During the latest broadcast of “LA Radio Sessions” with host Mike Stark, legendary Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward discussed the band’s habit for live improvisation and shared deep insights into “Spiral Architect“, the sweeping closing track from the heavy metal pioneers’ 1973 fifth studio album, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.
Known for its complex arrangements, soaring vocals from Ozzy Osbourne, and layered acoustic guitar work by Tony Iommi, the song tackled themes of retaining personal meaning in an increasingly surreal, modern world.
“‘Spiral Architect‘ live was brilliant to play. We had these huge orchestrational things… So I just loved everything about ‘Spiral Architect‘. It was one of my favorite songs. At the time when we wrote it, ‘Spiral Architect‘, I thought, was very adventurous musically. I love how we had a rock song that had almost classical production. We had the timpani, which pronounced and accented with Tony, and Terry‘s [Geezer Butler] bass. Something about it’s very gothic to me. It’s just absolutely pinnacle metal. I think what’s beautiful about it is that it can still be metal. However, I can feel how our band was changing, but it never lost its bottom roots. It never lost its roots where it came from, which was this very hard and unforgiving sound. And it still kept all of that encapsuled in ‘Spiral Architect‘. Lyrically, it kept it intact.” Bill Ward stated (as transribed by Blabbermouth).
Ward also revealed his uncredited contribution to the song’s existential lyrics.
“I love the fact that the band would take risks and would be orchestrational with this song. I think that there, are pauses, there are slower parts where we became as bold as to write ‘for all the things upon this earth’ or whatever the lyrics were at that time. I must be honest, if I’m gonna tell everybody’s secrets, I wrote those lyrics myself, and they made it into the song. And I’m not saying that to embolden myself. I couldn’t really give a f**k, but I’m just saying that the way that it all fitted together was, for me, capsulated, capitalized a time and a place where I think we were all traveling through,” he continued.
“You have to remember that this was about the third or fourth album, and we were very tired,” Bill explained. “We had been playing nonstop around the world. We hadn’t stopped. We hadn’t taken a break except to use the bathroom and have lunch. And other than that, we just kept rocking and rolling.”
“I just love this song,” he added.
When asked if the musically challenging track was difficult to pull off on stage given its frequent movement changes, the drummer insisted the environment allowed the entire band to thrive.
“No, it was great to play live,” he responded. “It was exceptionally wonderful to play live. For me, I just played hats to start it out, and then just moved around the drum kit. There’s plenty of room for me. And Geezer was making huge pronunciations of bass, almost orchestrally. And Tony, he had so much room to do all kinds of things. He was playing almost acoustically, but electronically, and at the same time he was still playing huge power chords. He’d add everything. And Ozzy‘s lamenting voice capsulized the whole song. It’s a brilliant song. I love that song. We allowed jam on the song a little bit. We did that with other songs. We’re having a conversation right now about it, how much we moved that around and how much improvisation we put into the song. But sometimes Tony would start it differently. We would have a segment where he would play a classical piece before it. And that could change overnight.”
Addressing the broader concept of improvisation during Black Sabbath‘s notoriously loud live sets, Ward noted that keeping the core rigid allowed them to expand during specific pockets.
“Sometimes at the very beginning, but in the song itself we would have to play tight. Sometimes on the very end, we would jam out on the end, so that was another improvisation place where we could do… Even on the record we improvised. That was improvisation at the very end of the song. That was in when we recorded it. But we actually had to play our parts as they were originally played. But there was room for improvisation, yeah.”
Asked if any other songs in Black Sabbath‘s live set left room for improvisation, Bill said: “Absolutely… Well, most of our show was improvisation, when I think about it. As you know, Tony would go into big-league guitar solos. That was one of the things that in the show [took up] sometimes up to 40 minutes. At first we were doing nearly two-and-a-half hour sets, or even longer. So it wasn’t unusual for… Back then a guitar solo was a big thing to look forward to. It still is. It was difficult to put into a song where we knew where we were going in all the parts, where improvisation wasn’t really allowed. But we did have songs where — and I’m trying to think of them and my memory’s failing me — we did have songs where we were allowed to fall out, where the song would break out, break off, and where we allowed drum solos or guitar solos or bass solos, depending on what that might be.”
When Mike Stark pointed out that many modern rock acts strive to replicate their studio albums note-for-note in a live setting, the drummer emphasized his fluid approach, even regarding the band’s biggest hits.
“Oh, we changed up things all the time like that. I never played ‘Paranoid’ the same way twice. I wouldn’t know how to. But I tried to stay in the pocket on most of the stuff. As a drummer, I tried to keep it in the pocket as how we originally did it. But some nights it’s just, like, ‘What the hell, I’m gonna put this in,'” he concluded.
The full interview broadcast will air on June 13, 2026, via KLBP.org.
The original classic lineup of Black Sabbath, consisting of Bill Ward, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, and Geezer Butler, officially concluded their historic career together last summer. The highly anticipated charity show, dubbed “Back To The Beginning,” took place at Villa Park in Birmingham, United Kingdom, on July 5, 2025.
Outside of his work with Black Sabbath, Bill Ward released Accountable Beasts, his first solo album in 18 years, via iTunes in 2015. The record featured his drumming on the majority of the tracks alongside longtime collaborators Keith Lynch (guitar, keyboards), Paul Ill (bass), and Ronnie Ciago (drums), with additional contributions from drummer Walter Earl and various session vocalists, including his daughter, Emily.
