The accent has hardly changed in over 70 years. He may have made his home in Utah, where he lives with Gloria, his American wife of 43 years, but nothing has ever taken the working-class Brummie out of Geezer Butler. His roots remain obviously preserved in his doleful speaking voice. The downbeat, sing-song cadences that make him sound as if in a continual state of surprise. His every sentence ending like the punchline to a self-deprecating joke.
These days, Butler mournfully intones, he is not doing so very much of anything. As he describes it, generally he wakes up each morning with three cups of tea. Yorkshire Gold, always. He has his two dogs to walk. He lost his eldest dog just the other day. The Butlers have three cats, too. All are rescue animals. The man who shared a stage with notorious bat-biter and chicken-slayer Ozzy Osbourne is an inveterate animal lover and animal rights activist, a campaigner for PETA and the Humane Society of the United States. Otherwise, he passes his time reading books, non-fiction history mostly, and watching his beloved Aston Villa on the telly. Seventy-four in July, he bemoans the fact he’s starting to feel his age.
