoid. We used to open up with Paranoid and end with it. And end with it. Only so many songs back then. It's one of those songs that everybody knows, so it's always good to keep everybody there until they've heard it. You're worried they're gonna run out, unless you pass the fight. You can't end up with like Planet Caravan. You can't do something like, we're gonna all smoke a doobie and just chill out. You gotta have some, it's a rock band, you know? A lot of it's very laid back and slow, you know? So it's, Paranoid's not saying, fuck you, we were here, you know?

8:31How did the new songs fit into the set? Like, are there certain ones? Really well. God is Dead, especially when we did it in Australia, because that was the first one off the, that was put on the internet. And people were already singing along to it, believe it or not, after like a couple of days of it being on the internet. So that fits in great. And then the other stuff, we'll see how the album goes. We were doing End of the Beginning live, and we did Methodemic live, and we did Loner live. But they were unfamiliar at the time, so we'll see what we do on the next part. I think people will be singing along in a couple weeks. Yeah, hopefully. What about, I was watching, just in preparation for this, watching the old episodes of The Osborns, and there's one episode where you get in this confetti gun Santa sled kind of thing for one of the tours. What kind of crazy effects are gonna be,

9:17are there crazy effects, Cairo for Sabbath's tour? We haven't even thought about that. We've been so busy doing interviews and getting on with this record. To be honest, I haven't even thought about it on other dates, but it's just, there's not gonna be confetti in fucking shit. It doesn't work as well, yeah. It doesn't work quite right, until he's black confetti. We'll just turn up and play the music, but they do all the rest. That's a good way to end it, actually. So five quick questions, one word answers. Roward or studio? Bob. Bob. Lennon or McCartney? Bob. Lennon. When you hear a song, what usually hits you first? Lyrics, melody, or rhythm? Melodie. Rhythm. The song you've written, you're most proud of. Today. All of them.

10:06I don't know. In one word, black Sabbath. Great. Life. Nice. Thank you very much, guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you. I just dislocated a bone, so I've had to wear this.