Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler reckons it was, in fact, him who popularised the devil horns hand gesture, not the late Ronnie James Dio. 

In an interview on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk (via Consequence of Sound), Butler argued that he was the one who introduced the gesture to Dio, who is largely credited with having started the trend.

I’ve been doing that sign since — I’ve got pictures of me doing it since 1971,” he said.

“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.”

Butler went on to say that it was when Dio replaced Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath in 1979 that he told him about the gesture.

“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.’ 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,” he said.

When asked why he let Dio take the credit for beginning to use the symbol, Butler said: “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 Beatles’] ‘Yellow Submarine’ album cover, 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 [occult writer] Aleister Crowley used to do it.”

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Butler also alleged that the hand sign wasn’t the only thing Dio “nicked” from him.

“There’s a lot of things that he nicked off me that he claimed that he was the originator… but he made it famous, so I didn’t care,” he said.

“The [Dio] album title Sacred Heart — that’s where I used to go to school. And he called one of his songs ‘One Foot in the Grave’. I jokingly said, ‘We should call the album One Foot in the Grave.’ And then when he left [Sabbath], he called one of his songs that. He was very naughty about things like that. And when I did an autograph, I’d write ‘Magic’. So Ronnie started writing ‘Magic’ as well. In fact, he called his [Dio] album Magica. He was very naughty about things like that.”

Meanwhile, prior to his passing Dio repeatedly credited his Italian grandmother with introducing him to the sign.

It’s not the devil’s sign like we’re here with the devil,” he told Metal Rules in 2001.

“It’s an Italian thing I got from my grandmother called the ‘Maloik.’ It’s to ward off the Evil Eye or to give the Evil Eye, depending on which way you do it.”

Check out Geezer Butler discussing the origin of the devil horns gesture:

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