Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler recently spoke with Louder Sound, where he explained how the band ended up wearing crosses.
He said:
“There was some black magic organization that wanted us to play at a stone circle. We said no – we were sort of against Satan, as opposed to promoting it – so they allegedly cursed us.
“The head of the white witches called our management and said he knew we had a curse put on us, and we should wear crosses and he’d do a ritual thing. It all sounds so hokey.”
When he was asked if they believed they were cursed, Butler responded:
“Yeah, that’s why we started wearing crosses! Ozzy‘s father made them for us. He used to work at a metal factory making car parts, so he made us these great big crosses out of spare metal.”
In a recent interview with Classic Rock, Butler said that he is he isn’t ruling out a one-off Black Sabbath reunion.
“If it came up, I wouldn’t say never. I can’t imagine it ever happening, but then I said that about the Sabbath tour, and it happened, so who am I to know?”
Drummer Bill Ward also expressed the desire to team up with his old teammates again:
“Hi everybody. My name is Bill Ward, and I wanted to say that I love Tony [Iommi, guitar], Geezer [Butler, bass] and Ozzy [Osbourne, vocals] very much. I’ve loved them for a long time, and I still do. And I would be very open-minded to any ideas about playing together in the future. That’s it. Love you all. Thanks.”
On 11 November, 2011, Iommi, Butler, Osbourne, and Ward announced that they were reuniting to record a new album with producer Rick Rubin and to start touring in 2012. In February 2012, however, Ward left before work commenced on 13, the first studio recording to include original band members Iommi, Osbourne and Butler since the live album Reunion (1998), which contained two new studio tracks.