Of course, only other bass players go to Black Sabbath concerts to stare at Geezer Butler. The main attractions are Ozzy and Iommi, the dark underbelly of the singer-guitarist dynamic typified by Mick & Keith and Plant & Page. Iommi bullied Ozzy as a kid, and then bullied him some more once they reconnected—not as grown-ups, just when they were older—during Sabbath’s prime back in the seventies. But then the power balance shifted once Ozzy’s fame as a solo artist eclipsed that of the band that had fired him. Now the value of the brand depended largely on whether revisiting Sabbath was
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