MIND GAMES

If you or I ever reach 72 years of age, we will no doubt be spending a lot of time ignoring everything that people tell us about bass guitars, and refusing to acknowledge anything other than the tried-and-trusted gear that we’ve been playing for the last 50 years. Not so the great Geezer Butler, or Terry as no-one calls him, who—despite a long and productive career as a master of the low end—is still breaking down barriers in bass. “I’ve just bought an Ibanez six-string bass, so I could play it like a guitar,” he tells us, “but then I progressed to a seven-string to have the full range, tuning the bottom string to B.” He’s not merely noodling around on this beast, either. “I’ve come up with lots of different ideas,” he adds. “I like having a few different things to experiment with, so I’ve recently aquired, a three-album collection of the solo records he released during downtime with Black Sabbath. The albums, (1995), (’97), and (2005), come with a bonus disc of rare and largely unreleased material, and collectively represent something of a welcome step outside the day-job band, it appears.