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"I guess it's to do with finances or something. But there was also another side to it. When Bill came along we all had to ask, 'Can he do an hour-and-a-half, two-hour gig? Can he cope?' My suggestion was that we run through a set and see how he got on because he was so out of condition and the drummer is the most demanding job in the whole band. We looked at Bill, and he couldn't remember what the fuck we were doing. But he didn't come clean and say, 'I can't cut this gig, but can we work something out, guys, where I'll come on but with another drummer backing me up?' Or, 'I'll come and play a few songs.' That would have been cool."
According to Ozzy, when Black Sabbath rehearsed with Bill Ward his playing was so rusty he relied on bullet-point notes stuck all over his kit:
"You know them yellow fucking stick-on memo notes? He had them all over his fucking drums. I was like, 'What the fuck's that for, Bill?' He said, 'I can't remember what I'm doing.' I go, 'How are you gonna remember out of those 500,000 bits of paper stuck all over your kit, which one you're looking at, Bill?' [He said:] 'I'll know.' Ah, OK great. I'm not gonna give Bill a hatchet job, but at the same time we haven't got the patience to deal with it."
