They were two albums that changed heavy metal. They marked the turning point, stylistically, between 70s metal and 80s metal. They featured a young guitarist whose time in the spotlight would be cut tragically short by an ill-advised private plane ride, but not before he had already achieved guitar god status in near record time. The band was anchored by a drummer who had played with numerous bands including Uriah Heep, and a bass player with a resume a mile long, filled with names like Mungo Jerry, Widowmaker, Chicken Shack and Rainbow. At the front, the man at the microphone was a legend, the former front man of the band made of the heaviest metal of all, Black Sabbath. He had been there for 60s metal, 70s metal, and was about to be present at the birth of 80s metal. Not being much of a writer, he left that task to the others, and because they created the songs and produced and arranged and worked and sweated as they did, they deserved equal billing. And got it.

Ozzy Osbourne didn't have a backup band. He was in a band. They were Blizzard Of Ozz. They were Randy Rhoads on guitar, Lee Kerslake on drums, Osbourne on vocals and Bob Daisley on bass. Daisley was also the official lyricist and wrote all the songs people would believe Ozzy Osbourne wrote for years to come. It's 22 years after the debut album and much has gone wrong, and Daisley has had to watch Osbourne take credit for his lyrics on numerous occasions. There's no friendship between them now. As far as Daisley's concerned, there's certainly no trust. What there is now is underhanded ploys from the Osbourne camp and lawyers all around. Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake just want to be paid for their performances. After all, if the Osbournes were 22 years overdue on their power bill, the MTV camera crews would be on battery power.

Daisley's a forgiving and patient man. I like to think of myself as a peaceful man, but if I'd been put through as many screwings as Bob Daisley had, I believe I just might raise my voice. Or possibly beat the hell out of somebody. Daisley, on the other hand, is not a chip-on-the-shoulder kind of guy. There is one chip, but he comes by it honestly and by rights there should be a dozen. He has allegedly been screwed over by Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne a handful of times, yet he's continued to return to work for them, each time closer to perfecting a method for getting paid and getting out with the fewest scratches possible. My angry inner child is baffled by Bob Daisley, but my angry inner child is also broke.

Bob Daisley was born in 1950 in Sydney, Australia, and at age 14 he discovered the bass. Easy math tells us that would be 1964, when most of the world discovered The Beatles, but actually, Bob had discovered the guitar a year prior. "I started playing guitar at the beginning of '63," recalls Daisley, "which I was pleased about because I thought I'm not just somebody who's jumping on The Beatles' bandwagon and began playing because everybody else did." Fact: In 1964, guitar sales went through the roof. By mid-1965, pawn shops were overrun with evidence of those who weren't as serious about it as they had thought. "I wasn't so cliche about it, I guess."

Instrumental surf bands like The Shadows, Ventures and Chantays caught his ear first, and then R&B hit him full force, especially the sounds of Motown and their house bass wizard, James Jamerson. "Oh, man, he's so good," says Daisley, making no effort to conceal his reverence. "He plays with such variety. If you listen to what he's doing, he never quite does the same thing twice, even from one verse to the next or one chorus to the next. It's always a little variation on what he's just done." Substance over flash. No wonder he also picks out Duck Dunn and Willie Weeks as early influences. Later he became a fan of Cream's Jack Bruce and The Beatles' Paul McCartney. Early on, he learned to pay attention to the needs of the song and not take every chop-op that presented itself. He listened to the right players. "They all had such great taste and feel," notes Daisley. "Like I often say, there are probably loads and loads of bass players out there that could out-play me because I'm not into all that widdely-widdely stuff, but I think the true art in bass is to compliment the song and not star in it."

After exhaustive research with several Internet search engines, we were unable to get the exact definition of "widdely-widdely," but the general consensus is that Billy Sheehan would be an excellent bass player who might nonetheless provide an example in sound. Alternatively, if you remove the guitar from Joe Satriani's hands and quickly substitute a bass before he notices, you might hear "widdely-widdely" then, too.

[Mungo Jerry]

In 1971, Daisley left Australia and traveled to London. In 1972 he found himself playing bass with a pretty fine blues outfit called Chicken Shack, which had at one time featured a keyboardist/vocalist named Christine Perfect who had moved on to Fleetwood Mac. After a year, Chicken Shack disbanded and in 1973 Daisley found himself in another successful recording band, Mungo Jerry, known in the United States for their 1970 hit single, "In The Summertime." In England, they had other hits, including "Alright Alright Alright." Daisley was on board for that one and had his first real taste of chart success. After a year with Mungo Jerry, Daisley rejoined the survivors of Chicken Shack in what was now rechristened The Stan Webb Band. Webb was something of a legend in England and the band was extremely good. The young bass player was beginning to rub shoulders with some mighty fine talent, including a young guitarist in the band named Robbie Blunt, who would go on to later fame as Robert Plant's guitarist in the MTV glory days. And if you listen to the recordings of the Stan Webb Band period and turn up the bass you realize Bob Daisley had already arrived as a player.

[Widowmaker]

His next band should have been a monster. Widowmaker had a nasty sound and stage presence and the whole nine yards, but there were problems. Forming in 1975, the band featured an alcoholic singer named Steve Ellis and a guitarist named Luther Grosvenor who had played with everyone from Spooky Tooth to Mott The Hoople to Stealer's Wheel (sometimes using the name Ariel Bender). They recorded for Jet Records and toured with ELO in '76, but it was a mismatch for the heavyweight rockers, even though they won over a surprising number of fans on that tour. Soon the singer was gone, replaced by John Butler, and tensions eased for a while. The second album, Too Late To Cry, was released in 1977 and the band supported it with a second U.S. tour, by the end of which things were back to crazy within the band. Daisley was in LA at the end of that tour when he ran into Dick Middleton, whom he'd played with in Mungo Jerry, and Middleton just happened to be a friend of former Deep Purple guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore. And, it just so happened, Blackmore was looking for a bass player for his band, Rainbow. An audition later, Bob Daisley was in.

I can't count the number of players I've seen complaining about Ritchie Blackmore in interviews. In fact, I'd never heard anyone say anything particularly nice about him before. Words like "asshole" and "jerk" were commonly used. In talking to Daisley about this period of his career, I used "jerk" and was surprised by his response. "A lot of people think that. I've never termed Ritchie a jerk. I think he's a really, really dedicated musician, and it was good, the discipline and the tenacity of him, it helped to run things like a well-oiled engine." Something Daisley craved after the Widowmaker experience. "There were always dramas in Widowmaker," Daisley says with a sad sigh. "They'd fight and sulk, and they were never short of a drama or a punch up or a fall out or somebody's leaving or whatever."

