In a recent conversation with Rolling Stone magazine, former Ozzy Osbourne bassist Bob Daisley talked about the reason he got fired from the band back in 1981.
Here are few interview parts:
They let you go from the band right after recording ‘Diary of a Madman.’ What happened?
“During that tour in 1980, when we just had the first album out, Ozzy and Sharon kept pulling me aside and saying, ‘Let’s get rid of Lee [Kerslake, the original Ozzy drummer]. Let’s get [current Whitesnake drummer] Tommy Aldridge in the band.’
“And I’d never agree. It wasn’t because of any sort of blind loyalty to Lee or anything. I just thought the band was working so well.
“Why fix something that wasn’t broken? I couldn’t agree to something I thought was wrong. I said, ‘Sorry, I can’t agree.’
“They asked me several times and I would never agree. And then even Tommy Aldridge turned up to one of the shows, which I thought was a bit distasteful. Lee didn’t know.
“But then we went into Ridge Farm in February of 1981 and began ‘Diary.’ As soon as that was finished, I phoned my mum. I said, ‘We’ve just about finished the album.’ She said, ‘What’s going to happen then?’
“I said, ‘We’re probably going to America next week and then go on the road to promote both albums.’ She said, ‘Well, you won’t.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘You might think you are, but you’re not. And neither will the drummer.’
“She didn’t even know Lee. She just knew. I actually said to her, ‘This time, mom, you’re wrong. There’s no time. That’s it.’
“I think we did a couple more days at Ridge Farm, finished recording, and then a couple of days later I got the phone call from Sharon. ‘It’s over.’ I still remember her words.”
She didn’t explain why?
“No. I think they wanted to get rid of Lee. They wanted to get Tommy Aldridge in the band.
“The only way to do that would be to get rid of me as well, and then ask me back, which did happen [on 1983’s ‘Bark at the Moon’].
“About six weeks later, I got the phone call from Sharon. I had a meeting with her and the accountant and she said, ‘Whether you come back in the band is one thing, but we want you to write for and play on the next album.’
“That was ‘Bark at the Moon,’ which was meant to be with Randy [Rhoads, guitar], Tommy Aldridge, me, Ozzy, and probably [keyboardist] Don Airey.
“But then in early 1982, when it was all planned we’d do the album that year, Randy was killed in a plane crash on the 19th of March. That was all put back. And then they got Jake E. Lee. That’s when we did the ‘Bark at the Moon’ album.”
You were infamously not credited for your playing on ‘Diary of a Madman.’ The album listed Rudy Sarzo as the bassist. How did you feel when you looked at ‘Diary’ and saw Rudy’s name there and not your own?
“Lee and I were in the studio with Uriah Heep. We put them back together. They became defunct for several months or a year. Lee phoned [guitarist] Mick Box and was like, ‘Let’s put Uriah Heep back together. Bob is interested.’
“We got John Sinclair on keyboards and Peter Goalby on vocals. We had another good band. We were in the studio and we went into the office and somebody had a copy of the ‘Diary of a Madman’ record.
“When we opened up, we just freaked. They had taken everything away from us. They credited Tommy Aldridge and Rudy Sarzo on the album we played on. They didn’t even play a note on it.
“They also took our production credits off it. Max Norman at Ridge Farm was the house engineer. He was a good engineer. We got on great with him. He engineered the first album.
“You’ll notice on the first album, he’s credited just as ‘engineer,’ and it says it was produced by us. That’s what we wanted.
“By the second album, he was the house engineer at Ridge Farm when we went back to record ‘Diary.’ It was actually my suggestion, ‘Let’s give Max a production credit since he’s become part of us.’
“That was agreed. But when the album came out, Lee and I didn’t get credit for playing on it. We had our songwriting credits – that was all good. That was still on there.
“But it says, ‘Produced by Max Norman, Ozzy Osbourne, and Randy Rhoads.’ And so we got left off production as well.
“And I put some good ideas into those songs for the production. I didn’t mind Max having a production credit, but I would have liked one myself.”