Into the Void: From Birth to Black Sabbath—and Beyond

Black Sabbath bassist Butler recounts his unlikely route from hardscrabble childhood to international rock fame in this intermittently revealing and frequently off-putting debut memoir. Born in 1949 Aston, England, to hardworking Irish Catholic parents in a household too poor to afford toilet paper, Butler was drawn to music early on. He built a guitar from a carpentry kit and began playing it around age 10, nurturing dreams of becoming a professional musician. He teamed up with friend Roger Hope to form the band Rare Breed in 1967; singer Ozzy Osbourne joined a few months later. In 1968, Osbourne and Butler left Rare Breed and joined drummer Bill Ward and guitarist Tommy Iommi to form Black Sabbath. Butler traces the band’s ups and downs, including struggles to get booked and their fallout with a cheating manager, and recalls Osbourne’s habit of depositing his waste wherever he felt like it. While the wealth of behind-the-scenes detail may prove tantalizing to some, others will be turned off by the author’s creepier anecdotes (at age six, he dug up a buried pet dog to cut it open and look for its soul) and hyperbole (“Sabbath must be the most successful bunch of outsiders in music history”). This is best suited for diehard fans. (June)