Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler discussed Bill Ward having a drunken meltdown in his hotel room when he left Black Sabbath in 1980 during the ‘Heaven and Hell’ tour in a new Eddie Trunk Podcast interview.
“I knew that Bill was really upset about Ozzy [Osbourne]’s departure, as we all were – it’s like losing one of your brothers – because we were all virtually growing up together, we were all from the same part of Birmingham in Aston, and it really was like losing your brother.
Nothing can hit Bill harder than anyone else in the band, and his drinking just got worse and worse and worse, and when we went on tour, he just used to booze all the time. And this one night he was sitting outside the hotel room drinking, and we all went to bed, got up the next day – like 10 o’clock in the morning – and Bill was still in the same position, outside his hotel room, still boozing. And soon after that he just got on his bus and left the tour without telling anybody.”
He added that despite it being a tumultuous time in the band, he loved playing the “Heaven and Hell” title track, “I love playing ‘Heaven and Hell,’ it’s a great song to play live because you can extend it for as long as you want it to and have a really good jam on it when we’re doing it live. I think ‘Children of the Sea’ is one of my favorites, and ‘Neon Knights.'” Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd members recently formed a supergroup.
