Ozzy Osbourne says he hopes original Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward will return to the lineup for the band’s final album and tour.
Ward declined to participate in the reunion album – 2013’s “13” – and tour over a contractual dispute; the group recorded the project with Brad Wilk of Rage Against The Machine while Ozzy’s solo drummer, Tommy Clufetos, handled live dates for the tour.
Ozzy tells Esquire: “What I'm really happy about is, if this is Black Sabbath's last hurrah, then we'll have ended it on an up note rather than when I left in 1979 and everybody was messed up on one thing or another and I was marked out as being the worst, you know. It ended on a bad note, so...”
“The only thing sad about it is I hope Bill Ward can get his stuff together to do this because... 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. That we were four guys who had a great idea and it worked from record one, and we still... Would you believe that it took 45 years to get our first number-one album in America? It was amazing to me."
Asked if the band have started writing songs for the final Sabbath album, Ozzy says, "No. Although I texted [guitarist] Tony [Iommi] the other day. I said, ‘It would be a great idea if you could send me some musical ideas so I can try and work some melodies around so we don't have to go searching for the song structure.’ So I'm not starting from a cold block, you know?"
Ozzy has just released a pair of career-spanning “Memoirs Of A Madman” collections.
The CD features 17 of Ozzy's hit singles compiled in one place for the first time, and is available in a single CD, 2-LP set and 2-LP picture disc set configurations.
The 2-disc DVD presents classic music videos, unreleased and out-of-print live performances, as well as interviews from his solo career.
Ozzy says the collections are to remind fans that his solo career is alive and well and will continue beyond Sabbath’s finale.
"I'm not one of these guys to do my solo stuff one night and Black Sabbath the next. I can't do that, you know. It's too much to handle. So with the Black Sabbath thing, the record company wants us to do one more record, and we've decided to do one more tour, and at the end of the tour we just disband and I go back to doing my solo stuff. And that's why I released Memoirs Of A Madman, to let people out there know I'm still functioning as a solo artist."
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