The Black Sabbath co-founder, bassist and main lyricist Geezer Butler is currently promoting his autobiography called “Into The Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath” and recalled in an interview with Readers Digest when a stage invader tried to kill the band’s guitarist Tony Iommi. According to the bassist that happened in the United States and they used to have problems there especially with people protesting against them because of their satanic lyrics and doomy sound.
Geezer Butler recalls when a stage invader tried to kill Tony Iommi
“My dad wasn’t very pleased when he saw the inverted cross on the sleeve of our first album. But, generally, nobody in the UK or Europe cared that much about our Satanic imagery. In the US, though, people would threaten us and turn up at our gigs with crosses and bibles.”
“In Nashville, someone jumped on stage and went for Tony with a knife. Fortunately, Tony had turned around to kick his faulty amp at that point, saw the attacker and got out of the way. The police arrested the attacker, though we don’t know what happened to him. But he wanted to sacrifice Tony. Lunatic,” Geezer Butler said.
Sabbath was the band that created Heavy Metal music and one of the first ones to write openly about the devil and the occult. So for decades religious people would go to their concerts with bibles and crosses to protest or would even make campaigns to get their shows canceled at their towns.
But as the band already recalled many times, there would also be people how were really interested in the occult and the devil at their shows. They would often be invited by these people to go to black masses and to perform rituals. That was the main reason why Ozzy’s father made them crosses so that they could wear around their necks in order to protect them.