Steven Rosen from Ultimate-Guitar.com spoke with legendary bassist Geezer Butler (HEAVEN & HELL, BLACK SABBATH) about the upcoming Eagle Rock Entertainment release, Black Sabbath: Classic Albums - Paranoid, due out on June 28th in the UK and the 29th in North America.

Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

Ultimate-Guitar.com: What does it feel like hearing 'Iron Man' as the main theme song of the Iron Man movies? Are you blown away when you hear the music all these years later in a modern film?

Butler: "It’s one of the first songs that we wrote and one of the most successful ones way back in 1970 or whatever it was. And it is very strange to hear it. We were influenced by the comic and now the comic’s influenced by us. I mean it’s really strange that after all, Iron Man was always one of my favorite comic books when I was a kid and now it’s sort of turned around. To see our music sort of promoting that film. It’s great."

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Is it difficult to grasp that it’s been 40 years since 'Iron Man' and the Paranoid album first came out?

Butler: "The past 40 years, it’s just flown by."

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Do you miss those days? Is there a feeling you had back then making music with Sabbath that maybe doesn’t exist anymore?

Butler: "Well because we were barely out of our teens and the whole world was all a new experience for us. So everything that we did was for the first time and we were all experiencin’ it together. It really was magical because you’re learning with every new day; it brings a new experience. And when you’ve sort of you know been there/done that kind of thing, you never sort of get that same feeling ever again."

Ultimate-Guitar.com: By the time you recorded Paranoid, did you better understand who the four of you were as a band? You’d done the first album and had that experience so was making this second record a bit easier?

Butler: "Not really ‘cause it was all done so quickly. We started the first album and the second album, Paranoid, was almost all written in one go. Because we were on the road all the time so we’d just literally write and stuff at gigs and I think half the Paranoid album was written when we’d written the first album. So we didn’t really have time to think back then. It was just like, 'We gotta write this, gotta write that.' As long as the four of us enjoyed what song we came up with, we’d just go in and record it."

Ultimate-Guitar.com: In 1970 when Paranoid came out, ZEPPELIN had released Led Zeppelin III and PURPLE put out In Rock. Live at Leeds (THE WHO) was out and as you mentioned, THE BEATLES put out their last album, Let It Be. Did you listen to these other bands to see what they were doing? Were you interested in hearing what your sort of contemporaries were doing musically?

Butler: "Oh, absolutely! The first Zeppelin album, we loved that album. That was probably the one album that the four of us absolutely loved. I mean Ozzy was always a Beatles fan. Tony wasn’t a big Beatles fan; he was more into THE SHADOWS and guitar-based bands and jazz kind of guitar. Bill was into big band stuff: BUDDY RICH, GENE KRUPA, and that kind of stuff. And the one thing that we all came together on was first of all the blues and the typical ROBERT JOHNSON and CREAM and HENDRIX and JOHN MAYALL. And the one band that we went, 'Wow, this is incredible' was Led Zeppelin."

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Working with Ozzy must have been the antithesis of working with Ronnie James Dio in the HEAVEN & HELL band. Conceivably could Sabbath have recorded any of the Heaven & Hell songs?

Butler: "Yeah, because we started off a few songs on Heaven & Hell [that] were the last Sabbath with Ozzy stuff. 'Children Of The Sea' started off as the original band song. Ozzy wasn’t interested in singing on it."

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Were Ozzy and Ronnie at different points of the spectrum in terms of their vocal and musical approaches?

Butler: "Yeah, he [Ronnie] was a lot more seriously musically. Because he can play guitar and he can play bass, he understood what went around it and he could work things out. He’d go away and work things out around the riff on his guitar or whatever. Whereas with Ozzy, whatever er we do at that particular time that’s where it’s always gonna be. Whereas with Ronnie, he’d come up with somethin’ and if he wasn’t satisfied he’d go away and keep changin’ it and keep changin’ it until he was satisfied with it."

Read the entire interview here.