Photo: WireImage
Could a final Black Sabbath show actually be in the cards? Geezer Butler and Ozzy Osbourne hope so, but they have to get the band's original drummer Bill Ward on board.
“Of course there’s an interest [on my part to do it], but there’s a big ‘but’ — you’d have to speak to Bill [Ward] about it,” Butler said in a recent interview (Ward wasn't a part of the band's 2016/2017 reunion). “Everybody wants to do it [but I don’t know if he is] capable [of pulling it off].”
“Ozzy was hoping to finish it all off next year back in Aston, at the Aston Villa [football stadium in Birmingham],” the former Black Sabbath bassist added. “I’m definitely up for it, to finish the whole thing off. … Me and Ozzy have agreed, but I’m not sure about anybody else.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Butler was asked about his 2023 memoir comments divulging that he and Ozzy had been out of contact for years. Thankfully, the rift was a product of "miscommunication" and now the former bandmates talk “every day practically.”
“There was a lot of miscommunication [before],” he admitted. “[Ozzy] didn’t think I was asking about his health ’cause I know he’s been going through a lot of health problems, and I was sending all these messages to him and they weren’t being passed on to him. So he thought I was just ignoring him.”
He continued: “And then the weird way I had to go through Sabbath’s accountant to tell Ozzy I’d sent him all these things. ‘Cause he did this thing in Rolling Stone saying that I hadn’t been in touch with him about his health. So I went through the accountant, and he got in touch with Ozzy and said, ‘He’s just been sending you stuff. He wants to talk to you.’ And we’ve been fine since that.”
Ward and guitarist Tony Iommi have both expressed interest in playing with Black Sabbath again—as long as everyone's healthy enough to do it.