Geezer Butler recalls that Iommi never backed away from a fight

The Black Sabbath bassist and main lyricist Geezer Butler recalled in an interview with Matt Pinfield that his bandmate, the guitarist Tony Iommi, never backed away from a fight and always helped the band when they were being attacked by other people.

He recalled that when Sabbath toured in the United States in the early 70s with the band Cactus, one of the members of the band accused Iommi of stealing his drugs. After a big discussion, Iommi smacked him so hard that he “actually went through a wall”. In the same conversation, as transcribed by Ultimate Guitar, he recalled that it was Tony that once helped the band to beat skinheads that were threatening him because he had long hair.

Geezer Butler recalls that Iommi never backed away from a fight

“There were three different varieties of skinheads in England. The first was the mods, who turned into townies, and the townies turned into skinheads. Their sworn enemy was anybody with long hair, or bikers. This one gig we played was in Weston-super-Mare, a seaside town in England.”

“And, as usual, this was with our first manager. We’d do these gigs, and we’d go to get the money for the gigs, and (they’d) go, ‘Oh no, we’ve already sent it to your manager.’ So, with this gig we did, our manager promised us that we’d get the money at the end of the night. So, we did our show, (and) I went to the guy that was putting the show on, and I said, ‘Where’s our money?’ He says, ‘I’ve already sent it to your manager.'”

“I was the accountant in the band at the time. And so, I went outside to the telephone box, and called the manager, going nuts for him. And meanwhile, all these skinheads surrounded the telephone box, chanting, ‘Kill the greaser, kill the greaser!’ Because, if you had long hair, they used to call us ‘greasers.'”

He continued:

“So I’m going, ‘Oh no, I got no money, and I’m going to get kicked to death now by the skinheads.’ So, I pretended to keep talking on the phone, pushed the door out, and ran back into the gig, told Tony and Ozzy I couldn’t get through to the manager because all these skinheads just threatened me to kill me.”

“And so, Tony went, ‘Come on, let’s get ’em!’ Tony would never back away from a fight. And so, we picked up microphone stands and guitars and all that, went out and beat the absolute hell out of them,” Geezer Butler said.