As the Christmas season begins, Bill is participating in a new series by the website classicrockrevisited.com. Bill’s contribution is a reading of the classic story, “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”. It’s quite cool to listen to. You can grab yourself a copy of it by downloading this mp3.

You will want to check out the rest of the series over at crr’s website. Here is their press release for the entire series:

ROCK STARS RECITE TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS. A CLASSIC ROCK REVISITED EXCLUSIVE

Tis the season to be jolly and at Classic Rock Revisited that means bringing something cool and unique to our readers. This year we asked several of our musician friends to recite the classic Christmas poem Twas the Night Before Christmas. They did an amazing job! Check out Bill reading the poem here!

First up is Black Sabbath’s Bill Ward. He did a great job! Every few days during the holiday season we will add to the list. We have members of the Heart, Boston, Uriah Heep, Krokus, The Tubes, Tower of Power and more all coming your way.

Kevin DuBrow, Quiet Riot

On Monday, November 26th, I was saddened and shocked to hear the CNN News report announcing the death of Kevin DuBrow.

Sincere condolences to Kevin’s family and friends. We shall make an announcement of his passing on our Christmas radio show on December 8th, and also dedicate the show, in part (as we sadly do far too often these days,) to Kevin’s family. In January, during our Metal show, we’ll play two Quiet Riot songs as an acknowledgment to Kevin’s work.

His voice was like no other – an original artist aligned to passion, mayhem and verse.

–Bill Ward

Bill did a half-hour tribute to veteran KNAC DJ Tawn Mastrey during his monthly “Rock 50” radio show on Saturday, October 27. He spoke about how Tawn was so helpful in promoting his first solo effort outside of SABBATH — “Ward One” — and how important a figure she was to all of the metal community.

You can listen to that segment of yesterday’s show at this location.

Tawn Mastrey was a disc jockey, music video producer and one of rock radio’s top media personalities. She hosted a daily show on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Hair Nation Channel 23 and was also heard nationally on Westwood One Entertainment’s “Absolutely Live High Voltage”. Mastery also hosted, wrote, produced and syndicated her own radio specials, “RockZone” and “Sammy Hagar’s Cabo Wabo Happy Hour”, through Mastrey Productions, Inc. She did voice-overs, has owned her own video production company, Ladies In Production Services, and has written a cookbook, “Eat This”.

Tawn Mastrey died October 2, 2007 in Minneapolis at the age of 53. She had been suffering from the effects of hepatitis C which she contracted as a child.

Today we bring you something cool from the archives. It’s the music video for the track “Children Killing Children” from Bill’s 1997 album, “When the Bough Breaks”. We’re glad to finally be able to bring this video to you as it’s been in the vaults unreleased for some time now. This video was the only video produced from Bough Breaks, and we’re glad that you can finally see it.

Bill still sells the Bough Breaks album direct on his merchandise page. If you haven’t heard it before, or just want another copy, you can buy it on Bill’s Merchandise page.

We will be having more video and audio downloads available in the future, so make sure to keep it tuned here. Coming shortly will be a jukebox player for Bill’s site here with some cool audio clips.

Here are the lyrics for Children Killing Children:

(continue reading…)

It’s Bill.

I have been expecting negative letters, rumors, and general gossip mongering over my not participating in the “Heaven & Hell” project. It’s not unusual, as yet I’ve made only one brief statement to confirm that I would not be involved.

It has been brought to our attention that there is a posting on a few web sites which discloses a supposed statement I made to a Clear Channel personnel. THIS IS COMPLETELY FALSE. Every piece of verbiage therein that posting – supposedly quoting me – is FALSE also.

OK. I’m off to get on with my life. Hopefully there won’t be too many shite letters floating around, as I don’t think anyone out there – myself included – wants to waste anymore time on complete falsehoods.

