2017 is slowly turning like 2016 as a number celebrities in their respective fields are being taken away by the Grim Reaper's long reach. Geoff Nicholls - Black Sabbath's former keyboardist, has just passed away at the age of 68.
The musician has been battling with lung cancer for quite a while now and has succumbed to the disease Saturday, Jan. 28. Band member and good friend Tony Iommi even took to Twitter to break the sad news to fans.
Iommi stated that he is saddened to have lost a dear friend to Nicholls and added that he has remained supportive of him in the past four decades. He went on saying that he will miss Nicholls dearly and will stay in his heart until they meet again. The band's frontman, Ozzy Osbourne did the same on Twitter saying that he too was saddened by the terrible news as Nicholls also remained a true friend to him over the years.
Nicholls joined Black Sabbath in 1979 for the band's 1980 album dubbed "Heaven and Hell." However, he was yet considered an official member of the band until Sabbath's twelfth studio album entitled "Seventh Star" that went out in Jan. 1986. He left Sabbath a decade later, though he occasionally plays for the band until 2004, Billboard reported.
Iommi, on the other hand, was diagnosed with Lymphoma in 2013 which is a type of cancer that targets the immune system. Furthermore, the guitarist-songwriter even speculated that his ongoing treatment of the disease may have pushed Sabbath's drummer - Bill Ward to decamp from the group, according to Mirror.
Aside from Nicholls, another equally talented rock icon - Butch Trucks of the Allman Brothers Band, also passed away last Jan. 24 inside his West Palm Beach condo. The founding member of the group has been reported to have committed suicide by shooting himself in the head in front of his wife.
Watch a couple clips reporting about both Nicholls and Trucks including a short history of their respective careers: