The following year, on Friday 13 February, Sabbath’s breakthrough first LP was released. In November, though, a BBC session for Peel was recorded and broadcast on Top Gear. Now writing their own darker material and employing a heavier sound, Sabbath were managed by Peel acquaintance Jim Simpson, who arranged a special gig at the Lafayette Club in Wolverhampton to showcase the band for the DJ, although they eventually signed for Vertigo Records the following month. According to venue manager Geoff Doherty, the band “gave no real indication of how big they were eventually to become.” īy September, however, it was a different story.
#BLACK SABBATH DRUMMER GENERATOR#
Peel first came across Ozzy Osbourne (lead vocals), Tony Iommi (guitar), Geezer Butler (bass guitar) and Bill Ward (drums) when the Birmingham four-piece were still using the name Earth and he was working as guest DJ when they supported Van Der Graaf Generator at the Bay Hotel in Whitburn, near Sunderland, in March 1969. This appears to have taken place on September 4, 1969.
#BLACK SABBATH DRUMMER SERIES#
As the pandemic hit, he has also begun posting a series of poems via his website.Although John Peel wasn't particularly known as a major supporter of Black Sabbath, the DJ gave early radio exposure to the metal pioneers and indeed later claimed he tried to sign the band to the Dandelion label after seeing them and Medicine Head at a gig in Lafayette Club in Wolverhampton. Much has been made of the public spats that have followed but spend time in a room with all four original members of Sabbath, and what you experience is warmth and humour, rather than the rancour that stems from the politics around them.īill has continued to play with his own band, making music from his home in Seal Beach, California, and releasing it independently. In the four decades that have elapsed since then, Sabbath reunions have come and gone – the latest of which did not feature Bill for various reasons (some financial, some health related). Tellingly, Sabbath replaced him with drummers that were far more prosaic and traditional in their approach. Sabbath recruited Ronnie James Dio as Ozzy went solo, but Bill remained forever regretful of the original band’s demise, initially leaving in late 1980. When Sabbath’s collective spirit began to splinter in 1979, it fell to Bill to tell his best friend Ozzy that he was fired from the band. Throughout that time, Bill Ward’s contribution proved to be immense.Īlong with his friend Bonzo, Cream’s Ginger Baker, the Experience’s Mitch Mitchell and The Who’s Keith Moon, Bill helped define the role of the drummer in a modern rock band – his approach based on the perfect mix of feel and technique. Equally significant was Ozzy’s contribution to the band’s melodic development, his irrepressible performances providing Sabbath with a larger-than-life frontman that fans could identify with.įor the first seven years of the band’s career, the four-piece formed what was a truly invincible alliance that revolutionised heavy music and spawned countless imitators – most of whom failed to grasp the soulful power in Sabbath’s music. While Tony served up a steady supply of riffs that drove the band’s creative process, Bill and Geezer forged a remarkable partnership that lay at the very heart of Sabbath’s music. The allegiances Bill formed with his bandmates – both as musicians and as friends – would help create Sabbath’s unique dynamic both on and offstage.
Within five months that band had folded and the pair had recruited bass player Geezer Butler and singer Ozzy Osbourne to form a band they first christened the Polka Tulk Blues Band, then Earth and, eventually, Black Sabbath. Just before his 16th birthday, he fell into the orbit of his future bandmate Tony Iommi with whom he began playing in earnest a few years later, when he joined Mythology in February 1968.
#BLACK SABBATH DRUMMER FULL#
By the age of 11 he’d become serious about playing and he began to soak up music that included rock’n’roll, blues and – just as significantly – big band jazz.īorn in Aston, Birmingham, on May 5, 1948, Bill immersed himself in a local scene that was full of remarkable drummers and included the likes of his friend, John Bonham (soon to join Led Zeppelin), Clive Bunker (Jethro Tull) and Jim Capaldi (Traffic). Bill Ward started banging things at the age of three, using a set of cardboard boxes before graduating to a cheap drum kit four years later.
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