Before Black Sabbath were Black Sabbath, they were Earth, and before that, Ozzy Osbourne and bassist Geezer Butler were in a band together called Rare Breed without their future bandmates. Speaking to Metal Hammer, the bassist once recounted how Ozzy and Tony Iommi refused to work together. Looking back to their formation, Butler said it wasn’t Osbourne’s primal howl that originally attracted him to the singer – he was the fact he owned some essential equipment. “I saw this advert, ‘Ozzy Zig wants a Gig’ with the magic words: ‘has own PA’,” Butler recounted. “It didn’t matter what he sounded like. It had his address and I went down there, and the next day Tony [Iommi] and Bill Ward went round.”
But despite everything appearing to be in place for the quartet to start a band, conquer the world, change the shape of rock music, etc, this scenario played out just like those old Grolsch ads: 'schtop! It’sh not ready yet!' The problem was that Ozzy and Tony couldn’t stand the sight of one another. “Ozzy had been to school with Tony, and they hated each other,” Butler said. “Tony had bullied him at school, so it was me one day, Tony the next day, so Ozzy decided he’d go with me because he didn’t want to play with Tony. That’s how we started.”
