I’ve said my piece about Bill’s surprise and surprising new record Accountable Beasts, so go read ‘er here if you like—it’s a long 10/10 review where the main point is Bill’s gotta be one of the great unknown songwriters, singers, arrangers and lyricists lurking in the shadows of a huge band.

So this is the legend’s turn to speak, and as you will see, his words possess the ring of an artist, a little abstract but oddly fresh of phrasing, as he walks through the making of the record designed to be a quick diversion from his 17 years in the cooking of Beyond Aston album, which still lives!

“I wanted to step out a little further lyrically,” says Bill, from his California home, with cold. “What I mean by that is, although I stepped out quite a bit with When the Bough Breaks, it was more of a personal stepping out? Let me try and get around this question. Or through this question. I’ve become more rude, lyrically—more up-front. I’ve used profanity for the first time on a record. I’ve never done that before. And I’ve become a little bit bitter, more cynical, in my music. A bit more bitter and cynical, especially towards some of the topics I normally tend to sing about, which are either love, religion, loss, grief, war (laughs)—one of my favourite topics. So I think I’ve hit harder lyrically. I’m actually really, really pleased with what I’ve done lyrically on this new record. And musically, I’m hitting harder as well. I wanted to have some of the tracks be loud and pure rock, as I understand pure rock to be. Like ‘Accountable Beasts,’ like ‘Katastrophic World,’ like ‘Ashes,’ which has a lot of indication of jazz, even though I put in a lot of different types of feels which are rock-orientated.”

Add to that a gothic feel that could only come from a 67-year-old British drumming legend, a weirdly post-punk aura from a guy who paid no attention to post-punk in the mid-‘80s, and the listener winds up as flummoxed as he was encountering Ward One: Along the Way and the magnificent and Floyd-ain When the Bough Breaks.

But then of course, asked about the drumming on the album, Bill hears...

“Well, obviously jazz, and also, you know, my history with Black Sabbath is very prominent. I played drums on all of the tracks, except for ‘First Day Back,’ so there’s a lot of that rhythm, the same type of rhythm that we use in hard rock or metal. But influences, I love choirs, I love English choirs, I love gospel music. I love a lot of the new Gothic choirs, love what they’re doing. And it was just so easy for me to... like for instance in ‘The Wall of Death,’ there’s two chords that I hit, and I’ve got a whole choir that actually hits at the same time. It’s in the verse and I just love that; it’s so powerful. And then I thought, okay, when we do this live, which I’m hoping to be rehearsing it this week, we are working with people who will be kind of the backing choir, if you like, when we do the songs live. So, yeah, and I’ve just always had that. I was in the church choir as a child. So that’s in the foreground of the music.”
“But there’s definitely jazz, that I love playing,” continues Bill, always a curious reference (but when you study Sabbath carefully, it’s a subtle discerning dimension to the sound picture). “I mean, especially on ‘The Wall of Death.’ But I kind of put a rock hat on as well. In a song called ‘Ashes,’ I use the percussion to pronounce the pattern of sound, with these huge explosive drums (sings a drum beat). It’s almost orchestration, actually. But then again I do play orchestrational on drums anyway, so it’s not unusual for me to say that.”

Asked whether anything lyrically speaking on Accountable Beasts represents a working out of his thorny relationships with the rest of Sabbath, Bill offers that, “There is one that’s definitely written—or was originally written—in anger, and that’s ‘The Wall of Death.’ And I felt very cynical and very bitter when I first started writing that. That’s why we got ‘Keep the pace, motherfuckers’ in there (laughs). There’s a direct link. I must say that that was three years ago. I’d moved on considerably from that place. It doesn’t matter anymore, to me—they do or they don’t. I just see them as people that I knew, and people that I still know, really. So I don’t have that. I was responding to a lot of things that were being said in the press. It’s like, you know what? ‘Screw you, and keep the pace, motherfuckers.’ It’s kind of like saying it in one sentence right there, you know? So that’s connected on there. I think that’s the only one, that’s out there. All the rest of the stuff just came, you know. It’s past experiences. It’s not really anything that’s related to Sabbath.”

It’s been surreal and almost Axl-like to talk to Bill about Beyond Aston, and the spiral continues—it turned out erroneous to be thinking that this new record is that one renamed!

“The only thing I took from Beyond Aston is ‘First Day Back,’” explains Ward. “I just decided to write a bunch of new stuff. Accountable Beasts was supposed to be a really fast album, Martin, because Beyond Aston was taking its own sweet time, and we were kind of getting lost in the tracks. We had 30 songs, and so I thought, okay, fuck everything, I’m just going to do a quick album. And of course that’s eight years ago. And so I just wrote new songs.”

So to clarify, Beyond Aston exists?

“Yeah, not only does it exist, it’s incredible. I was in the studio about a week ago, and we... that’s already being mixed. It’s ten or 12 songs on Beyond Aston right now, and it’s underway. It’s being mixed. It’s like, ‘Yay!’”