[Daisley with Rainbow]

After a nice run playing with the likes of Blackmore, Ronnie James Dio and Cozy Powell, Blackmore up and fired the entire band with the exception of Powell, yet Daisley still holds no grudges, though he does still marvel at an experience involving Dio that evolved from the Rainbow experience. "During the American tour in, I think, about 1978, Ronnie said 'I think Ritchie might be getting a new band together after this tour, so would you be interested in putting a band together with me if that happens?' I said I would, and it did happen that Ritchie got rid of everybody except Cozy, and he only kept Cozy a little while and then he went as well." Dio did call Bob Daisley and tell him to "sit tight and wait there in London" while he scouted guitar players and record deals. That's exactly what Daisley did for the next several months, until he picked up a music newspaper and saw the headline "Ronnie James Dio Joins Black Sabbath." He was, of course, less than pleased. "I thought OH, thank you! Thanks for telling me," laughs Daisley, who couldn't be blamed for being a very bitter man just based on some of the events in his career to this point, and yet there are no chips on his shoulders. Humor gets him through it all, plus an apparent belief in things happening for a reason.

This thing happened, apparently, to bring him in contact with someone he was now certain was out of a job.

Daisley went to a club in London called The Music Machine where a band called Girl (a band that wouldn't make the bigtime, but did feature guitarist Phil Collen, later to make a splash with Def Leppard) was performing. Like Widowmaker, Girl was on Jet Records, and Daisley wanted to talk to some of those people and see what was shaking. One of them introduced him to the newly unemployed Ozzy Osbourne.

"Ozzy said 'I'm putting a band together. I know you've just come from Rainbow. Would you be interested?' So I caught a train up to Ozzy's place up in Stafford in the Midlands in England, and we had a play together with a couple of local musicians, friends of his that he had there, but it worked really well. So he asked me again if I'd be interested in putting a band together, and I said 'Yeah, I don't know about the other guys. If you want to get serious about it, maybe we should look at some different musicians' or whatever, so he just walked into the next room - he had a rehearsal studio at his house - he said 'Hey guys, it's not working out, you can pack up and go home!' and I said 'I didn't mean THAT, Oz!'" Daisley laughs at what actually must be a hard memory, because this story typifies the lack of decency and feeling Osbourne would display over the many years he and Daisley would be associated.

The two discussed forming a band. B - A - N - D. Not "The Ozzy Osbourne Band" with Backup Musicians, because Bob Daisley had been around and paid his dues long enough by this time and become a bass player of such high caliber to warrant an equal billing. It would be a band. Daisley knew Osbourne's name recognition would be important and they agreed on the name Blizzard Of Ozz. Osbourne said he knew of an amazing young guitarist in California named Randy Rhoads. They just needed a drummer and they'd be off. And this is where the plot thickens.

---

Cosmik: What was the first meeting like, once it started to shape up as a band?

Daisley: The three of us [Daisley, Osbourne and Rhoads] met up at Jet Records over in London, and then we went back up to Ozzy's place and had a play together. The first time we played together, Randy and I looked at each other, right at the same time - it was uncanny - and said "I like the way you play." Right at the same time.

Cosmik: That's one of those moments you never forget.

Daisley: Yeah, it was. I had another moment that really stuck in my mind. We stayed up there a few days and we realized that yes, this was good, this was happening, let's get a drummer, we can audition drummers as we're writing material for the first album. We put the word out and started getting people in to audition. We stayed up at Ozzy's place for a few days, then Randy and I caught the train back down to London. This would be the end of 1979. I was standing on Stafford Station with Randy, and I had this weird feeling come over me, it was almost like a voice in my head saying "One day people will keep on asking you what was it like to play with Randy Rhoads," and I could never figure out why I had that feeling at that time. Then, eventually, as history unfolded, I found out why.

Cosmik: And of course you know I have to ask you that.

Daisley: Yeah, what was it like playing... It was great! It was great. I think as the situation developed and grew together, and Ozzy wasn't a lyricist and Randy wasn't a lyricist, so I just said "Look, I'll write the lyrics," and I did and just kept on writing them, and Ozzy was happy with them. We kept on auditioning drummers but we could not find anyone who was right, and eventually we had one more guy to audition, and if he didn't work out then we would have just gone into the studio to do our album with a session player, maybe like Cozy Powell or whoever was available, you know? But the last guy to audition was Lee Kerslake, and as soon as we started playing, we started doing the song "I Don't Know," we got into the first half of the first verse, and Randy and I looked at each other, and we both must have had the same look in our eyes, like "thank fuck for that!" And that's what we said after, too, "Thank goodness for that. YOU are the guy. You are the guy we've been looking for." It just worked out great. We went out to a Chinese meal and celebrated. But back to the question of what was it like to play with Randy, it was great to play with Randy. He was a dedicated musician, a nice, quiet guy, but what the situation was in that band was that everybody - Ozzy, Lee, Randy, Me - we all brought out the best in each other. As an example, Ozzy and myself and Randy had been writing the song "I Don't Know," and I had certain lines that I played in it, but the final lines I played in the recording didn't come out of me until I played with Lee. He inspired me to play those lines. We sort of pulled ideas out of each other. The whole chain was like each link was as strong as the next. No weak links, no links that were really stronger than the others. It just worked. It just gelled. I'm sure we brought out the best in Ozzy, and Lee was shining, coming up with great ideas.

Cosmik: So despite what they try to make it sound like now, this was most certainly a band and you guys were never hired guns behind a star attraction.

Daisley: Oh no, the band was called The Blizzard Of Ozz, and if you look at all the contracts that were drawn up, and all the letters of intent, all the accounting in the office of expenses, it's all down to something called The Blizzard Of Ozz, and that was not the album. The album was to be called The Blizzard Of Ozz just like Led Zeppelin's first album was called Led Zeppelin and Bad Company's first was called Bad Company. We said "We don't mind having Ozzy Osbourne's name featuring on it, like 'The Blizzard Of Ozz,' then in smaller writing, 'featuring Ozzy Osbourne.'" We said we were fine with that. We can drop the Ozzy bit when we're more established. But what they did was they brought the art with bigger writing saying Ozzy Osbourne, then in smaller writing, The Blizzard Of Ozz, which makes it look like it's an Ozzy Osbourne album called The Blizzard Of Ozz.

Cosmik: Yep, which is what I thought it was at the time, and in fact didn't know any better until just recently.

Daisley: I'm sure a lot of people don't.

Cosmik: A lot of our readers won't until they read this.

Daisley: These bastardized copies of the albums that they've brought out now with these two bogus players on them, they've got a little sticker on the front saying "Ozzy's blistering first album of his solo career." It wasn't a solo project. He was a bigger name than anyone because he'd come from Black Sabbath, but I remember we'd had many meetings about how we wanted this called a band name, not The Ozzy Osbourne Band. It's got to be a band name. That's why we settled on The Blizzard Of Ozz; because it sounds like a band.

