Almost totally off my own topic but I'm beginning to think about how to let site contributors explore anecdotal, possibly conflicting and overly detailed information about compositional contributing: On that note, does anyone know if Geezer Butler wrote any of the quintessential Sabbath riffs (not just the lyrics), or was it all Tony Iommi?
And to what extent did Geezer Butler borrow from what Ozzy initially sang:
"Butler wrote most of the song lyrics by borrowing phrases from Ozzy's stream-of-consciousness vocal melodies and fleshing them out. Ozzy did very little writing until he left the band."
Hmm, maybe not an intentional stacking of the deck against the bass player's contributions and I'm honestly grateful that lawyers didn't prevent the whole Sabbath thing from occurring in the first place by making it untenable. But I would be curious to know what stream-of-consciousness stuff was there, and what was mostly or entirely Geezers.
So like, Generals gathering the masses, was that Ozzy's phrase?
"You know that Geezer, he was always slipping away with Ozzy's strangely and astonishingly coherent, gurgles & burbles and kinda fleshing them out a tiny bit." Fascinating skimpy crediting process.
Maybe this is why the classic Chemistry bands (perhaps Zep, Who, Stones, Beatles) are often unequaled by individual member efforts.
Similar to Court of the Crimson king being more or less Pete Sinfield's Donovan-esque strumming song, like C, G, D strumming, and turned, by keyboardist Ian McDonald, using guitar as a composition tool, into the dark work on the album essentially by the keyboardist. Yet, Sinfield had the vision to make a progressive rock/jazz/classical inspired production...
Ian McDonald:
(keyboardist, used guitar to write the music for Court of the Crimson King..)
