‘Bad Rap’ Means Bill Ward Can’t Get a Record Deal
Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward said he has seven solo albums he wants to release, but he hasn’t been able to secure a record deal.
He blamed the situation on the fallout over his refusal to take part in Sabbath’s farewell project after saying the contract he’d been offered in 2012 wasn’t “signable.” That led to years of public acrimony between the drummer and his former bandmates.
“It sounds incredible,” Ward told Classic Rock of Beyond Aston, one of those unreleased records. “A fucking masterpiece, even though I say so myself.” He added that he's “surrendered to the idea” that he’ll be able to arrange digital releases for his work but still hoped for physical editions in the future.
“It’s not for lack of trying,” he reflected. “I think I got a bad rap a few years ago and people didn’t want to touch me. We’re within an industry that’s very tiny. I walked out on a deal, you know.” He referred to the Sabbath argument only as “the big thing we went through in 2012.”
Ward remained positive about the band’s early years, though. “It was us against the world," he recalled. "The camaraderie was amazing. We were always fucking around and cracking jokes at each other’s expenses, but we respected each other’s abilities and the friendships we had. We were all from the same place, same background. We had a common language.”
He added that they "played like punks onstage. The band was just fucking crazy. There was this force, all this resentment and anger that was coming out. It came from what we thought was bullshit at the time: politics and war, and upbringing and people’s ways of life.”