During his final years, Ozzy Osbourne released two albums: “Ordinary Man” (2020) and “Patient Number 9” (2022), both produced by Andrew Watt, who had also recently worked with The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney. In an interview with Lipps Service, Andrew talked about the final Black Sabbath album that Ozzy wanted to make but that ultimately never happened.
Although guitarist Tony Iommi previously said in another interview that he didn’t think it was a good idea and turned down the offer, Watt said everyone was on board with it, but drummer Bill Ward said he couldn’t do it. Although no reason was specified, Ward has been dealing with health issues in recent years.
Andrew Watt says final Sabbath album didn’t happen because Bill Ward said he couldn’t do it
“So what happened there was we had made these two Ozzy albums, and Ozzy wanted to make another album. (He) didn’t wanna do exactly the same thing that we had done before, so he was into the idea of doing a Sabbath album. So Sharon and him said I had to call and talk to each guy and see if they were into it. So I called Tony, talked to him, and he said he was into it, as long as Bill was there. That was everyone’s thing. Ozzy was, like, ‘If Bill does it, we’ll do it.'”
“And Geezer said, ‘If the other guys are in it, I’m in to do it.’ So I had this 40-minute call with Bill, which was one of the weirdest and funniest phone calls just ever, of all time. It was on the phone. But it was personal things that were talked about on that phone call that made Ozzy and Sharon crack up. It’s, like, an inside joke. Long story short, it ended up that Bill was not gonna be able to make the record. Like, he wasn’t able to do it for a multitude of different reasons. So that’s why that didn’t happen. But the other guys were all into doing it. And then Bill sent us all this long e-mail, and then it was over,” Andrew Watt said (Transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Black Sabbath’s final studio album is “13” which didn’t feature Bill Ward. He was replaced by Brad Wilk (RATM, Audioslave) in the studio.