In a new interview with Scott Penfold of Loaded Radio, Bob Daisley, the 75-year-old veteran rock/metal bassist and songwriter, who performed on — and wrote/co-wrote the lyrics/music for — a good portion of Ozzy Osbourne‘s early solo catalog, was asked about the status of his legendary “Holy Grail” tapes, which are rumored to contain around seven hours of recording sessions with late Ozzy guitar icon Randy Rhoads.
He said (as transcribed by blabbermouth.net), “Well, you see, the copyright on those songs and on those performances is not owned outright by me. They’re my tapes and I made them. They’re only really reference tapes of when we were writing stuff in the rehearsal room and I had a big portable cassette player and had a condenser mic on it, so I just recorded everything on the tape, just as our reference so we wouldn’t forget parts. So if we had new bits or were adding bits or changing bits or whatever, we’d have a record of it the next day so we didn’t forget. That’s the only reason I [recorded them]. But looking back now, I’ve got about seven or eight hours’ worth of that stuff. And I know there is a lot of interesting stuff on there. Some of it’s us just clowning about and being silly and talking daft and messing about, having a laugh, sometimes half drunk, but it’s all there as the band. And there’s even some bits of us jamming at Ridge Farm [studio in Rusper, England, where both Blizzard Of Ozz and Diary Of A Madman were recorded] the day we got to Ridge Farm, which was the 22nd of March, 1980. And we were just getting sounds and getting used to the studio. And Max Norman, he was the house engineer. He was just getting used to miking us. So there’s some jam stuff and us clowning about, so I’ve got all that on tape.”
In a 2023 episode of of The Osbournes Podcast, Ozzy and his family discussed Daisley‘s legendary “Holy Grail” demos. When Ozzy and his wife/manager Sharon‘s son Jack suggested that it should be up to Randy‘s family to decide whether those recordings should see the light of day, Sharon said: “Exactly.”
But Ozzy offered a more practical reason for why those tapes have not been made available to the public. “The quality sucks,” he said. “The quality is fucking dreadful.” Sharon concurred, saying: “[It was recorded] on a little cassette machine — on a tiny little cassette machine. And yeah, it’s not for us to do anything with.”
During a November 2023 appearance on Diary Of The Madmen – The Ultimate Ozzy Podcast, Jack attempted to clarify Ozzy‘s position regarding the unreleased Randy Rhoads recordings, saying: “I think that’s kind of what [Ozzy] was trying to say. I think where he went with it is, like, if you’re gonna release it, there’s gotta be a standard to it.”
Jack continued, “I think Randy deserves nothing but the best. And you don’t wanna release something that’s, like, ‘Eh.’ And that’s what he said, he goes, he recorded it on just like a tape recorder. It’s not a real studio recording. It’s not from the deck or from the mixer or anything like that.”
Jack went on to suggest that there were some contractual disagreements that led to the recordings not being made available to the public.
“To my knowledge, the way that — and this is just the way it was kind of presented… Now I could be wrong, but my parents felt that the way that the terms of the deal, it was a big ask, and ultimately, and what they said in the podcast was it should be left to Randy‘s family,” Jack explained. “Because that’s what ultimately they’re trading on at that point. No one, no one gives a s–t that it’s Bob Daisley on that. People give a s–t that it’s Randy Rhoads. I’m not being a dick. The people don’t give a s–t that it’s my dad on that. People wanna hear and see more Randy Rhoads. So my dad’s perspective is that should be Randy‘s family decision for that to exist or not… I think collectively, my parents and the management and everyone was just, like, this is a Randy property at the end of the day, just ’cause there’s such a little out there of him. And they just felt it was in bad form [to release it].”