OZZY OSBOURNE Hopes BILL WARD Can 'Get His Stuff Together' Before Next BLACK SABBATH Album, Tour

In a brand new interview with Esquire.com, Ozzy Osbourne confirmed that BLACK SABBATH will record a new studio album in 2015 and head out on one final tour. He said: "I'm not one of these guys to do my solo stuff one night and BLACK SABBATH the next. I can't do that, you know. It's too much to handle. So with the BLACK SABBATH thing, the record company wants us to do one more record, and we've decided to do one more tour, and at the end of the tour we just disband and I go back to doing my solo stuff. And that's why I released [the solo career retrospective] 'Memoirs Of A Madman', to let people out there know I'm still functioning as a solo artist."

Asked if he has started writing songs for the new BLACK SABBATH album, Ozzy said: "No. Although I texted [guitarist] Tony [Iommi] the other day. I said, 'It would be a great idea if you could send me some musical ideas so I can try and work some melodies around so we don't have to go searching for the song structure.' So I'm not starting from a cold block, you know?"

He added: "What I'm really happy about is, if this is BLACK SABBATH's last hurrah, then we'll have ended it on an up note rather than when I left in 1979 and everybody was fucked up on one thing or another and I was marked out as being the worst, you know. It ended on a bad note, so... The only thing sad about it is I hope [drummer] Bill Ward can get his stuff together to do this because... one of the biggest things I'm proud of in my life was that BLACK SABBATH wasn't a band that was created by some business mogul in London or New York. That we were four guys who had a great idea and it worked from record one, and we still... Would you believe that it took 45 years to get our first No. 1 album in America? It was amazing to me."

Ozzy recently told Metal Hammer magazine that Rick Rubin, who produced last year's "13" album, will likely be back for the next project.

"13" was the first SABBATH album in 35 years to feature Ozzy, Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler together, with Ward the only founding member to sit out the record and world tour.

"13" went to No. 1 in both the U.S. and the U.K., a first for the band in America and only their second chart-topper in their native country since 1971.

Butler said in a recent interview that the band had four tracks left over from the sessions for "13", which could give them a head start on writing the next album.

Ward was on board for the SABBATH reunion when it was first announced in November 2011, but backed out soon after. He later claimed that he sat out the recording and touring sessions because of unfair contractual terms, although the members of SABBATH have hinted in other interviews that he wasn't physically up to the task.

SABBATH has used Ozzy's regular touring drummer Tommy Clufetos since then for live work. RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE's Brad Wilk laid down the drum tracks on "13", which came out in June 2013.

Iommi revealed in January of 2012 that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma and had to return to England every six weeks for treatment throughout the course of SABBATH's year-long tour.