A day or so ago, I was forwarded an email from a fan (thanks Stephan) which purported to be from Bill Ward talking about (or more to the point badmouthing) the Heaven & Hell reunion. Here is the text that appeared in said posting, which had appeared on the Dio Message Board, and the forum area of the official Dio website.
“On a very recent ‘black sabbath’ promo vist BILL WARD was asked by a member of the clearchannel personnel why he had declined the HEAVEN AND HELL PROJECT he said…
‘It is a farce, it’s either BLACK SABBATH or nothing, so are we saying that the band that released ‘heaven and hell’ was not black sabbath..?..Ronnie Dio is demeaning his self because not calling it black sabbath is like saying that the post ozzy band was not really black sabbath at all but some sort of spin off band.
12 years ago Ronnie Dio said he’d never work with me and geezer again, even last year he repeated this statement, so whats suddenly changed..?..probably that he never thought he’d ever be asked to play with us again so he could say he did’nt want to..but hey,,the first time he’s asked he jumps at the chance..whys that..?..probably because his own band only play to 600 people and sabbath to 5000…so it suits him at this stage of his career..what amazes me is how..as with dehumanizer he is so quick to drop his own band to re-join sabbath..its obvious he’s not happy with his own band….well, i’m sorry but Ronnie said he never wanted to play with me again..he can’t suddenly change his mind and expect me to jump…and if geezer see’s it through i’ll be very surprised…….this hall of fame excuse is bull-poo..we were given the hall of fame because of sabbath music from start to finish not just for the ozzy years..why not call the project sabbath the dio years..?…i think theres going to be problems..’ “
Now as most of you know, I also do Bill Ward’s website. I’ve done so for almost 10 years, and during that time I’d like to think I have a handle on what Bill would say, and how he would say it. This REALLY did not sound like Bill at all, so I checked in with some of Bill’s people.
Sure enough, I got a reply back from Bill only a few minutes before posting this saying that the “Clear Channel” remark is totally false, and not from Bill. Bill issued this statement in response to the message today on his website:
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
That’s good to hear, as the original remark just seemed like such crap. Nice to have that confirmed. I will also say this – if Bill does make some sort of remark along those lines, you can expect to find out whether it’s real or not here. Doing Bill’s site I’m bound by what he wants me to put up there, but this is my own Sabs related fan site, so I can address rumours like this more freely. But I know Bill enough to say that even if he DID feel this way towards the guys, there’s no way he’d publicly say something like that, so if you see something like this come up again, I think you can safely disregard it as shit.
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