Cosmik: Lee had come from Uriah Heep, you'd come from Rainbow, so it wasn't like you were nobodies.

Daisley: Yeah, we weren't some schmucks, we were seasoned pros. And it wasn't like Ozzy had all these songs he wanted to record. We were writing the fucking stuff.

Cosmik: I understand that Ozzy was let go from Sabbath because they couldn't work with him very well anymore at that point in time.

Daisley: He was non-productive, and that's why they got rid of him. He was drunk, he was on drugs, he was just a waste of space while he was in Sabbath, and they said "Aw, fuck this, we're not getting anywhere," and that's why Sabbath's career was going downhill. When they got Ronnie James Dio in that band, the first album they did with that lineup, BINGO, hit album.

Cosmik: Hell of a good album, too.

Daisley: Oh yeah! What was that called again?

Cosmik: Heaven And Hell. That was a masterpiece.

Daisley: First album back after getting rid of Ozzy and getting Dio in, and there you go. That speaks for itself. The thing with Ozzy was that he was still getting drunk, still doing drugs and all that shit while we were getting the band together, and I actually used to pull him aside sometimes and say "Ozzy, look, we're auditioning drummers. It's 11:00 in the morning and you're half cocked already. What happens if this drummer comes down and he's the guy we're looking for? He might think this is a fucking loser situation he doesn't want to get involved in, and we might lose the right guy." And then we finally did find the right guy and started recording. We actually went into the studio before a lot of the lyrics were finished, because I remember writing "Suicide Solution" at Ridge Farm, where we were recording, but I wrote that about Ozzy's drunkenness. I didn't make it known to him, or publicly, but I was thinking to myself "Your drinking is not the solution to your problems." And also, the "Solution" being as in "Liquid." Like the booze.

Cosmik: Aha! Now that's going to be very interesting to a lot of people because of all the strange things surrounding that song, with the kid committing suicide and what people thought it was about.

Daisley: Well, that's it, you know, I SAW Ozzy in the press and on TV say "I wrote that song about Bon Scott." Okay, Ozzy, you wrote it, yeah, bullshit. I wrote it about him, I just didn't make it publicly known and I didn't let him know at the time. I'll tell you how much Ozzy put into that song. The first like: "Wine is fine but whiskey's quicker." That was his contribution. That's all he came up with.

Cosmik: Which is not exactly original in the first place.

Daisley: No, it's a saying, isn't it.

Cosmik: Yes.

Daisley: Wine is fine but whiskey's quicker. And then I wrote the rest of the song around that, including the title. Later on that kid killed himself, and they found the record on the turntable and they blamed that song. Why would we want anybody to kill themselves? No, stay alive and buy the records. Duh.

Cosmik: Did that have an effect on you?

Daisley: To a point. It was sad that some young kid killed himself, for whatever reason. But what I thought was a little disturbing was that his parents didn't look at themselves and say what was our 18 year old son doing out of his mind and having a hand gun? Forget about the record, he could have had a book, he could have been to the movies. It could have been anything. Just because you have a record on there with the word Suicide in the title... The song was actually a warning against drinking yourself to death instead of facing your problems. Ozzy was going through what he termed a "divorce," and he was depressed about it, and that's why I wrote, at the end of "Goodbye To Romance" - and there's another example - "Look ahead - forget about the past - I think the sun will shine," you know? I wrote that sitting in the demo studio in Birmingham near where Ozzy used to live as sort of a positive light shining through the darkness of his divorce from Black Sabbath. "Goodbye To Romance" was his title, but that's just a line out of an Everly Brothers song.

Cosmik: Yeah, "Bye Bye Love."

Daisley: Ozzy came up with that title and then I wrote the lyrics for it. [Ed.Note: This is one of the very few moments where the normally relaxed Daisley shows actual anger. This subject clearly infuriates him a great deal.] And then the cheeky fuck, in one of those... was it VH1 Behind The Scenes, or one of those programs, he says "Yeah, when Randy and I wrote that..." blah blah blah "and then Bob Daisley came in and put a bass line on it..." Like that was my contribution. HEY OZZY! I Fucking co-wrote the music with Randy, and some of the vocal melodies as well, and I wrote all the lyrics as well. That's a little bit more than just putting a bass line on it, ya fuckin' asshole. [Ed.Note: Daisley lets out a deep breath and, after a moment, laughs, probably feeling a bit better, though now the interviewer is possibly madder at Ozzy than the interviewee.]

Cosmik: God, it's AMAZING to me! This is actually hard for me, because this is a guy I idolized as a kid because I was a Sabbath fanatic!

Daisley: They always played me down and pushed me in the shadows, and I wasn't the sort of person to say "Give me the limelight. I want to be Mr. Star." I just got on with the job and did it for the love of the music and the self-satisfaction of coming up with good songs. He could have at least said "When WE wrote that" instead of "When I wrote that," and I wouldn't have been so pissed off, but he was taking all the credit. "When I wrote this song" and "When I wrote that song." Aw, fuck, give me a break. He didn't write the lyrics in Sabbath, either.

Cosmik: At least in those days the truth was known, because the albums always said "Lyrics by Terrence Butler," so we knew it was Geezer. It makes me wonder how much truth he tells about anything. For example, the public perception, which is fostered by him, is that he was like a father to Randy Rhoads. Is any of that true, from what you saw?

Daisley: No, he punched Randy in the face. He got all pissed off because he knew Randy wanted to leave the band. Tommy Aldridge told me that, I wasn't there when it happened, but Tommy said that Randy could not wait to get away from Ozzy. He wanted to get out and dedicate himself to his classical guitar playing, go through the schools, do more teaching himself, and he wanted out. In Tommy Aldridge's words, "He did find a way out, it was just the hard way."

Cosmik: Did Aldridge say when it was that Ozzy punched Randy out?

Daisley: I don't know if he knocked him out, I just know he punched him. It was fairly close to the time Randy got killed. At least the same year.

Cosmik: All these years Ozzy's made it sound like "My son, my son!" Like he's weeping.

Daisley: All this bullshit about "There's never a day that goes by that I don't think about Randy." Yeah, I'm sure that may be the case, but he has dressed it up to something that it wasn't.

Cosmik: All these years there's never been a day he doesn't think about Randy when he looks at the cash register, perhaps.

Daisley: That's exactly right! That's probably the main reason. Randy was a great player and a dedicated musician, and he was an up and coming bright new hope. He got the Best New Guitar Player award, or whatever it was, that year. But the thing was there was a chemistry in that band that the four of us created. It wasn't anything planned. It just happened. Now they try to make it sound like the only two people who did anything were Randy and Ozzy, and right after Randy got killed, it was actually in the press in Ozzy's own words, he said "Randy and I wrote everything."

