Ozzy Osbourne has said Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward was replaced for their reunion tour as he ‘couldn’t remember what the fuck we were doing’.
Bill Ward had originally been rolled out as part of the reformed line-up last year, but was soon replaced in the group. At the time, Ward himself blamed contractual disagreements for his swift departure, but Ozzy is telling a different tale.
“We looked at Bill, and he couldn’t remember what the fuck we were doing,” he says in an interview with Mojo. “But he didn’t come clean and say, ‘I can’t cut this gig, but can we work something out, guys, where I’ll come on but with another drummer backing me up?’ Or, ‘I’ll come and play a few songs.’ That would have been cool.”
“You know them yellow fucking stick-on memo notes? He had them all over his fucking drums,” Ozzy continues. “I was like, ‘What the fuck’s that for, Bill?’ He said, ‘I can’t remember what I’m doing.’ I go, ‘How are you gonna remember out of those 500,000 bits of paper stuck all over your kit, which one you’re looking at, Bill?'”
Black Sabbath have arena shows in London, Belfast, Sheffield, Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham booked for the end of this year.