With the reissues of the two DIO era Black Sabbath albums, Heaven and Hell and The Mob Rules, they’ve been making the rounds and talking about the albums and sharing old stories. Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler told Eddie Trunk that he is actually the one who came up with the famous heavy metal greeting, the devil horns. It had always been said that Ronnie James Dio came up with using the devil horns because it was something his Grandma did to him, but Geezer says different;
“I’ve got pictures of me doing it since 1971. I always used to do it in the breakdown in the song ‘Black Sabbath’ — just before it goes into the fast part at the end, I’d do that sign to the audience. And on the first couple of Heaven and Hell tour shows, Ronnie was saying, ‘When I’m going on stage, everybody is doing the peace sign to me, and that’s an Ozzy thing. I feel like I should be doing something back to them. What’s that sign that you do in Black Sabbath?’ And I showed him the devil horns sign. And he started doing it from there and made it famous.”
There was a point in time when Gene Simmons from Kiss tried to claim that he came up with this heavy metal greeting as well, but most agree that it was in fact the legendary Ronnie James Dio. According to reports his wife Wendy Dio is not happy with Geezer’s words.
[Blabbermouth] [YouTube]