Cosmik: 'Course, Randy wasn't there to refute it.

Daisley: No, Randy was dead and Kerslake and I weren't in the band. He could say anything he liked.

Cosmik: Randy probably would have refuted it, at least if the things I've heard about Randy as a person are true.

Daisley: I'm sure he would have. Randy was the only one to phone when they got rid of Kerslake and me. He phoned me when I was still living in London and said "Look, I'm sorry about what's happened here." He didn't say it in actual words, but more or less said it was out of his hands and nothing to do with him. Although Ozzy and Sharon having made the decision to get me and Kerslake out of the band, Randy probably suggested [bassist] Rudy Sarzo, and Ozzy already wanted Tommy Aldridge on drums, and away they went, but I don't blame Randy for that. And all that bullshit Ozzy came up with recently, in the March issue of Guitar World Magazine, those were blatant lies. [You can read about this subject and read Bob Daisley's response on his website at www.bobdaisley.com/.]

Cosmik: I have to admit I was a little bit concerned coming in here, because you've given several interviews where you've been really polite. I mean REALLY polite. And we're not about muckraking here, but this is obviously a story about a lot of injustice, and you're always real gentle about it in interviews, so I'm surprised to hear you coming out and really getting down to details.

Daisley: Well, it's about time the truth is known, and the gloves are off, as far as I'm concerned because to me that was the ultimate sin, taking our performances off those two records. Not just for our sake, but what an insult to Randy and what an insult to the record buying public. You know they put all these little stickers on the front of those records saying "Ozzy's blistering first recording of his solo career" without saying "Hey, if you're going to buy this record, know it's not the original recording, and it's not the original band." That's what they should have said, and they didn't. You know, The Osbournes have so much power, so much money, and they control people by... I wrote a letter to Guitar World and they wouldn't print it because the Osbournes spend so much money with that magazine with the Ozzfest that they wouldn't rock the boat and piss the Osbournes off. So they wouldn't print my letter. That's why that letter's on my website.

Cosmik: I just recently heard that you have to pay $75,000 to be on the bill at Ozzfest, which is shocking in the first place and when you think about the young bands just trying to get a break, their parents mortgaging houses to help them, just on the off chance that the slot on Ozzfest will make them megastars, it's pretty upsetting. If it's true, and I've heard it from two industry sources now, so...

Daisley: And what's he got with him, like 8 or 10 bands? So he's making three quarters of a million bucks before they make a penny on record sales when they make a record of it, merchandising, all that shit. I mean, good luck to them. If they're going to do good business, and they're good business people, that's smart, and good luck to them. But don't fuck other people in the process.

Cosmik: Young bands... GOOD bands, paying their dues, working hard and just trying to catch a break after years in clubs.

Daisley: They should be promoted, not held back. That's holding them back. If this is a young band with a lot of talent that can't afford [a slot on the tour], you're robbing the world of seeing another great band when there's a shortage of them.

Cosmik: And some of these bands have played on Sabbath or Ozzy tribute albums. That's kind of ironic.

Daisley: Then they go and charge them seventy-five grand to be on the show. (Laughs.) If they have a record company behind them, the company foots the bill, one hopes.

Cosmik: Possibly, but so many of them are on little independent labels that don't have that kind of money.

Daisley: Yeah, that's it, they don't have ten grand, let alone seventy-five.

Cosmik: So the folks mortgage the homes and the kids put everything in hock...

Daisley: All to put the kids on the show...

Cosmik: And it never ends up coming back. It's sad. Meanwhile, Ozzy's got enough money to pay you and Lee fifty or sixty times over without blinking. At what point did you and Lee begin to wonder where your money was?

Daisley: I can't go into too much detail on that because it's part of the lawsuit, but what happened was contracts were going backwards and forwards for the first album, which is how they would stall everybody and keep them working, and then by the time we began writing for the second album, Diary Of A Madman, we actually downed tools one day and went into the Jet Records office. We said "Well look, you know, we've been promised these advances and we haven't even gotten the advances for the first record yet and it's already out. Now we're supposed to have advances for this new album and we haven't got that either." They said "Aw, keep on working, guys, the contracts are being drawn up, things are being changed. Your lawyers have changed things, our lawyers have changed things and now we've pretty much got the figures set, so keep on working and in no time you'll have your dough." So we figured "Well, don't rock the boat, don't ruin the project, keep on working." So we did. We recorded that second album, Diary Of A Madman, and as soon as it was recorded, no sooner had our ears stopped ringing from playing the music, we got a phone call, "you're out of the band, see ya."

Cosmik: Why did they do it?

Daisley: That came from... Well this is my version of the story: When we were auditioning drummers, Ozzy wanted Tommy Aldridge in the band, and he wasn't available. He was doing other stuff.

Cosmik: He was with Pat Travers then.

[Tommy Aldridge]

Daisley: Yeah. And he'd just done something with Gary Moore, too, and he wasn't available for us. Then after the first album we did, with Lee Kerslake on drums, then Tommy Aldridge became available. By then Sharon was on the scene. She wasn't on the scene for the first album - which is another fuckup in that Guitar World interview, but that's another story - so she was there by the second album, and Tommy Aldridge was a friend of hers, so she started saying "Let's get Tommy Aldridge in the band," because she and Lee didn't see eye to eye. She knew Lee was a seasoned pro who couldn't be manipulated. I wouldn't agree with getting rid of Lee. Tommy even came to some of our gigs, and I thought that was a bit uncool. Ozzy and Sharon would pull me aside at the end of the gig and say "Look, let's get rid of Lee. Tommy's available now!" I'd just say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There's nothing wrong with Lee. It works perfectly. He was the guy we were looking for. The band sounds great. Listen to the first album. It's a chemistry and it's gelling well, don't fuck it up." But they wouldn't have it. They kept on asking, they kept on pushing for it, and I think eventually they just must have thought "Oh fuck it, let's just get rid of Daisley as well. He's going to stand up for Kerslake." So they got rid of me. Then, as history shows, they kept on asking me back, so obviously they didn't really want to get rid of me. They kept asking me back to do each album.

Cosmik: I have a theory about that.

Daisley: Yeah? What's that?

Cosmik: Well, Jesus, who was writing all of the lyrics?

Daisley: Yeah, me.

