There’s a new interview with Bill Ward online now. It’s with the website allaboutjazz.com, and you should definitely check it out, as Bill talks about his career playing the drums and how it felt to be influenced by the blues growing up in Birmingham, England. Here’s a few quotes from the article:

AAJ: At what age did you start playing?

BW: I think I might have been about four, four or five, because my mother told me that they thought there was something wrong with me because I continually kept tapping on furniture. They thought I had something which, in Birmingham where I was born—or actually I was born in Aston which is in Birmingham—they said that I had Saint Vitus’s Dance, and Saint Vitus’s Dance is a common term in the midlands for somebody who can’t sit still.

AAJ: How would you say the group’s creative approach differed in the early days as compared to later albums?

BW: That’s a tough question actually. I think it comes in several parts. The first three albums or four albums, for me at least, I felt like they came out of big jams because we literally would sit in a room and just jam and a song would come from that. Giving credit where credit is due, I think that Tony would jam a little bit more than everybody else [Laughs], definitely work more on the arrangements and spend a lot more time with the song.

“Being influenced by dynamic music, I felt quite suited for blues and jazz which is pretty much what we really liked to play, especially more traditional blues.”

You can check out the full interview over at the All About Jazz site here.