“He said, ‘What’s all this I hear about you doing an album? You haven’t invited me.’ ” Ward turned the microphone over to Osbourne for the album’s most Sabbath-like rockers, “Jack’s Land” and the excellent “Bombers (Can Open Bomb Bays).” Bruce’s clear, emotive tenor serves as the voice of comfort and encouragement on the lullaby, “Light Up the Candles,” and on “Tall Stories,” an affirmative rocker in which Ward writes of regaining the ability to play music. Ward contacted Bruce and asked him to sing two songs, even though he had never met the former Cream singer-bassist. Then, starting in 1987, he began work on “Ward One” with a nucleus of Southern California-based musicians, including guitarists Rue Phillips and Keith Lynch, who helped Ward write the music on several of the album’s songs. Ward tried playing with other musicians for two years but failed to find a focus. First, he rejoined Butler and Iommi in Black Sabbath, but he soon quit the band, feeling that it had stagnated (Iommi still leads a rump version of Black Sabbath).
#BLACK SABBATH DRUMMER HOW TO#
I found a guy who had this inside him, but didn’t know how to let it out.”įor Ward, 41, the process of finding a musical self began after he gained sobriety in 1984.
Finding out what I’m capable of, what’s inside-that’s what this album is about. I’d have an idea, and I’d keep it inside. When it came to writing songs with Black Sabbath, “I’d let things pass. “I guess I put in what I could, how I could,” he said of his creative role in Black Sabbath, which Ward formed in 1968 along with Osbourne, bassist Terry (Geezer) Butler and guitarist Tony Iommi. Ward gets some all-star help from Ozzy Osbourne, his old Black Sabbath band mate, and from Cream alumnus Jack Bruce, each of whom sings the lead on two songs.Īs a founding member of Black Sabbath, Ward had some creative input, but he faced nothing like the wide-ranging demands of writing, singing and arranging an album of his own. Ward sings lead vocals for the first time in his 22-year rock career, in a voice that is limited, but evocative after the manner of Roger Waters’ dramatic singing in Pink Floyd (minus the screams). While much of “Ward One” recalls the brooding tone, wailing guitar and tromp-and-chug rhythms of vintage Black Sabbath, the album also has a strong adventurous streak that allows for an unflagging emphasis on melody, atmospheric textures that recall Pink Floyd, African rhythms not unlike Peter Gabriel’s, and even the softness of a caressing rock lullaby. In between, Ward’s song cycle probes the dark, lonely tightrope walk of an addict struggling to reach for hope before he tumbles into despair. It ends with the sound of footsteps, first circumspect, but growing steadily stronger until the steps are joined by the sound of a light, optimistic whistle.
#BLACK SABBATH DRUMMER SERIES#
The album begins with the ominous crackle of an ambulance radio relaying grim medical reports-a sound that Ward says became an almost routine part of his life in 1983 as it dwindled into a series of physical emergencies and mental crises fueled by his alcoholism. He found it in that alley, where he stuck a borrowed 12-gauge shotgun in his mouth. In his last days, Ward the drinker lived in the streets of Huntington Beach, dogged by pneumonia, looking for a way out. Toward the end, it estranged him from his friends and family.
Eventually, Ward’s alcohol addiction stripped him of his ability to function as a musician. Once he had been a millionaire rock star, living in a fine, 19th-Century home on a hill overlooking a village in his native England. But he was pretty messed up.’ Bill Ward the drummer seems like a distant friend these days.”īill Ward the Black Sabbath drummer died six years ago this week in an alleyway in Huntington Beach. “I know who that guy was, and I look at him sometimes,” Ward said Tuesday as he sat in a diner on Pacific Coast Highway, not far from his home a few blocks from the ocean in Seal Beach. “My ego wanted you to see this heavy metal monster-Grrrr!” Ward said, hiking up his shoulders under a navy blue double-breasted blazer as he imitated a mad-dog rocker’s growl. The role was prominent, and highly remunerative: drummer for Black Sabbath, one of the earliest, most extravagantly popular heavy metal rock bands. For most of his adult life, Bill Ward had a role to play and a ready-made mask to wear.
0 kommentar(er)
