I’m getting real tired of the “No Bill Ward, No Black Sabbath” responses in facebook. In facebook, you see a lot of “No Bill Ward, No Black Sabbath” in various facebook fan pages. Through the official Black Sabbath facebook, Tony Iommi facebook, Guitar World magazine facebook, etc. Any music news website that reports Black Sabbath, the fans will reply back, “No Bill Ward, No Black Sabbath”. While the news reporters online, do a good job keeping up to date with this back and forth feud, the fans are a bunch of assholes and don’t know much about music.

In defense of Black Sabbath, bands move on, bands change. No Bill Ward, No Black Sabbath? Why don’t you say, “No John Bonham, No Led Zeppelin” when they reunited for the O2 show a few years back. Why don’t you say “No Bon Scott, No Ac/Dc”. Why don’t you say, “No Layne Staley, No Alice in Chains”. Why don’t you say, “No Cliff Burton, No Metallica”. Why don’t you say, “No Hilel Slovak, No Red Hot Chilli Peppers”. Why don’t you say, “No Ace Frehley, No Kiss”. Why don’t you say, “No Marty Friedman, No Megadeth”. “Why don’t you say, “No Keith Moon or John Entwistle, No the Who”.

All those bands, I listed above, continued on without their well known members. Their well known members that were the star of the band either died or left, but they all continued the band anyway with various members over the years. Bands change and evolve. I believe all those fans that say, “No Bill Ward, No Black Sabbath” are new fans who are young, who don’t know much about the history of rock too well. Especially the history of Sabbath, who went through too many different members over the years. They just don’t understand it.

Even Bill himself is cool with Black Sabbath going on without him. He even wished them good luck on their upcoming gigs on his website. Bill didn’t demand a high payment that the band couldn’t afford, he said it wasn’t true. He said his payment request was fair, and affordable. All he’s asking for is something “sign-able”, something official. Bill’s requests were pretty simple, and I’m sure it’s easy to give him what he wants. For some reason Sabbath is being difficult on him. I’m not sure of all this legal bullshit, so I don’t know anything about that stuff, but like I said before, all this stuff is behind the scenes of the music business. Bill has his own reasons for making this public. He has his own reasons for backing out of the reunion. The point of this post, is that bands don’t stay together with the same members forever. Except for U2, which is one of the only bands who have the same members for years to this day.

This wasn’t the first time, Bill and Black Sabbath had a public feud. They had one way back in 2006, when Tony asked Bill to play drums with Heaven & Hell, with Ronnie James Dio as the frontman. Bill was on board for that project at first, but later bailed due to musical differences. See? These guys had problems for years. They have no personal hatred against each other, it’s all business, behind the scenes bullshit. Sabbath is used to playing with different people over the years.

This feud is just proof that the music industry is a sleazy business. Are you sure you bands out there really want the fame?

Kev