







During a Q&A session at the Kipinä Kokkola business conference in Kokkola, Finland on September 5, guitarist Tony Iommi said that he isn’t ruling out a BLACK SABBATH reunion.

“We may — I don’t know — do a one-off or something, but [we’re] never touring again,” he said. “‘Cause we’re at the age now — we retired, but I’m still gonna play. But to tour the world like we were — we did an 18-month tour, the last one was. It’s a long time to be out and away from home and your friends and family. So if we do do anything, it would be very short.”

Drummer Bill Ward recently shared a video saying he would be very open-minded to any ideas” about playing with his BLACK SABBATH bandmates in the future.

“Hi everybody. My name is Bill Ward, and I wanted to say that I love Tony [Iommi, guitar], Geezer [Butler, bass] and Ozzy [Osbourne, vocals] very much,” he said. I’ve loved them for a long time, and I still do. And I would be very open-minded to any ideas about playing together in the future. That’s it. Love you all. Thanks.”

In an interview with Classic Rock, bassist Geezer Butler says that he is he isn’t ruling out a one-off BLACK SABBATH reunion.

He said: “If it came up, I wouldn’t say never. I can’t imagine it ever happening, but then I said that about the SABBATH tour, and it happened, so who am I to know?”

Butler also said that he is still in contact with guitarist Tony Iommi, but he has not spoken to Ozzy Osbourne.

“I haven’t seen Ozzy at all,” he said. “I’ve seen Tony and Bill [Ward, original drummer] at a couple of awards things we’ve done, and me and Tony stay in touch through e-mails, but that’s about it. But it’s good between us. It’s like having brothers. You don’t have to be in touch.”

In May, Ozzy told Keerang that he would like one more SABBATH concert with Ward who wasn’t involved in band’s farewell tour.

“I didn’t like the fact that Bill Ward wasn’t there, for a start,” he said. People put that down to me, but it wasn’t me, honestly. We [SABBATH] didn’t have the f*cking time to hang around, we had to get going, but I’m sorry it didn’t work out with Bill. Tommy [Clufetos, Ozzy‘s drummer, who played with SABBATH on the farewell tour] did great, but the four of us started this, and it should have been the four of us ending it.

“Those final gigs in Birmingham were bittersweet because you think of how far we came, and how much we did, and it would have been good to have shared that together. Maybe one day there’ll be one last gig, I don’t know.”

On 11 November, 2011, Iommi, Butler, Osbourne, and Ward announced that they were reuniting to record a new album with producer Rick Rubin and to start touring in 2012. In February 2012, however, Ward left before work commenced on 13, the first studio recording to include original band members Iommi, Osbourne and Butler since the live album Reunion (1998), which contained two new studio tracks.

Ward said that he had failed to reach an agreement regarding his contract. However, he did later admit that his weight would have been an issue in a 2013 tour. Osbourne also suggested in an open letter that Ward‘s decision not to take part was down to his health. In April 2015, Ward criticized Osbourne on his Facebook fan page via a letter to his and the band’s fans, which prompted a rebuttal from Osbourne on his Facebook page.