Cosmik: And what did a lot of us think back then? We're listening to these songs and we're starting to sing them, notice the words to them, and even though if people really paid attention they'd see all four names in the writers credits, everyone assumes it's Ozzy. And he starts being called "the voice of the heavy metal youth" and the word poet starts being used. You're fired, he smiles and takes credit, sits down to write and comes up with "Wine is fine but whiskey's quicker," which he already borrowed once, and then he's out of ideas. "The Voice" is gone. What's he gonna do, sing stuff like "Um, I snorted some more co-caine... uh.. BOB!!!" (Laughs)

Daisley: (Laughs) Yeah, that might be right.

Cosmik: So I think he had to call you back, because anybody else is going to sound like somebody else, and people are going to catch on. Well, some people. Anyway, that's my theory.

Daisley: That's pretty much it, I think. You said when did we first worry about when our money was coming, well, we started the lawsuit in 1981 against Jet Records and Don Arden, who is Sharon's father, and back then Ozzy and Sharon were helping us in our case against them because she'd had a major falling out with her father. Back then she was still Sharon Arden. Unbeknownst to us, in 1983 they made a deal to buy Ozzy from Jet Records and her father and own all the rights. We didn't know that. We carried on suing Jet and Don, went to court in 1986, had a settlement, a payout from him and Jet that we didn't get until 1987, but then we thought "Okay, that's taken care of that, so now maybe they'll change the credits and now maybe we'll get our money." And we were getting some money, because we'd get publishing money from Blizzard Music.

Cosmik: What money were you getting, all told? What was it for?

Daisley: We weren't sure what the money really was. Are we getting all our royalties, are we getting some of our royalties?

Cosmik: What money didn't you get?

Daisley: We haven't had any artist royalties. Performance royalties. We got songwriting royalties, but we weren't sure at the time what we were getting and what we weren't. We found out what they were later. We also found out later they didn't change the credits on Diary, which they were supposed to. And while I was working with them, I actually said to Sharon "This means a lot to me, can we get this changed?" "Yes, I promise you. We're re-releasing it in '95. We're doing a remastered version, we'll do it then." Then it came out, I looked in the shops and it wasn't changed. I confronted her about it. I said "Sharon, you didn't fucking change it! You said you would!" She said "Oh, well that was just their mistake on the first issues. The next batch will have your names..." They never did, it was just bullshit. She was jacking me off the whole time.

Cosmik: I'm glad to hear you still have your songwriting credits, because I thought they might have somehow stolen some of them, too.

Daisley: No. The credits that they fucked up on Diary were... We got our songwriting credit, but they didn't credit us with playing on that album and they didn't credit us as co-producing that album. If you look at the first album, it says "Produced by Osbourne, Daisley, Rhoads and Kerslake. Engineer: Max Norman." We used the same engineer for the second album, and we thought "We'll produce this one as well." We didn't have a producer. We produced it. We thought "Max Norman is the engineer again, so let's give him a credit as co-producing," so we all agreed on that. But then when they got rid of me and Kerslake, it's got production of Diary Of A Madman as "Produced by Ozzy Osbourne, Randy Rhoads and Max Norman." And they left us off there. Max Norman was really just the engineer. We were being nice by saying "Give him a credit as co-producer," and then we got left off it.

Cosmik: Do any of these people ever step forward now? Does Max Norman have anything to say about it these days?

Daisley: I don't know. I haven't spoken to Max in a long time. I didn't mind that he got a credit for co-production, because it was the second album that he'd engineered for us, and he had an input on it, as long as I got my production credit as well because I came up with a lot production ideas for that album.

Cosmik: And I would imagine there's probably extra money due to you if you've got a producer credit, isn't there?

Daisley: Well no, we didn't bother about that, we just wanted a great product, as good an album as we could get, so we didn't ask for more money. If they ever say we're money grubbing... whatever, well, we didn't even ask for any more points or anything. Not a thing. We just wanted to make the best possible record.

Cosmik: You just want credit where credit's due.

Daisley: Yes.

Cosmik: That's understandable, I think. By the way, I think you said something earlier and I just want to make sure I got it right. When you were talking about Sharon and her father and that situation... is this correct, that Sharon basically bought Ozzy from her dad?

Daisley: Yeah.

Cosmik: Okay. I just enjoy that too much to leave it out.

Daisley: I don't know what the figures were and a I don't know what the conditions were, but I know that she bought Ozzy from her dad and Jet Records.

Cosmik: When you were sacked, did you ask them directly about your money?

Daisley: Oh yeah! Sharon was the one who phoned me up. She said "You and Lee are out of the band. It's over." I couldn't believe it, because three days before that we were at Ridge Farm finishing Diary Of A Madman. They must have gone to America the next day, or that night, and then I got a phone call three or four days later saying I'm out of the band. I couldn't believe it. I said "Wait a minute, what about our royalties? These contracts have been drawn up and we're supposed to have everything sorted out, and that's why we kept working. What about that?" And she says "End of story!" I said "Yeah, we'll fuckin' see about that."

Cosmik: Nice lady.

Daisley: Oh yeah, who would chew you up and spit you out.

[with Uriah Heep, 1982]

Cosmik: Then Ozzy goes on to tour with Aldridge and Sarzo, and you and Lee join Uriah Heep, which is a good gig, but it has to burn you up that imposters are getting the credit for playing the parts you really played in the studio. Imposters are out there... playing you on one of the hottest tours of the year. How did you deal with that, when it has to be ripping at you, emotionally?

Daisley: Oh, it was! It was. It was terrible, you know? The first day we saw that album out in public, in 1981, Lee and I just felt like throwing up, because we knew how much work we put into that, rehearsing, writing all the stuff, coming up with the production ideas, the song arranging and the whole bit. I wrote all the lyrics and put the music together with Randy, and Lee did some of the music parts, as well. We put a lot into it. And then to see two other guys' faces on that album and their names in the credits, awww, I felt like throwing up. It was just disgraceful.

Cosmik: How did you get through that, emotionally?

Daisley: Emotionally... I think a lot of the stress and pressure was taken off by putting the energy into the lawsuit against them to try and get it changed. But like I said, by 1986, when we went to court and got this payout, we thought that's it, we've taken care of them. The credits would be changed, we'd get our dough... and it didn't quite work out like that, so here we are again, you know?

Cosmik: Screwed bigtime. Okay, a lot of people who do know the basic story of what happened are pretty fuzzy on this next part, and I'm with 'em, I have to admit. This is baffling to me. Here's your chance to set us straight. You went back to work for Ozzy for a long time later on. After all this horror that had gone before, why on earth would you do that?

Daisley: Well, you see, by 1983, I had no idea that that year would be the year Sharon would buy the rights to Ozzy from Jet Records and her father, so in 1983 I went back to them to do Bark At The Moon because they were helping us in our lawsuit against her father. Because she'd had a fallout with her father. I thought "Well that's great, I've got the Osbournes on my side to help us drag in our royalties and get things sorted out." So why wouldn't I go back with the people were helping me?

