Black Sabbath – War Pigs

Jazz roots and power – Bill Ward was a pioneer of heavy drumming.

While metal drumming today is typically a rigid, straight, aggressive onslaught , Bill in comparison had a unique free flowing groove. He grew up listening to big band drummers of the 1940’s and based his drum sound off Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. He was also influenced by other players of the time – Bernard Purdie, John Bonham and Joe Morello. These roots, combined with the forerunners of heavy music in the 70’s, made for an interesting revisit of this classic. I sat down to transcribe the piece from the 1970 Paranoid album for one of my classic rock enthused students.

“Without the jazz influence, the Black Sabbath drumming would be very different. The feels and jazz feels and rock feels were exactly, to me, what we needed…“ – Bill Ward

Focus here was on the 8 bar drum features, rather than every note Bill played through the groove sections during the verses and guitar solo.

Find more 70’s rock in the pdf summary.