The “Devil Horns” gesture and who invented it was always a controversial topic in music history. It is connected with Ronnie James Dio, however, Gene Simmons of KISS tried to take credit for it. On the other hand, we must not forget that John Lennon did that hand signal on the cover of the “Yellow Submarine” album (by the Beatles, 1969).
Well, we have some more information on this topic, since Geezer Butler spoke to SiriusXM’s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” and said that he was doing the gesture years before Ronnie James Dio: “I’ve been doing that sign since — I’ve got pictures of me doing it since 1971. And 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,” referring to original SABBATH singer Ozzy Osbourne, whom Ronnie replaced. “I feel like I should be doing something back to them.’ He says, ‘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”.
Why hadn’t Butler publicly revealed before that he was responsible for showing Dio the devil horns? Butler answered: “”I didn’t really think much of it. As I say, I’ve got pictures of me doing it in 1971. And it was just an alternative to Ozzy’s peace signs, I was doing it. And if you look at the ‘Yellow Submarine’ album cover [from The Beatles], John Lennon’s cartoon character is doing it, in 1966 or whatever it was. So it’s an old sign. I was just doing it ’cause [English occultist] Aleister Crowley used to do it”.
Ronnie himself said his Italian grandmother often invoked the horns to ward off the malocchio (the evil eye), bad luck or malevolent spirits.
To the above, we must add that also the two members of the band Coven was doing the “Devil Horns” gesture on the back cover of their first album (released in the summer of 1969).