Cosmik: Yeah, except that you might be a little bit dubious about the woman that was such a bitch on the phone when she fired you.

Daisley: Well, that's it, I was. That's why I said "I'm not going to bother about trying to get ongoing royalties and all this, and who knows what's going to happen with this album anyway because Kerslake's gone, Randy's dead, so it's not the original band. Who knows how much magic it's going to have anyway? Pay me to do the record, pay me to write the songs and I will."

Cosmik: Cash up front?

Daisley: Yeah.

Cosmik: Ah, smart man. I was worried about you for a while, too.

Daisley: I did, I got money up front. I thought if it's a flop, well, then I've been paid, and if it's not, then good luck to them. Then I did the world tour to promote Bark At The Moon from '83 through '84, then at the end of '84 we started writing stuff for The Ultimate Sin, and me and Jake [guitarist Jake E. Lee] were putting all that together because Ozzy was in the Betty Ford Center and he had not much input at all. Then, when he came out of the Betty Ford Center, he started drinking and getting stoned again anyway. Then him and I had a fallout about that, and he told me to fuck off so I left.

Cosmik: By that time it wasn't a democracy anyway.

Daisley: No, no. It was the Ozzy Osbourne show by then. Then about six weeks after I left I got a phone call saying "Will you write the lyrics for The Ultimate Sin now?" So I did. Then when the fuckin' album came out, I wasn't credited for that. It said all songs written by Ozzy Osbourne and Jake E. Lee.

Cosmik: They can't do that, though... I mean, you'd think. Did you try to stop it?

Daisley: Well, I went to my lawyer and threatened to sue them, and they had to pay my costs and fix the credits on the next batch of records that came out. It says "All songs written by Ozzy Osbourne, Bob Daisley and Jake E. Lee." But the first batch of probably three or four hundred thousand that came out didn't have my credit on it.

Cosmik: Jesus, these people live in the reptile house.

Daisley: Ah, man, they're fuckin' scum when it comes to that. And that's not an accident. You can't overlook something like that. "Oops! We didn't credit you for all those songs you wrote."

Cosmik: "Oops, we did it again." They knew. I've been wondering something. Tommy Aldridge has always been one of my favorite drummers, so this is another part of the story that's a heartbreaker for me, his part of it, but I wonder about what it must have been like for you to work with him after you came back. Was it uncomfortable? He was one of the guys credited in your place on Diary.

[Rudy Sarzo]

Daisley: It felt weird, I must admit. I got on well with Tommy. Nice bloke. We always had a great laugh together and he was a really nice guy, but it did feel a bit weird every time I looked at that album seeing his picture instead of Kerslake. Rudy Sarzo wasn't a writer, and that's why Ozzy had to get me back. Rudy Sarzo could copy everything I did, but when it came to writing new stuff, whether it be songs or even bass lines - Ozzy said he didn't even write bass lines!

Cosmik: Man, how did he even function at the professional level, then?

Daisley: Who knows? I guess he did stuff a lot of people had already done, because when he was in Whitesnake he was just doing the stuff that Neil Murray had already recorded. If you look at those videos of Whitesnake, there's Tommy Aldridge playing drums and there's Rudy Sarzo licking the neck of his bass and all that shit, when really the recordings were done with Ansley Dunbar on drums and Neil Murray on bass. It happened again. (Laughs.)

Cosmik: Did you ever have any dealings with Sarzo?

Daisley: Not really. I met him a couple of times. I mean, he's a nice enough guy. I don't dislike him or anything, and it wasn't his fault anyway. But one thing I must say is that I was sitting with him and Sharon and Ozzy and a couple of other people in LA one night in a hotel bar, and some guy came up to him and said [imitates a hyper-excited fan voice] "Hey!! Man, Rudy, cool, dude!! You know, I loved that bass thing you did in 'Believer.'" He just sat there and said "Thanks." In front of me. I mean, he didn't say "Yes, it was me," but he also didn't deny it and say "hey, it was Daisley and here he is."

Cosmik: There's another one shot down in flames. (Laughs.) People's heroes are falling left and right. So now let's move forward to the current bit of fun. Lawsuits are one thing, but they claim... they meaning Ozzy and Sharon... that they're being "harassed."

Daisley: Oh yeah, that was Sharon's statement. It was like "Kerslake and Daisley have been harassing us and our family for years, and so Ozzy decided to take them off these recordings." That is absolute bullshit because we've had no contact with them. How can you harass someone when you've had no contact with them? The only contact we've had with them is our lawyers contacting their lawyers trying to get us paid. And if asking to be paid is harassing, then yes, we've harassed them.

Cosmik: Yeah, shame on you.

Daisley: I know, yeah.

Cosmik: When was the last time you worked for Ozzy?

Daisley: 1994. He was putting something together for the Ozzmosis album, and Steve Vai and Ozzy were together, and I think John Sinclair, and they were trying to get bass players who sounded like me, and it was like "What would Daisley do here?" and "What would Daisley play there?" and all that sort of stuff. Steve Vai said to Ozzy, "If that's what you want, why don't you get Daisley in to do it?" So I got a phone call. I went over and we worked in Steve's studio in LA for a while, then we went to New York to Sony CBS' rehearsal rooms and worked there, and then they got rid of Steve. So that didn't work out.

Cosmik: You know what's really funny about all this? It's pretty clear you're Ozzy's ideal bass player, but you have one fatal flaw: you wanna be paid!

Daisley: I wanna be paid and I want credit for what I do. (Laughs.) How fuckin' dare me? Who do I think I am?

Cosmik: Have you ever seen Singin' In The Rain?

Daisley: Yeah.

Cosmik: Why can't you just stand behind the damned curtain and sing?!

Daisley: (Laughs.) That's basically what it was boiling down to, I think! They didn't want people to know that I was behind a lot of the stuff he was taking credit for. "Push him behind the curtain!"

Cosmik: Well, when you look at it, at what his legend is based on... Well, let's not count Sabbath, because his voice is definitely his voice, and they didn't lie about who wrote what in Sabbath...

Daisley: They wouldn't because that was a democracy. That was a band.

Cosmik: As far as his solo career, though, it's at least the contention here that it's based largely on lies and rotten tricks and misconceptions, and look at the empire the man is sitting on now. He can't let anything happen to that, and she can't let anything happen to it, but they screw up by doing high profile things like destroying half the tracks of the two best and most important albums while a lawsuit is going on. Duuuh. How did you first hear of the plans to erase your performances?

Daisley: I didn't hear plans to erase the performances. I just found out that the new albums had come out without our performances on them, and I was just speechless. I said "My God, what's he done now?!" It's like we pissed him off by asking for our credits for the work we did and for the money that we were owed, and we knew that had pissed him off, and we thought "God, what's he done, he's gone 'I'll show them! I'll ruin my own product!'"