Sincerely,
Bill Ward

Bill has sent in the the 15th edition of his Audio Diary series. This new edition, totaling 15:44 in length is available right now. It was recorded on Saturday August 12th, but due to some technical problems was not placed online until today (Aug 21st). Here’s some of the highlights of what Bill has to say in this edition:

• Talks about several of the bands he plays on his Rock 50 show, and a few words about Dave Mustaine’s Gigantour.
• An update on the Garage Sale
• Bill’s column in the “Hails & Horns” magazine
• An Update on “Beyond Aston”, saying he’s “nearly at the end of it”.
• A few brief remarks about terror issues in the world.

There’s plenty more to hear as well, so make sure to check it all out. Here’s the link to the audio diary:

https://www.billward.com/sounds/diary081206.m4a

(Right click and select “Save As” or “Save Link As” and save the file to your hard drive, don’t just click this)

You need one of any number of free audio players (Winamp, iTunes, or Musicmatch Jukebox) to play this file. Don’t forget about Bill’s Podcast for the diaries, you can get more info on that here.

You can discuss the audio diary in this thread on Bill’s forums here on billward.com. A short note, if you have Windows Media player, you may have to rename the file extension from m4a to mp4 to get the file to play right in that player.

My condolences to Arthur Lee’s family, and my thanks to Arthur for all his music. My most vivid memory as a teenager was rehearsing “My Little Red Book” for the local community centre gig and the Friday night gigs (pre-Sabbath) and later (with Sabbath) in Frisco at Fillmore West or Winterland (I’m not sure which venue.) I was honoured to be a part of helping Love’s drummer (at that time, 1970) fix his snare drum, being high as we were in those days, it was a challenging project. Becoming successful, Love continued to play on. Fond memories.

Arthur Lee – certainly original; influential – yes; different – yes; and so soulful. Thank you again, Arthur. You are remembered fondly, and your music will live in my heart forever.

Bill Ward

Thank you, Syd for the brilliant lyrics, melodies and songs.

Like so many you touched, you reached me also and provoked much to contemplate.

Rest in peace, Syd. My condolences to your family.

Syd and Gerald forever.

–Bill Ward (Black Sabbath)

Comment:

It’s plain, if we look at history, that bombing “the enemy” (these days we can include missiles, also) will only unite a country or a city.

Bombing kills and maims and destroys material worth; it scars the hearts of those still alive (like many, my parents were bombed multiple times, I’ve heard their scars.) Eventually bombing/missile attacks will win nothing, in my opinion.

I think the only positive effect that comes from being attacked is the unification of those in peril. It’s well written historically how people of all nations have tightened their belts, dug in and fought for life itself, overcoming anything “the enemy” tried to destroy. From the London Blitz to Stalingrad, Berlin, Vietnam and Iraq, it’s so obvious that the missiles and bombs bring no real solution to anything.

–Bill

P.S. For those glued to CNN, I humbly suggest the following:

1. Educate yourself in the word objectification.
2. Stop using escalating words and statements, i.e. World War III.
3. Have an open mind and maybe don’t gather up all of the world’s trouble spots, potential, or otherwise (media-fanned), and amplified for dramatic effect, to hit yourself over the head with fear. Don’t do that. You’re worth more, way more, than that.
4. Pray President Bush will preside with an open mind and not be one-sided and judgmental to all those in conflict at this time. A humanitarian process to stop the guns and back off, I hope, will be forthcoming.

In addition to the Summer Sale program, Bill is also starting a series of ebay auctions. The first item up for auction at Ebay is an authentic Black Sabbath drumhead autographed by Bill Ward.

This drumhead is a Remo Snare Drumhead played by Bill Ward from 08-06-05 in East Troy, WI and retired after the Cynthia Woods Pavilion concert in Houston, TX on 08-27-05. The drumhead was autographed by Bill Ward on 05-31-06. Here is a picture of the drumhead (click on it for a larger picture):

This auction starts this evening (Fri, June 30th) at 8PM Eastern Time (in the US). Here is a link to the Ebay auction page. Please note it will generate an error until the auction has actually started.

Finally, if you are the winner of this auction, Bill will personalize the drumhead for you!