For diehard Black Sabbath fans, the 2001 Ozzfest tour remains a fascinating “what if” moment in the band’s history. During that trek, the band regularly performed a new, bluesy track titled “Scary Dreams,” teasing a potential studio album that never materialized. Now, legendary bassist Geezer Butler has candidly explained exactly why those recording sessions were abandoned: the music simply wasn’t good enough.
In a revealing appearance on the latest episode of “Gabbing With Girlfriends“, the podcast hosted by his wife and manager Gloria Butler, Geezer pulled no punches when recalling the quality of the material they had prepared at the time.
According to Butler, the band had made significant progress on a follow-up record, writing nearly an album’s worth of material in Wales. However, a listening session with super-producer Rick Rubin proved to be the project’s death knell.
“Yeah, I think we had about eight [new] songs written [during those sessions]. We did them in Monmouth, down in Wales. And we had at least six [tracks] completed and I think a couple of more in the works,” Butler explained (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “That’s when [producer] Rick Rubin first got in touch with us. He wanted to do that album back in — I think it was 2002. And we went to his house to play him what we had, and as we were playing them, I was thinking, ‘What a load of cr*p.’ [Laughs] I just didn’t like them at all. I just completely went off them. I don’t know if it was ’cause I was playing them to somebody else. And I just went, ‘Nah, after all these years to come out with this, I don’t think it’s right.’ So we knocked it on the head.”
This isn’t the first time Butler has disparaged that era of songwriting, though his recent comments are notably blunt. In a 2023 interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, he confessed that his enthusiasm for the project was so low that he—the man responsible for the lyrics to “War Pigs” and “Iron Man“—outsourced his duties to the band’s keyboardist.
“Well, if you haven’t heard [the songs], then they’re not good enough to go on the record. I mean, ‘Scary Dreams‘, you know, it wasn’t great. That was when we were trying to throw an album together; I think it was in 2001. It just wasn’t working. It just felt really forced. ‘Scary Dreams‘ is probably the best we came out with,” Butler admitted. “I was so disinterested in it that I didn’t want to write the lyrics or anything. Geoff Nichols, the keyboard player, came out with the vocal line and the lyrics. [Laughs] That’s how disinterested everybody was. It was just too forced. We had about five or six songs and I didn’t really like them, but I just went along with it for Tony [Iommi, Sabbath guitarist] and Ozzy‘s [Osbourne, Sabbath singer] sake.”
Ultimately, the decision to scrap the album came down to a democratic standard of quality. Butler felt that releasing sub-par material would tarnish the legacy they had built.
“We went to play them to Rick Rubin and I just thought, ‘God, these are really cr*p.’ I think Tony and Ozzy might have liked them, but they just weren’t up to scratch. I didn’t think so. The four of us have to like something for it to be good. It can’t just be two of us, so that’s as far as it went.”
While those 2001 sessions remain in the vault, Butler has been active celebrating his past work. His autobiography, “Into The Void: From Birth To Black Sabbath – And Beyond,” was released in June 2023, offering a deeper look into his life and career. Additionally, his solo trilogy—Plastic Planet (1995), Black Science (1997), and Ohmwork (2005)—saw a vinyl reissue campaign in 2020.
Most recently, the original Black Sabbath lineup reunited for a massive hometown celebration. At the “Back To The Beginning” concert last year, the quartet performed four songs for over 40,000 fans at Villa Park in Birmingham, proving that while “Scary Dreams” may have been a misstep, the band’s classic catalog remains untouchable.
