The maligned drummer Bill Ward adores: “Wow!”
If your average rock fan were to boil down who the most foundational drummers still walking the Earth are, the two names likely to spring up are Ringo Starr and Bill Ward.
With John Bonham, Keith Moon, and Ginger Baker now departed, Ward’s percussion power for heavy metal pioneers Black Sabbath places the drumming veteran as a towering figure in the rock canon. It’s a road all rock veering into the hard leads to, the four Brummies’ downtuned-blues attack and lyrical dark storm clouds backed in no small part by Ward’s jazzy but thunderous prowess behind the drum kit.
Ward’s just as much a metal fan as its pioneer, too. Speaking on his regular LA Radio Sessions for KLBP radio, Ward was effusive about one drummer of the metal world whose band commercially eclipses Black Sabbath, yet suffers from a complicated relationship with fans and the rock press over the years.
“I know that he’s a huge fan of Black Sabbath, and I’m a huge fan of Metallica,” Ward revealed, touching on his admiration for one Lars Ulrich. “I just love Metallica. I love Lars’ drumming. He’s had to find himself, as have all the band, they’ve found a niche or a place where they can exist and dominate in heavy metal.”
Quite why Ulrich gets such hate feels more of a mystery as time moves on. Supposedly, a bad mix of suspected corporate ruthlessness in light of the Napster controversy, a motivating push for Metallica to explore artistic avenues away from thrash, and a basic drumming style have all left many metalheads and longtime Metallica fans seriously rubbed the wrong way. Whatever the merits, such mud-slinging never coloured Ward’s feeling about the Danish drummer, even crediting his work with reawakening a new chapter in his life.
“I was in bad shape,” Ward confessed. “I was coming off Sabbath, and we’d been through all the Sabbath years and touring and grinding. It was 1980, and I was just waking up into a new life, I guess, and I was listening around, looking around for music, and I heard a couple of early Metallica albums, and then I heard the black album, and I thought, ‘Oh my god.'”
Released in 1991, Metallica’s eponymous fifth album ushered metal’s explosion into the mainstream, tightening their songcraft and moving on from thrash’s complexity, to the chagrin of the scene purists. For Ward, Metallica’s new sound reached a sky-high bar set by one of music’s most canonical artists. “It had the same effect that The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ had on me,” Ward furthered. “When I heard that, and I heard Lars’ playing, I just was like, ‘Wow! Something really neat’s been accomplished here.’
He added further high praise, “It pointed, ‘This way, guys. This is the way we’re going.’ And it seemed like there was a multitude of music that followed that, and we’ve got this incredible heavy metal thing that we have today.”
To be compared to The Beatles is no mean feat, but Ulrich’s co-steering of the Metallica machine has ensured its survival in a rapidly shifting music climate, taking risks and creative gambles that the likes of Megadeth or Slayer just can’t count on in the same way. Such mutual respect served a fitting live tribute, Metallica playing Villa Park’s Back to the Beginning as a penultimate warm-up send-off for Ozzy Osbourne, Bill Ward sharing the billing, returning to lend his drumming heft for Black Sabbath one last time.
