March 19th is the 32nd anniversary of the tragic passing of Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Randy Rhoads.
To pay special tribute to his life and the working relationship that he had with bassist Bob Daisley, Bob has not only agreed to answer some questions regarding the seven hours of audio tapes that he recorded during the writing, rehearsing and recording sessions of the “Blizzard Of Ozz” and “Diary Of A Madman” albums, he has also agreed to share some snippets of those recordings with the fans.
Some snippets from the Q&A appear below.
Q: Why do you refer to your tapes as ‘The Holy Grail’?
BD: Several years ago, I was talking to someone about what I have on tape and I said that to those people who love that band and the Blizzard and Diary albums, what I have would be considered ‘The Holy Grail’ to them. It just refers to its rarity, a sort of ‘ultimate treasure’, not to any religious connotations.
Q: What time-span does the ‘Grail’ cover?
BD: From December the 8th 1979 to March the 23rd 1981.
Q: Have your cassette tapes been transferred to digital?
BD: Yes, all of my analogue tapes have been transferred to digital for safety sake, although I still have the original cassettes as well.
Q: Have the Osbournes, or the Rhoads family, heard any of your tapes?
BD: Ozzy heard them when we were writing and rehearsing in 1979/’80/’81, the whole band did, but Ozzy hasn’t since then. Kelle Rhoads has heard snippets that I played him over the phone, and he loved what he heard, he’d love to see the ‘Grail’ released.
Q: A so-called rare demo of Suicide Solution was on YouTube for a while, the sound quality was poor to say the least, is that ‘demo’ from your tapes?
BD: No, that’s not from my ‘Grail’, I don’t know how that got out there, and it’s not a ‘demo’. It is us, we were writing Suicide Solution, but we didn’t demo it, and if we had, the quality would’ve been way better than that. That’s not Lee Kerslake on it either, it was a drummer that we were auditioning at the time, before we found Lee, but we tried out many drummers so I’m not sure who it is. Maybe he made a tape that day too. We only ever went into a demo studio once and recorded four songs – I Don’t Know, Crazy Train, Goodbye to Romance and You Looking at Me. I remember writing the outro lyrics to Goodbye to Romance in the control room at the demo studio before Ozzy recorded the vocal. That was in Birmingham in early 1980, we had a drummer with us called Dixie Lee. We thought that he might be ‘the guy’ but he wasn’t the final piece of the puzzle.
Read more and listen to “Holy Grail” examples at bobdaisley.com.
8 Responses
No publisher wants to sell 475 books in the U.S..
What are you talking about Lee? He’s already published the book – he needs distribution. Amazon will do it, but Bob isn’t thrilled with the amount of money he’ll get per book sold. I think he’d sell well into the 1000s, but then again who knows.
I have Bob’s book, I truly appreciate the releases Bob did on his website of the Randy snipets. Being a fan of that era, it is indeed precious material, and I would love to hear it all.
Bob contact me$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$