GEEZER BUTLER Talks BLACK SABBATH's Failed 2001 Album With RICK RUBIN

Black Sabbath hit the studio to work on new material with all four original members and producer Rick Rubin in the spring of 2001, but nothing ever came of it. So what happened? During a recent appearance on Gabbing With Girlfriends, the podcast hosted by his wife and manager Gloria Butler, Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler shed new light on one of the band's long-rumored unreleased chapters.

The slow, bluesy song "Scary Dreams" was performed during Ozzfest 2001, leading fans to wonder for years whether it — and other material from that era — was ever properly recorded. According to Butler, the answer is yes… but the results ultimately weren't good enough to see the light of day.

Asked directly whether Sabbath ever made a proper studio recording of "Scary Dreams," Butler confirmed that the band had written and recorded far more than just one song. "Yeah, I think we had about eight [new] songs written," Butler said. "We did them in Monmouth, down in Wales. And we had at least six [tracks] completed and I think a couple more in the works."

Those sessions caught the attention of producer Rick Rubin, who reached out to the band around 2002 about potentially producing a new Black Sabbath album. Butler recalled visiting Rubin's house to play him the material — but the experience quickly soured his enthusiasm. "As we were playing them, I was thinking, 'What a load of crap,'" Butler admitted with a laugh. "I just didn't like them at all. I just completely went off them."

He explained that something about presenting the songs to an outside listener made their shortcomings impossible to ignore. "I just went, 'Nah, after all these years to come out with this, I don't think it's right,'" he said. "So we knocked it on the head."

Butler had previously discussed "Scary Dreams" in a 2023 interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, where he was equally blunt about the quality of the material written during that period. "Well, if you haven't heard [the songs], then they're not good enough to go on the record," he said at the time. "I mean, 'Scary Dreams'—it wasn't great."

According to Butler, the 2001 sessions felt forced, with the band struggling to recapture the magic that defined their classic output. "That was when we were trying to throw an album together," he explained. "It just wasn't working. It just felt really forced."

Ironically, despite his lack of enthusiasm, Butler acknowledged that "Scary Dreams" was probably the strongest track they came up with—though even that didn't inspire him creatively. "I was so disinterested in it that I didn't want to write the lyrics," he said. Instead, longtime keyboardist Geoff Nichols stepped in to handle the vocal line and lyrics. That's how disinterested everybody was."

Although Butler noted that Tony Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne may have liked some of the material, he emphasized that Black Sabbath only moves forward when all four members are fully on board. "The four of us have to like something for it to be good," he said. "It can't just be two of us."