In a new chat with TalkShopLive, Geezer Butler reflected on how writing lyrics for the song ‘Paranoid’ helped him express his feelings about depression.
The bassist talked about his previous struggles with depression, saying:
“Unless you’ve experienced true depression, you can’t describe it. It’s like you’re going to this awful black hole. And people would say, like, ‘Oh, just go and have a drink or take the dog for a walk.’ That’s what the doctors used to say. ‘Well, go and watch television or read a book.’ And, of course, you’ve got no interest in anything.”
Writing lyrics was like a healing process for Butler:
“So the only way I could express myself was writing the lyrics for [Black Sabbath’s classic song] ‘Paranoid’. I mean, I wasn’t depressed all the time, but when I used to get the bouts of depression, you just couldn’t explain it to anyone, and you were terrified that you go to a mental health person, maybe, and they put you in hospital for years, in a mental institution. So you’d never go to doctors or anything like that. And so you just had to get on with it. And the only way I could get it out of my system was to write the lyrics.”
Butler’s Earlier Comments On Battling Depression
The rocker also said he’s doing well now. In 1999, he was properly diagnosed and took Prozac for six weeks. After that, he felt much better and the heavy feeling he had lifted.
Previously, in an interview with NPR’s ‘Bullseye With Jesse Thorn,’ Geezer again said he couldn’t talk to anyone about his depression:
“And when I did get depression, people used to think I was moody and miserable. And they’d be going, ‘Well, what’s the matter with you? What’s happened to you?’ And nothing bad had happened. So they were saying, ‘You’ve got all the money you want, you’ve got your house, you’ve got your cars and everything. What’s wrong with you? Cheer up.’ And they couldn’t understand that it’s nothing like that. You can have everything you can possibly want in the world, but when you get into those dark, depressing days, nothing matters. All you think about is, like, ‘So I’ll just end it or what.’ And luckily I used to come out of it.”
‘Paranoid’ celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2020. Black Sabbath honored the record with a Super Deluxe Edition released on October 9, 2020.