Cosmik: Then you never had a chance to try to stop it, no chance for an injunction or anything.

Daisley: No.

Cosmik: Would there have been a chance if you'd known in advance?

Daisley: Well, we'd have to prove in court exactly what our position is in the situation, and then we could look at that, but we couldn't have done a thing until all that stuff was established.

Cosmik: Was Lee's reaction about the same as yours?

Daisley: Yeah, he couldn't believe it. We were speechless. Surely, nobody could be that stupid, to ruin your own product, to cut your nose off to spite your face this way. And you know, us being insulted is one thing, but when you insult the memory of Randy Rhoads and put his playing with two guys he has no say in, and then insult the record-buying public by saying "Here's some shit. Buy this crap, and we're not gonna let you know until you've bought it that it's not the original band and these aren't the original recordings." That's a bloody insult to the record-buying public.

Cosmik: It is, and I agree about Randy, but now that I learned what you and Lee did, too... don't sell yourselves short. It's a huge insult to you, too.

Daisley: It is. It's an insult to rock history, too, because those two albums are milestones in rock history, and it's really terrible this has happened.

Cosmik: A whole lot of young kids are becoming Ozzy Osbourne fans now...

Daisley: Because of the MTV show.

Cosmik: Kids who weren't even born when you recorded those albums.

Daisley: And they're not going to know what the original albums sounded like.

Cosmik: No, because they've made sure that the old ones are off the market.

Daisley: That's right, because they withdrew all the originals.

Cosmik: So now they're hearing that this is what it is, and they're going to believe that this is what it sounded like, and history will tell them that this shook the world of metal back at that time. This is not what shook the world back at that time.

Daisley: No, it isn't. This is shaking the world now for the wrong fucking reason. (Laughs.) You know, Sharon, at the end of her statement, when she said that we'd been harassing her and her family and all that, she said "We've turned a negative into a positive." Oh really? You wouldn't know a positive if you fell over one. How can you call this a positive? Ruining your own product and slandering the name of Randy and insulting the record-buying public, AND insulting the people who actually came up with the product in the first place? Yeah, that's real positive in the first place.

Cosmik: Sounds more like she turned The Beatles into The Shaggs.

Daisley: Give her a Beatles record and it'll come out sounding like The Rutles.

Cosmik: (Laughs) It's tragic, you know? I haven't got terrible things to say about the players, in their own context. [Ed. Note: Mike Bordin, former Faith No More drummer, and Suicidal Tendencies/Infectuous Grooves bassist, Robert Trujillo.]

Daisley: Probably really lovely guys and I have nothing personal against them, other than they acted like musical whores in a way, you know...

Cosmik: Sure, someone dangled a lot of money in their faces.

Daisley: Yeah, do the job, get paid, ruin the product for money... It's being a bit of a whore, but you don't know the complete circumstances, and you don't what threats might have been made to them about their gig or whatever.

Cosmik: And who knows for sure that they were told that this would end up being the only versions of the albums available.

Daisley: Maybe they said "Hey, we're doing an alternative version to go with..." this thing, or that thing, or maybe the Ozzfest, you don't know what bullshit they were told. The thing is, if they just said to me "Come in and re-record what you did back then," I couldn't even do it. I couldn't recapture what we did. It only happened once. That one take. If you listen to other takes from that same record, they wouldn't be as good, either. That's why we used the one we used. Because it was the best one with the most magic.

Cosmik: Randy's solos were so fine, and they just disappear now.

Daisley: I know! The whole mix has been ruined, the whole vibe, the whole groove, everything. It's a different record now.

Cosmik: The tone of the bass is wrong.

Daisley: It's a different amp, it's a different bass and it's a different bass player. It's not going to sound anything like what it did. I cannot believe the intro to "Goodbye To Romance." I actually burst out laughing out loud, because it's so sloppy and terrible and out of time and... aww.. it's diabolical!

Cosmik: It almost has to be intentional. The guy's a seasoned pro, he knows how to play, but when you listen to that... I just don't know why he would do that. I was listening to one of the tracks - I can't remember which - but I thought "Why on earth would you turn the treble up so high on the bass for a song like this?"

Daisley: And get a little clunky sound out of it.

Cosmik: On top of the fact that it saturates Randy's sound. Sucks it in and makes it disappear.

Daisley: Yeah. Randy must be turning over in his grave now.

Cosmik: Basically, it's like they're trying to erase you from history, which isn't going to happen.

[Lee Kerslake]

Daisley: No. What they've really done is turned us into heroes and martyrs. I've had letters come into the website from people saying "I'm an ex-Ozzy fan, and I'm in your corner, and I hope that you get paid, and I'm going to tell people not to buy these albums." And this is coming from Ozzy fans.

Cosmik: I've only seen a few negative remarks on your website. A ton of angry messages and then one or two people saying "get over it," man, I can't imagine anyone saying anything like that if they had half a brain and had put themselves in that situation.

Daisley: Naw. If you know anything about music itself, and about those records, you don't fuck with history like that.

Cosmik: No. And then that's the sad thing. In heavy metal history, those are important albums.

Daisley: If I went along and bought an early Led Zeppelin or Beatle album and found out one of them wasn't on it, I'd take it back and say "This isn't what I paid for. Shove it!"

Cosmik: What if Jimmy Page got mad at John Paul Jones and had... it wouldn't matter who it was, it could be someone great like Jack Bruce, and he had him go in and re-record Jones' bass parts in Zeppelin 1, I'd be furious!

Daisley: That's exactly what I said! Even if they got Paul McCartney to go in and do my parts, he'd probably do a great job. He's a great bass player, Paul McCartney, but it's not going to sound like the original, and that's what people want to hear.

Cosmik: Because it's not just the playing, it's the moment.

Daisley: Exactly. When Kerslake and I were thrown out of the band, Don Arden of Jet Records - Tommy Aldridge told me this - Don Arden said to Rudy Sarzo and Tommy, "Can you replace them on this album?" They wanted us to be replaced on Diary even back then. But Tommy Aldridge turned around and said to him "I've listened to that album. There's too much magic captured in those grooves." Because we're talkin' vinyl days. He said "We couldn't do that. We couldn't recreate that, and we wouldn't even attempt it." So good for him. At least he didn't do it.

Cosmik: And I guess you can't blame him for not saying anything in public at the time, because he would have been fired immediately.

Daisley: Oh yeah, he said nothing. He told me that off the record. And probably these new guys might even have said to Ozzy and Sharon "Are you out of your fucking minds? Do you want us to you ruin your product?" We don't know.

Cosmik: And then to pull the originals off the market like that is sinister. Of course, the music industry is freaked out by MP3s, but there is historical preservation through MP3.

