Black Sabbath‘s bassist and main lyricist (in the early years of the band), Geezer Butler is currently promoting his autobiography “Into The Void” and in an interview with Full Metal Jacket (Transcribed by Blabbermouth), he praised Sabbath’s overlooked vocalist Tony Martin.
After years out of the streaming platforms, the albums with Martin on vocals were finally released in 2024. One of them, “Cross Purposes” had Butler as the bassist and lyricist.
Geezer Butler praises ex-Black Sabbath singer Tony Martin
There was just one album that I did with Tony Martin. That was — God, I can’t even remember it — it’s called ‘Cross Purposes’. Tony Martin’s a great singer, and he was good to work with. There was no big egos or anything. He got down to it when he needed to. And that was a good album for me because half of it was probably written by me, the music side of it.”
“I went around to Tony’s (Iommi) one day and played him all this, ’cause I was doing a solo thing at the time. And I’d got tons of material. And I went around to Tony’s house and played him some of the stuff that I’d been writing and he really liked a lot of it. So I think about half of it ended up on the album,” Geezer Butler said.
On “Cross Purposes”, the band was also formed by Tony Iommi (Guitar), Tony Martin (Vocals), Geoff Nichols (Keyboards) and Bobby Rondinelli (Drums).
Tony Martin was a member of Black Sabbath from 1987 to 1991 and from 1992 to 1997. With him on vocals the band released the albums: “The Eternal Idol” (1987), “Headless Cross” (1989), “Tyr” (1990), “Cross Purposes” (1994) and “Forbidden” (1995). All the albums of his era with the band were finally released in 2024 as part of the boxset “Anno Domini”.