Terence Michael Joseph "Geezer" Butler (born 17 July 1949)[1] is an English musician, best known as the bassist and primary lyricist of the heavy metal band Black Sabbath.

[6] At the age of ten, Butler passed a test and was invited to attend Birmingham's prestigious Holte Grammar School in 1960.

[6] After growing his hair long as a teenager, he would encounter a nun every Sunday at Mass who found it humorous to refer to Butler as "miss", and he soon decided to never go back.

When The Beatles appeared on a Birmingham television program called Thank Your Lucky Stars in January 1963, Butler waited outside the studio to get a glimpse of them.

The Ruums would perform only a handful of local gigs before breaking up, but it was long enough for Butler to decide that he wanted to devote his life to music.

[4] In late 1967, Butler formed the band The Rare Breed, with an acquaintance named Ozzy Osbourne soon joining as lead vocalist.

[8] Inspired by John Lennon, Butler played rhythm guitar in his pre-Sabbath days, including with The Rare Breed.

Iommi described Butler as being "from another planet" in the band's early days; he took LSD, wore Indian hippie dresses, and was very peaceful.

[5] At the time Black Sabbath was formed, Butler had been hired by a Birmingham steel company to train in the accounting department, and this business experience resulted in him managing the band's finances in the early days.

[5] In the summer of 1977, drummer Bill Ward visited Butler at his Worcestershire home to inform him he had been fired from Black Sabbath after a band meeting, telling him that Iommi and Osbourne questioned his commitment.

The event changed Butler's attitude towards Black Sabbath and he was never able to completely trust his bandmates again, saying "a little bit of me died back then".

The 1980 album Heaven and Hell was recorded with bassist Craig Gruber but Butler returned to the band at the last minute and re-recorded the bass parts prior to release.

In 1988, Butler joined the backing band of his former Sabbath bandmate Osbourne to take part in the No Rest for the Wicked World Tour.

He rejoined Black Sabbath in 1991 for the reunion of the Mob Rules line-up, but again quit the group after the Cross Purposes tour in 1994.

He says that due to this limitation he developed a "very strange style" which would later serve him well when he switched to bass guitar after forming Black Sabbath.

[4] Later, his older brother Jimmy gifted him a brand new Rosetti acoustic guitar that cost him two weeks salary, an act of kindness that Butler says changed his life forever.

With a proper instrument, Butler learned chords from the Bert Weedon book Play in a Day and saved enough money for a new Höfner Colorama electric guitar and Bird Golden Eagle amplifier.

[4] Butler is noted for his melodic playing, and as being one of the first bassists to use a wah pedal and to down-tune his instrument (from the standard E-A-D-G to the lower C#-F#-B-E), as exemplified on Black Sabbath's Master of Reality album, to match Iommi who had started tuning his guitar to C# (a minor third down).

Billy Sheehan of Mr. Big said: "He's a founding father of a whole genre of music and a man who really set the bar early on to be such an integral part of the sound and song structure of Sabbath".

[17] In Mick Wall's biography of Iron Maiden entitled Run to the Hills, founder Steve Harris recalls: "I distinctly remember trying to play along to Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" – at first I just could not get it.

Butler had already met his second wife, Gloria, on 16 September 1978 just prior to Black Sabbath's concert at the Checkerdome in St. Louis, Missouri.

[6] Butler appeared in a promotional ad for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in 2009[24] and later urged fans to boycott Fortnum & Mason until they remove foie gras from their shelves.

Butler said, "I've seen some outrageous things in my time, but watching those poor birds suffer simply so that their diseased livers can be sold on your shop floor is horrific!

[26] A bin-man (refuse collector) had called him an "Irish cunt" when he was a small child, and he repeated the word at the family dinner table that evening, asking what it meant.

[4] In January 2015, Butler was briefly detained after a bar brawl in Death Valley, California and charged with misdemeanour assault, public intoxication and vandalism.

[29][30] He initially ruled out a Black Sabbath reunion, saying the band was "put to bed",[31] though a one-off show was later announced in February 2025 to take place in July of that year.

[32] Butler endorses Lakland basses and has his own signature model,[33] as well as DR Strings, EMG pick-ups, and Hartke amplifiers.