‘One final album’ is what Ozzy Osbourne described Black Sabbath‘s possible follow-up to last year’s ‘13‘ as, and in a new interview with Esquire, he’s spoken of his hope that Bill Ward will bury the hatchet and rejoin in time for the band’s swan-song.
“I hope Bill Ward can get his stuff together to do this,” he said. “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. We were four guys who had a great idea.”
Ward was a part of the original Black Sabbath reunion in 2012 but left soon after. He cited contractual disagreements as the reason, but his estranged bandmates had different stories; Tony Iommi claimed that Ward was taking too long in deciding whether to fully sign-up to the return, while Ozzy more bluntly and, let’s be honest, more amusingly, claimed that the drummer ‘didn’t know what the fuck they were doing‘.