“I thought I could live without it, but I can’t”

This is the story of an unlikely rebirth. The resurrection of a Midlands legend whose glory days were widely assumed to be over. But enough about Aston Villa FC, the long-suffering football club that Geezer Butler has spent the last 90 minutes cheering to Premier League promotion from his California home. “I hope I’m making sense,” says the man who has spent most of his life in Black Sabbath, picking up the phone in Los Angeles after the final whistle. “I’m still hoarse after staying up all night shouting at the TV. I’m going back to bed after this…”

Butler has another reason to be cheerful: the new band Deadland Ritual, which he never expected to find himself in, two years after Black Sabbath signed off and a matter of weeks before his seventieth birthday. “I thought I’d been in my last band,” he says. “I even swore to myself that was it, never again. I didn’t even pick up a