We’d be remiss not to give credit to the rest of Bill’s band (Keith Lynch – guitars, Paul Ill – bass, Ronnie Ciago – drums, although see above caveat). Frankly, in any other situation with one old legend and a bunch of young bucks, I’d be keeping to myself the view that those guys really wrote the whole thing, and the old dude just swanned in and sung on it—especially when the music is so odd and pioneering such as Accountable Beasts is. But given the wove wire back through two previous stupendous and ethereal Bill albums years apart in every direction but sounding much like this, I gotta understand the situation not as greed or grasp when Bill says...

“It’s pretty much all me, to be honest. I usually have most of it done, and take it to the other guys, and ask them to put their magic in and around. And it comes out really well. Some things, I’ll say, I don’t know if I want to go that way, you know. So they’ll come up with different things. But I usually try to throw the ball to them in a way that they will really be able to catch it well.”

What the heck do you write on?

“Yeah, keyboard, yeah, just drones. I use drones. I have tons of melodies all the time. I can’t stop writing lyrics, Martin. I mean, I was actually... what time is it right now? It’s 8:15. So at 6:30 this morning, I was working on a new idea. It just gets a bit nuts.”

Would you consider a poetry book?

“Yeah, we’ve got a book of poems that we’re working on. There’s a couple of pieces that we lost. It’s in our storage facility. We’ve got everything else, except these couple of poems. As soon as we find the bloody things, we’re going to put out a little book of poems. Lots and lots of pictures. But if people... I love working with people. If people give me a photograph, I’ll write a poem. Just show me a photograph, and I’ll... same as drumming: if you give me a chord, I’ll react. Same with poetry. If you show me a picture, I’ll write a poem.”

But very distinct in the band is Bill’s long-time right-hand man, Keith Lynch... “Well, first of all, he’s really good guitar player,” says Bill. “I’ve got to say that. Then what makes him even greater is he has patience, and he has an open mind, and he has the ability to see the bigger picture, and he has a visionary outlook. And that’s really fucking important. Especially, it’s important to me, because I’m in there with a keyboard, the keyboard drone, and then I’ll basically explain if I’ve already got a guitar part, for instance. Or if I don’t have a guitar part, I’ll say, okay, have at it. I have no fucking idea where we’re going to go from this point. I might have the basics there; I might have the basic melody. And then, you know, I need him to come through there. And it’s not always easy. It’s definitely not easy with me, because I’ll change things, move things, and I’m always, whenever I’m searching for the song, often I’m on the tail, but I don’t quite catch it sometimes. So he’s a partner with me; he goes after the song. And he doesn’t go after his own self-interest in the song. He’ll go after the song with me. That part’s really important.”

Very, very different from the time Bill spend with Tony, Ozzy and Geezer working on the 13 album. Surely those guys must have appreciated that you could write at a high level.

“Yeah, I was asked to come up with some melodies, and when I came up with the melodies, they didn’t go down very well (laughs). I presented them to Oz, and Oz just kind of threw ‘em to the ground. So that was kind of the end of that. I can jump all over Sabbath music. I can jump all over it and come up with things all over the place. But I can appreciate that it doesn’t always work for Black Sabbath, for the idea that they want for Black Sabbath. Which is, I’ve never had an idea of what we ought to be in Black Sabbath.”

As for the finished 13 album, Bill bristles.  “I’ve got to be honest here. I’ve only heard the first 16 bars of one song, and when I heard my floor toms, I heard the shape of my design. When I heard that, I just went... it’s like steam came out of my ears. I turned it off. And I said I never want to hear that fucking album again. I was not a happy camper with any of that. Very painful. Very painful. Especially when you hear the design of your drumming being played by another drummer. It’s very, very painful listening to that. Thank God I’m beyond all that stuff. I’m now past all that.”

“That’s a total red herring,” says Bill on the official reason cited, as to why he was not on 13, and then not on the tour either. “It’s a complete red herring. And without sounding defensive—I don’t need to be defensive about it; I just want to be honest about it—but I was completely capable of playing all the songs, without stress, without imbalance, without losing my breath or otherwise. I was completely fine. I would’ve been fine touring. I would’ve been fine (laughs). I had already started my pre-tour exercises. And my pre-tour exercises started in August. I always start to work out about five months, six months out before a tour. And I was already doing it and I was fine.”
“The bottom line, Martin, is if I would have signed the shit contract, there never would’ve been an issue with my health. You know what I mean? Sign the shit... just sign the shit contract like you always do, there wouldn’t have been a health problem. You know, so I said... that’s the truth of it. Instead they made me the fall guy of 2013, 2014, 2012 as well, actually. You know, the only problem was, they picked the wrong fucking guy, as far as I’m concerned. You know, I ran into some problems there, in October 2013, but my health was completely okay. My ability to play was completely OK. And I could’ve easily done any touring or anything else. It was just absolute bullshit. But I’ve come up with this new thing now. It’s like, once upon a time it was a signable contract, but since all the crap went out about me, it’s like, now I’ve talked to Oz and basically said, ‘Hey, how about an apology, mate?’ Get an apology and how about righting a couple wrongs? But he basically answered me back in the press ( here ). It was a big public thing, only a couple of weeks ago. Basically he told me to go fuck myself. So it’s like, okay, all right. Well, I won’t do that; I’m just going to carry on with my music (laughs).”

(Bill Ward slider photo by Christopher Wagner)