BLACK SABBATH’s rarely discussed song “Scary Dreams” has long intrigued fans, especially since it surfaced live during the band’s 2001 Ozzfest run but never received a proper studio release. Now, bassist Geezer Butler has once again shed light on why that material — and an entire potential album — was ultimately abandoned.
Speaking on a recent episode of Gabbing With Girlfriends, the podcast hosted by his wife and manager Gloria Butler, Geezer was asked directly whether BLACK SABBATH ever completed a studio version of “Scary Dreams.” His answer made it clear that the band came close — but not close enough.
According to Butler, the group had been actively writing and recording new material at the time, working out of Monmouth, Wales, and accumulating a sizable batch of songs before momentum abruptly stalled.
“Yeah, I think we had about eight [new] songs written [during those sessions],” Geezer said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “We did them in Monmouth, down in Wales. And we had at least six [tracks] completed and I think a couple of more in the works. That’s when [producer] Rick Rubin first got in touch with us. He wanted to do that album back in — I think it was 2002. And we went to his house to play him what we had, and as we were playing them, I was thinking, ‘What a load of crap.’ [Laughs] I just didn’t like them at all. I just completely went off them. I don’t know if it was ’cause I was playing them to somebody else. And I just went, ‘Nah, after all these years to come out with this, I don’t think it’s right.’ So we knocked it on the head.”
That moment, Butler explained, effectively ended any chance of the songs — including “Scary Dreams” — moving forward. Despite interest from Rick Rubin, Geezer felt the material simply didn’t live up to the band’s legacy, prompting him to pull the plug altogether.
Those feelings weren’t new. Butler had previously addressed “Scary Dreams” during a 2023 interview with Ultimate Classic Rock, where he spoke candidly about unreleased SABBATH material from the band’s later years and why much of it remains unheard.
“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’, you know, it wasn’t great. That was when we were trying to throw an album together; I think it was in 2001. It just wasn’t working. It just felt really forced. ‘Scary Dreams’ is probably the best we came out with. I was so disinterested in it that I didn’t want to write the lyrics or anything. Geoff Nichols, the keyboard player, came out with the vocal line and the lyrics. [Laughs] That’s how disinterested everybody was. It was just too forced. We had about five or six songs and I didn’t really like them, but I just went along with it for Tony [Iommi, SABBATH guitarist] and Ozzy‘s [Osbourne, SABBATH singer] sake. We went to play them to Rick Rubin and I just thought, ‘God, these are really crap.’ I think Tony and Ozzy might have liked them, but they just weren’t up to scratch. I didn’t think so. The four of us have to like something for it to be good. It can’t just be two of us, so that’s as far as it went.”
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