Not long after releasing their groundbreaking debut album in 1978, Van Halen had the chance to be Black Sabbath‘s opening act. That’s when the members of the Heavy Metal band had the chance to meet the American band and a friendship started, especially between Tony Iommi and Eddie Van Halen. But as the bassist Geezer Butler, who is currently promoting his autobiography “Into the Void”, recalled in an interview with BraveWords (Transcribed by Ultimate Guitar) that Ozzy wasn’t happy with David Lee Roth, because the American frontman was copying him every night.
Geezer Butler recalls why Ozzy wasn’t happy with Van Halen on tour
“I really liked them. (They) did one of my all-time favorite Kings songs, ‘You Really Got Me’. I immediately really liked them doing the cover of that, and that was their first, like, big single. They were great to get on with.”
“But then, as the tour went on, Dave Lee Roth started copying, became like an Ozzy clone. It was really upsetting Ozzy at the time, because, whatever Ozzy did one night, Dave Lee Roth had said the same thing the next night. It was upsetting Ozzy. Then, Eddie was doing these extended solos, so Tony had to have a word of him about that.”
He continued:
“But it was good, because they brought in this whole new younger audience for us. They actually brought in some women and girls [laughs] that we never really had at our gigs. But what pissed us off is that Warner Bros. completely concentrated on Van Halen, and it was almost like we were the support band. Warner Bros. were like, ‘You’re an old hat’, kind of stuff.”
“‘This is Van Halen of the future.’ So they did everything for Van Halen, nothing for us. There was no promotion for us whatsoever. But they were great guys, a great band, and we [enjoyed] long-lasting friendships, especially Tony and Eddie,” Geezer Butler said.
As Geezer said, especially Tony and Eddie remained good friends. He even played in the track “Evil Eye” during the sessions for the 1994 album “Cross Purposes”. He is credited as one of the songwriters of the track but he wasn’t part of the recording released on the album.