Daisley: Yes, I know what you mean. It has its good side as well as its downside.

Cosmik: It may not be an upside financially, but all across the Internet, people are talking about this, people are comparing the recordings and believe me, nobody is deleting your performances on the Internet. That may be a screwy way for people to hear them in the future, but it's a way. So you will not be forgotten. Not to mention the fact that you've got a hell of a discography aside from those anyway.

Daisley: Yeah, and I'm still on them. (Laughs.)

Cosmik: Now this obviously puts a bad taste in your mouth, but do you think there'll ever be a time when you can get past that and remember those recordings positively?

Daisley: Oh, totally. Yes. That was a very special time in my life, to be able to record those records and write all that stuff and have that many people appreciate it, that left a great taste in my mouth, apart from this current bit of... (laughs) bad taste. But I still feel grateful that that many people got to listen to the music and appreciate it.

Cosmik: It's reciprocal. A lot of us are grateful to you for what you did.

Daisley: I've had a lot of nice letters come into the website saying "Thank you for the good music," and thank you for this and that, and that's really nice of them. I appreciate that.

Cosmik: When you look at the heavy metal albums that pioneered, you have to look at records by Cream and Hendrix, Sabbath and Zeppelin, early Priest and Maiden, and then it leads right to you guys with Blizzard and Diary. You can understand how the people feel when they write in. It had an effect on them.

Daisley: It was a different era and a different type of metal, I suppose, but it was all part of the evolution of metal, and of music. Early Hendrix, early Zeppelin, you know, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, all the bands that were non-commercial and wouldn't sell out and did well from it...

Cosmik: You were definitely part of that tradition, because you sure weren't jumping on anyone's bandwagon. It was new.

Daisley: Yeah, we didn't go into the studio and say "Let's do a record that sounds like... this." It was just totally spontaneous. Let's see what happens. And that's what happened, and we liked it, and apparently so did everyone else.

Cosmik: "Let's see what we sound like."

[with Dio, 1998]

Daisley: Yeah, not "Let's try to have a hit record or a pop single or make money." None of that came into it. It was "Let's do what we really feel and hopefully it'll turn out to the point of other people liking it as well," and that's what happened. Another question people have asked me a lot is "would you work with Ozzy again," and I have nothing personal against him. I don't really have anything personal against Sharon, even though this seems like the expression of a personal vendetta from them.

Cosmik: Sure it does... I don't see how you could NOT have something personal against them...

Daisley: I would never say I would never work with them again, if it meant getting all this sorted out and moving on. I never burn bridges.

Cosmik: I cannot imagine... I'm sorry, but they just tried to erase you from part of history, for something you did that was not just a little thing. They just took something important away from you.

Daisley: That's right, and that's a really wrong thing to do, and they also took it away from Randy Rhoads, because he doesn't sound the same anymore. They changed his part in history. And Ozzy doesn't sound the same anymore! It's not just beats and notes, there's vibes and energies and expression of human emotion in that playing that isn't there anymore.

Cosmik: So I'm thinkin' other than if they walked up and shot your dog... How much more do you need before it becomes personal?

Daisley: (Laughs.) Well put it this way: I'll probably never work with them again, because I doubt I'll be in that position, so I don't really care. The most important thing to me now is to get the credits for the work that I did and to get paid so I can do what I want to do with that money instead of them having it.

Cosmik: But... I mean... Good God, Bob, how could you even stand being in the same country as those people? How come you didn't tell him to get stuffed?

Daisley: I know what you're saying. Sometimes I ask myself that. "How did I ever not just tell him to fuck off after the second album?" But after the first two records, I didn't know that they were getting our royalties. I didn't know they'd bought Ozzy from Jet Records and her father. I was eager to work with them because of what I believed the situation to be.

Cosmik: As long as you're getting paid up front and you're not at their mercy, I guess. Man, if I were you my shoulders would be weighed down with chips. I mean, you're understandably pissed about having your work erased and being ripped off, but you're still practically mellow about it all. You're a better man than me, I'll tell you that. Thanks for taking the time to do this interview.

Daisley: I'm pleased to do stuff like this, because it's an opportunity for me to let people know what really happened, because before, I was just this whiner. "Aw, there he goes again. He's not getting paid or he didn't get his credits. So fuckin' what. Get on with it." This is an opportunity for me now to speak about what really happened and what was really going on.

Cosmik: Well, I'll tell you what, no matter what anyone does, it'll never be erased.

Daisley: That's right. There's too many millions of copies of those albums already out there, and I think now, because they're [the Osbournes] so high profile and they've taken us off those records, and those records are so important, and we have a lawsuit to recover unpaid royalties and get the credits we never got, the cat's gonna be out of the bag now. The cat's going to be amongst the pigeons.

---

POST-INTERVIEW THOUGHTS: I've been baffled for weeks now. Completely confused by the thought of going back to work for someone who has screwed me so completely. I was putting myself in Bob Daisley's place, but the truth is, I wasn't doing so completely until I stopped and thought about what other gigs I'd take instead. There were plenty to be had, but the truth is this: in the early 1980s, the plum hard rock gig was playing with Ozzy Osbourne, and if you got paid up front... no worries. Ozzy was the king, and here's where you really have to put yourself in Daisley's place... Bob's lyrics, production, music writing and performing had played an enormous role in putting him there. More so than anything Ozzy himself did, other than be Ozzy, metal legend. All through this interview I believed that I would never have gone back to work for the guy, had I been in that situation. I was wrong. If I'd written all those songs that so many people loved, I'd want to be there to play those songs for them. I'd get my money up front, wear knee-high leather boots and keep a snake bite kit near me at all times, and just hope for the best.

---

[with Mother's Army]

All recordings by Bob Daisley's post Ozzy band, Mother's Army, available at www.jeffwatson.com. Besides Daisley, the band features former Rainbow vocalist Joe Lynn Turner. Check it out.

DISCLAIMER: The statements made by Bob Daisley in this interview could not be independently verified. Randy Rhoads is deceased and cannot speak on Bob's behalf. However, most of the legal points discussed are part of the lawsuits against the Osbournes being pursued by Daisley and Lee Kerslake, and are therefore part of the legal record. All references to private conversations, however, must be considered as "according to Bob Daisley." It should be mentioned again that this is a man with very few chips on his shoulder and a great deal of integrity. After seeing the evidence we can see (the firing of Daisley and Kerslake and the misleading credits allowed to stand for so many years, as well as the removal of their performances from the original tapes for what appears to be reasons of spite), our sympathies are with Mr. Daisley and Mr. Kerslake and we wish them the best of luck in their ongoing struggle.

(C) 2002 - DJ Johnson