BLACK SABBATH Drummer Talks About Outside Projects

All About Jazz has published the second part of their interview with BLACK SABBATH drummer Bill Ward conducted on August 10, 2005. An excerpt from the chat follows:

All About Jazz: Can you talk about some of the things you have done musically outside of BLACK SABBATH?

Bill Ward: "Well, I made a lot of mistakes in the sense that I didn't finish anything. First, when I finally dropped out of the public eye during the 'Heaven and Hell' tour, I tried to do some things with other guys but, again, I didn't know it at the time but in hindsight now I can look back and go, 'My god, no wonder you couldn't get anything done,' because I was so fucked up all the time behind the dope. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't complete anything. And I get these crazy-ass ideas in my head to fly from America to England and at one time I did and I picked up a musician from England, brought him back to the States, and tried to do these incredible things and nothing worked out because I couldn't get it together.

"So, I think I disappointed a lot of people, to be honest. I think I was more of a nuisance than anything else. So, those were my first early things (laughs). But it was after I got sober that I'd become more defined in ‘84. I started writing again. We did the 'Born Again' album but I fell apart with the idea of touring. I got so much fear behind touring, I didn't talk about the fear, I drank behind the fear instead and that was a big mistake. So, I blew the 'Born Again' tour and Bev Bevan, who is a very, very, very nice man, a very good drummer, took over the drum chair on that one.

"In '84, I had reached the point where I tried to go back to the SABS with yet another singer and at the time I just couldn't hang with the idea of trying to do something without Oz. All that was too fresh. It was just too much for me. I took time out and that's when I had to spend a lot of time in recovery. But at that point, that was the point where I sat down and I really started to look at music inside me that I hadn't attended to for years.

"All of us were writing things on the side. We always did outside of BLACK SABBATH. But I started to become very vigorously interested in where it was. I tested my parameters, and that small start, if you like, has escalated into something that's absolutely blossoming because I've tested myself in production now. I've tested myself as a songwriter, I write parts for other musicians, I have my own drummer in my band. But I feel like over the years that I've really tried to learn a lot about just music, period. I even went to a drum teacher for the first time. When I was 50 years old I kind of had cap-in-hand and felt quite ashamed of myself, and I went to Roy Burns and I asked Roy if he could teach me drums. He kind of had a smile on his face and he said, 'Well, you pretty much know how to play drums already, I think.' And I told him I didn't consider myself to be a drummer. If anything I consider myself to be an orchestrated drummer. I define that. But, man, Roy gave me some written stuff to learn. Oh man, I found it so awkward, so hard to read. So, I'm still just on eighth notes. I'm still there, you know. He started me off on quarter notes and I moved to eighth notes and I haven't been able to move on since then.

"Even kids, little kids that I know that have just grown up into drummers, now have gone past their eighth notes and sixteenths. I mean, they do it and I'm looking at them going, 'How do they do that? How do they play like that?' To me, those are real drummers. Those are proper drummers. So, for a long time there was very much of a wasteland in me because I didn't know. I thought, well, how do I categorize myself? I couldn't identify as a drummer. It's like these other guys pick it up and they seem to play in time and they seem to know all these things about drumming, and I have never been able to do that. I have no concept of what they're doing. I went to Roy Burns with all my heart and soul trying to learn how to play drums. I thought, 50 years old, I'm going to learn how to play drums, finally. You know, I'm clueless. I'm absolutely clueless, yet I can play with a band and just feel the musicians and just play to wherever it's got to go, and that's something that just comes absolutely natural to me. So, I don't get it.

"Several things happened to me as I was really, really growing up this time. I stopped looking at what I couldn't play and I stopped being angry about what I couldn't do, and I started to focus on what could I do and could I do it well, and if I could do it well and if I could do it properly, then what I decided to do was enhance that and let that grow, and I stopped wasting my time looking at other drummers thinking about, well, how do they play and how come I can't do that. And from that very day, when that happened — that happened a number of years ago now — I've been in love with other drummers. All the envy, all the anger that I felt, has all dropped away. It's nonexistent. I have such an open mind and a complete enjoyment for any drummer. Anybody, you know, I know that I'm going to enjoy their drumming because drumming now is something to me that has a totally different dynamic. It's like…how can I explain it.... Drumming now is...well, I see it without envy. I try to look at drumming with humility and in doing so, I see the musician and I see the heart and I have no jealousy, or envy, or anything else. I feel like I can really, really listen to a drummer whether he is 96 years old or six years old, and I give the six-year-old just the same amount of credit that I would the 90-year-old because they are in the same process of achievement as drummers. So my outlook towards drumming has completely changed.

"My relationship with my drums has gotten a whole lot better because I used to look at my drums and they used to be like mountainous to me. That looked like a mountainous problem sometimes and it's like, how can I overcome these drums? How can I master them? So, I just stopped trying to do that. I surrendered. Now I play them instead, rather than trying to overcome them. There's a big difference there, you know? Like learning how to play. Aynsley Dunbar, years and years and years ago, years ago, man — this is when Aynsley was playing with Zappa, years ago — he watched me, and I had this technique of playing up here like this, when I was a kid. I'm 22, 23 years-old and I like to play up high, and he suggested to me one time — I can always remember this; I don't think Aynsley would remember this, but I know I do — and he said, 'Why don't you lower your cymbals and play from the shoulder a little bit more?' And today, I have lower cymbals and I play from my shoulder just like Aynsley taught me (laughter). I don't know, there's so many different things here that I'm learning.

"But I've written a couple of albums and I've got another three or four albums in the works. I like working with all kinds of people. When I'm not with the SABS I like to work with all kinds of musicians — rock musicians, metal musicians. In all walks of life, it doesn't make any difference — jazz musicians, brass — whatever it might be. Musically, I feel very rich. I feel that by surrendering up everything that I thought I wanted, instead I found an overflowing well or an overflowing spring that just brings up music endlessly all the time."

Read the entire interview at AllAboutJazz.com.