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26 ноя 2025

BLACK SABBATH's BILL WARD On Meeting JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE's MITCH MITCHELL: 'We Couldn't Stop Talking To Each Other'
 During BLACK SABBATH drummer Bill Ward's November 2025 radio show as part of the LA Radio Sessions, which airs Sundays at 10 a.m. (Pacific Time) on 99.1 KLBP-FM in Long Beach and also online at KLBP.org, he played Jimi Hendrix's "All Along The Watchtower". Bill later talked about the drumming on that song and his thoughts on Mitch Mitchell, the English rock and jazz drummer best known for his work in the JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE, for which Mitch was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1992. Ward said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "What can I say about Mitch? Well, I was privileged — underlined, that's underscore the word 'privileged' — I was privileged to meet Mitch not so far away ago. Both he and I had definitely gotten older. First of all, I thought that his playing on 'All Along The Watchtower' was so unique and so brilliant in terms of, he was playing rock, he was also playing jazz. He was playing everything that worked with Jimi Hendrix and Noel Redding [JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE bassist]. So as from a drummer's point of view, to listen to his work — I was still quite young when I first heard 'All Along The Watchtower', so I was intrigued by the amount of work that he was putting into his drumming, his double-bass drum work, everything. And I think he was cutting edge, leading edge. He was going into places where I would've loved to have gone, but at that point I think I was only 15 years old. So I was dreaming to go there, and I hope I eventually became something of a shadow myself or something of a follower. He was one of the men that influenced me, among many other drummers. But Mitch was just out there and playing frantically with basically a 'I don't give a flying fuck' attitude, which I loved."
Bill continued: "I had the pleasure to meet [Mitch], and when I met him, the excitement and the level of excitement between us both, because Mitch had heard about me and I obviously knew about Mitch, so when we met, we couldn't stop talking to each other. And people would come in and interrupt us and we didn't hear them; we couldn't hear other people. We were so embraced in each other's conversations, and we talked and we talked for approximately one hour nonstop. We talked about everything — we went all the way back to the day and we came all the way forward to right now. We covered everything in between, and we talked about the ups and the downs, the tragedies. And it was one of the most intimate backstage conversations that I think I've ever had with anybody, and I've had a lot of backstage intimate conversations."
Ward added: "I was just so saddened when he passed away. But I saw him get up and play and I knew that he was on a road that had to be that way, and I knew that he was going back out. I also knew intuitively that he might not have been his best, but it's a force inside which says 'we have to go back out.' I have the same thing. I'm 77 years old, and I have that thing inside that says, 'We have to go as far as we can go.' And I can't stop that. I can't switch that off. There's nothing inside that can switch me off from not wanting to do more, write more, be more. And I saw that in Mitch, and I've seen that in a lot of other drumming friends of mine who simply couldn't say 'no', they simply couldn't retire to a place where they were not involved or they had to stay on the road. So I love the man."
The original lineup of BLACK SABBATH — Ward, singer Ozzy Osbourne, guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler — played its final concert this past summer. Dubbed "Back To The Beginning", the charity show was held at Villa Park in Birmingham, United Kingdom on July 5.
"Accountable Beasts", Ward's first solo album in 18 years, was released in 2015 via iTunes. The CD featured Ward's drumming on seven of the album's nine tracks, as well as contributions from Bill's longtime collaborators Keith Lynch (guitar, keyboards),Paul Ill (bass) and Ronnie Ciago (drums),alongside drummer Walter Earl and an array of session singers, including Ward's daughter Emily.
Ward in May 2012 announced that he was declining to join his former SABBATH bandmates for its scheduled dates, as well as the recording of the new album, due to a contractual dispute. After SABBATH shot down producer Rick Rubin's suggestion to replace Ward with Ginger Baker (CREAM) ("I thought, 'Bloody hell?'" Iommi told Rolling Stone magazine. "I just couldn't see that.") for the LP recording sessions, Rick suggested RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE drummer Brad Wilk.
Ozzy told The Pulse Of Radio during SABBATH's last tour that Ward was not in shape to participate. "Bill Ward has got the most physically demanding job of the lot of us, 'cause he's the timekeeper," he said. "I don't think personally he had the chops to pull it off, you know. The saddest thing is that he needed to own up to that, and we could have worked around it, whether we had a drummer on the side with him or something."
It was rumored that SABBATH wanted to bring a second drummer on the road to share duties with Ward, something that Iommi confirmed in 2017 during a question-and-answer session about SABBATH's "Ten Year War" box set.
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