The Black Sabbath co-founder and drummer Bill Ward had the chance to meet the late legendary Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell a couple of decades ago. It was a magical moment for him and in an interview with 99.1 KLBP-FM, he recalled what they talked about. The British drummer passed away in 2008 at the age of 62.
Sabbath’s drummer Bill Ward recalls his magical meeting with Mitch Mitchell
“What can I say about Mitch? Well, I was privileged — underlined, that’s underscore the word ‘privileged’ — I was privileged to meet Mitch not so far away ago. Both he and I had definitely gotten older. First of all, I thought that his playing on ‘All Along The Watchtower’ was so unique and so brilliant in terms of, he was playing rock, he was also playing jazz. He was playing everything that worked with Jimi Hendrix and Noel Redding.”
“So as from a drummer’s point of view, to listen to his work — I was still quite young when I first heard ‘All Along The Watchtower’, so I was intrigued by the amount of work that he was putting into his drumming, his double-bass drum work, everything. And I think he was cutting edge, leading edge.”
“He was going into places where I would’ve loved to have gone, but at that point I think I was only 15 years old. So I was dreaming to go there, and I hope I eventually became something of a shadow myself or something of a follower. He was one of the men that influenced me, among many other drummers. But Mitch was just out there and playing frantically with basically a ‘I don’t give a flying fuck’ attitude, which I loved.”
“I had the pleasure to meet (Mitch), and when I met him, the excitement and the level of excitement between us both, because Mitch had heard about me and I obviously knew about Mitch, so when we met, we couldn’t stop talking to each other. And people would come in and interrupt us and we didn’t hear them; we couldn’t hear other people.”
He continued:
“We were so embraced in each other’s conversations, and we talked and we talked for approximately one hour nonstop. We talked about everything. We went all the way back to the day and we came all the way forward to right now. We covered everything in between, and we talked about the ups and the downs, the tragedies. And it was one of the most intimate backstage conversations that I think I’ve ever had with anybody, and I’ve had a lot of backstage intimate conversations.”
“I was just so saddened when he passed away. But I saw him get up and play and I knew that he was on a road that had to be that way, and I knew that he was going back out. I also knew intuitively that he might not have been his best, but it’s a force inside which says ‘we have to go back out.’ I have the same thing. I’m 77 years old, and I have that thing inside that says, ‘We have to go as far as we can go.'”
Bill Ward continued:
“And I can’t stop that. I can’t switch that off. There’s nothing inside that can switch me off from not wanting to do more, write more, be more. And I saw that in Mitch, and I’ve seen that in a lot of other drumming friends of mine who simply couldn’t say ‘no’, they simply couldn’t retire to a place where they were not involved or they had to stay on the road. So I love the man,” Bill Ward said (Transcribed by Blabbermouth).
After two decades, Bill Ward had the chance to play one final time with Black Sabbath during their Back to the Beginning festival in Birmingham, England. Just a couple of weeks later Ozzy Osbourne sadly passed away at the age of 76.