Bill Ward kertoo tilanteestaan Black Sabbathin kanssa
Black Sabbathin laulaja Ozzy Osbourne ja yhtyeen alkuperäinen rumpali Bill Ward ovat vaihtaneet kiivaasti sanoja liittyen Wardin terveydentilaan, kykyyn soittaa rumpuja ja hänen nykyiseen asemaansa Black Sabbathissa. Pari päivää sitten Ward vaati Osbournea oikaisemaan sanansa julkisesti hänen sanottuaan Wardin olevan huonossa kunnossa ja kykenemätön soittamaan rumpuja. Tuon jälkeen Osbourne julkaisi viestin, jossa väitti edelleen Wardin olevan huonossa kunnossa ja sopimussotkujen olleen keksittyjä.
Tämän kaiken jälkeen Ward on antanut Rolling Stonelle haastattelun, jossa hän kertoo hänen ja Osbournen välisestä sanasodasta sekä tilanteestaan Black Sabbathin kanssa. Hän kertoi mm. olevansa täysin kykeneväinen soittamaan rumpuja niin studiossa kuin kiertueellakin. Tässä muutama lainaus haastattelusta:
”My part in this is to let the fans know the truth about me. If he feels that he’s been wrong in any of his statements and if he wants to apologize, that’s fine. And perhaps we can even resume a friendship again, but I don’t wanna resume a friendship with him if he’s gonna be like this all the time.”
Artikkeli jatkuu mainoksen jälkeenMainos päättyy
”I haven’t left. If I was leaving the band, I would make a statement saying I’ve actually left the band.”
”They haven’t approached me directly. They talk about it, and that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to be vocal about this now, because I feel like sometimes when I hear those stories, they’re talking about me, but they don’t actually directly contact me. The only person that’s directly contacted me was Geezer, and that was a couple of years ago. He was asking me if he could do one more gig with me, and I basically said, ’Well, you better ask Sharon.'”
”One of the most painful things for me was Ozzy claimed in 2012 that I ought to have spoken up to the band and admit that I couldn’t cut it. But in my world, there was no such reason to do that. I was completely capable of playing in the studio and on tour.”
Artikkeli jatkuu mainoksen jälkeenMainos päättyy
”The truth is that I was overweight for playing onstage, but I wasn’t overweight for the studio. I could cut tracks with the weight that I arrived at. All of those guys know that I have a really rigorous exercise regimen. In August 2011, I started to drop weight because, at that point, I thought, ’OK, we’re probably at five or six months away from actually doing a tour.’ When we were in England, I was walking six miles before breakfast, I was doing bench presses, I was walking possibly two to three miles in the evening, and I was playing, like, three to four hours a day.”
”I wanted to earn some better money than we had been in the past for festival gigs. I think it was somewhere like $80,000 for the festivals, which I can hear everybody gasp now, but $80,000 is not a lot of dough when you’re playing festivals. And for all the other gigs in between, I was prepared to negotiate in a correct and proper manner.”
”I also wanted a little piece of the action in publishing. It was just a gesture of good faith that ’drumming means writing.’ If you’re laying a track, you’re writing. I don’t play beats. I hate playing beats. I’m an orchestration drummer. I’m a musical drummer. I’m a visionary drummer and I have been for a long, long, long time. I was asking for recognition. Nothing of what I asked for is exorbitant, wrong or over the top. I thought I was actually very reasonable.”
”I know that they’ve suggested that I played half the gig, and I don’t want to play half the gig. I’m quite capable of playing a complete fucking Black Sabbath set.”
Artikkeli jatkuu mainoksen jälkeenMainos päättyy
”I haven’t listened to the 13 album actually. I’ve only listened to one song, and I think it was called ’God Is Dead?’ I listened to it for 30 seconds, and then I listened to a drum pattern that I used originally on the track, and I switched it off. I’m not saying that to create a problem or anything or be clever about it. I’m just saying I don’t want to hear my ideas being played by somebody else on the album. I won’t listen to that album. I just don’t want to find out what else is on there. And quite frankly, I didn’t like what I heard. It doesn’t sound anything like what I consider to be Black Sabbath.”
”I come with a realistic point of view. I have no hidden agendas. I have no desire to batter them into the ground. I have no desire to argue with them or to be mean or weird toward them. There are some things that have been said; they need to be cleared up. They need to be addressed before I can move on and feel comfortable in saying, ’OK, let’s renew our friendship.'”