Bill Ward, the original drummer for Black Sabbath, tweeted a poem inspired by the coronavirus pandemic overnight.
Ward, who posts poems on Twitter prolifically, titled his latest piece ‘Holding On Loose’. According to the post, Ward wrote the poem on May 13th.
It isn’t the first time the coronavirus pandemic has inspired Ward to write poetry. The drummer has signed off many of his poems with “COVID-19” since the beginning of the year. ‘Holding On Loose’ is the second poem Ward has shared on Twitter since the beginning of the month. The poem reads:
#holdingonloose #covid19 #poem pic.twitter.com/OhToKtBbX3
— Bill Ward (@billwarddrums) May 16, 2020
Ward last performed with Black Sabbath in 2005. He was originally slated to partake in the band’s reunion in 2012, but later backed out due to a contract dispute. Band members have contradicted Ward’s claim of a contract dispute, however, saying the drummer was not physically fit enough to partake in the tour.
“Bill Ward has got the most physically demanding job of the lot of us, ’cause he’s the timekeeper,” lead singer Ozzy Osbourne told The Pulse of Radio.
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“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.”
Ward was replaced by Tommy Clufetos, who had previously performed with Ozzy Osbourne on his solo tours. Ward was also absent from Black Sabbath’s most recent studio album, 13. Brad Wilk, of Rage Against The Machine fame, performed on the album instead of Ward.
In 2015, Bill Ward released his third solo album, Accountable Beasts. The record was Ward’s first solo full-length release in eighteen years, and was met with favourable reviews from critics.
Check out Bill Ward’s drum solo from a 1994 Black Sabbath show:
