Bill Ward

Wakeman discusses the jazz-styled Black Sabbath covers of Jazz Sabbath and how Ozzy surprised him with his Dad’s keyboard from the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath sessions. 

1980 could have been a disaster for Black Sabbath. They had recently parted ways with Ozzy Osbourne, their batshit crazy yet undeniably entertaining frontman, and drummer Bill Ward’s Hemingway-esque boozing was threatening his very ability to play. Instead of accepting their inevitable slide into obscurity, band masterminds Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler knuckled down and wrote eight songs that expressed a variety of new dynamics, textures, and emotions. Oh, and they recruited a little ol’ singer named Ronnie James motherfucking Dio, whose previous work with Elf and Rainbow had already cemented him as one of rock’s premier wailers.

In 1985, a kid by the name of Tommy Memzercardo released “The Innocent, The Forsaken, The Guilty”, an off-kilter fantasy/epic metal EP featuring Bill Ward on drums. Back then, the former Black Sabbath drummer couldn’t be credited for legal reasons, while Memzercardo was a mystery all of his own, calling himself The Mezmerist and playing…