Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has said the band’s reluctance to delay their reunion after his cancer diagnosis was the reason why Bill Ward withdrew from the comeback.
Ozzy Osbourne has recently said drummer Ward’s departure was simply down to the fact that he ‘didn’t know what the fuck they were doing‘, but Iommi tells Guitar World he didn’t agree quick enough to the terms of his contract.
“Once I heard ‘cancerous lymphoma’ I thought, ‘That’s it. I’ve had it’,” Iommi explains. “We waited a long time for Bill and we wanted to sort it out. But at the end of the day, especially after I was diagnosed, I thought ‘Fucking hell, that’s it – we’ve got to get a move on.”
“I might pop off next year!’ So I emailed him and said ‘Bill, we can’t wait any longer. We’ve got to get a move on with it’. And that was it.”
In the end, the vast majority of Black Sabbath’s planned European tour of last year was cancelled. However, more dates have already been played this year, and they will release the new album ‘13‘ next month.
