Geezer Butler shared what Black Sabbath did against a Satanic curse cast on them in their early years, during a recent chat with Goldmine magazine.
“As you say, the head satanist in England called us up to play up their Walpurgis thing in England,” Butler recalled. “They had Satan’s Christmas or whatever it is, and we said no. So, the next thing we heard was that he cursed us and the only way to combat the curse was to wear crucifixes. And I always wore a crucifix from when I was a kid being brought up strict Catholic. So, Ozzy’s dad made us all crosses to wear.”
Ozzy Osbourne previously shared more details about the memory in his autobiography, ‘I Am Ozzy.’ “I couldn’t believe it when I learned that people actually ‘practiced [sic] the occult.’ These freaks with white make-up and black robes would come up to us after our gigs and invite us to black masses at Highgate Cemetery in London,” he noted. “I’d say to them, ‘Look, mate, the only evil spirits I’m interested in are called whisky, vodka, and gin.”
The singer continued, “At one point we were invited by a group of Satanists to play at Stonehenge. We told them to fuck off, so they said they’d put a curse on us. Britain even had a ‘chief witch’ in those days… Mind you, we did buy a Ouija board once and have a little seance. We scared the shit out of each other.”
The dark tones in Black Sabbath’s music and stage shows appealed Satanist groups at the time, leading other similar incidents. In one instance, the band came across a crowd “wearing black cloaks, sitting on the floor with candles in their hands, chanting, ‘Ahhhh,’” in the corridor leading to their hotel room.
Tony Iommi shared of the night, “So, we climbed over them to get to our rooms, but could still hear them chanting. We called security, but that didn’t work. So, we synchronized our watches, opened our doors at the same time, blew the candles out and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to them. Pissed ’em off. They freaked—they were expecting us to help them conduct a Satanic mass and they got ‘Happy Birthday’ instead.”
Though Black Sabbath didn’t follow Satanist practices, their history included some dark moments that varied from biting off the head of a live bat during a concert to snorting live ants.
Some of these memories found themselves a place in Paramount+’s ‘Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored Story of ’80s Hair Metal’ through rockers like Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy.