Bob Daisley, Ozzy Osbourne’s former bass player, is speaking out about why hours of unreleased rehearsal and demo footage including Randy Rhoads hasn’t been made public. Rhoads played with Osbourne for several years, was a member of Quiet Riot and has been recognized on several “Greatest Guitarist” lists.
In an interview with Songfacts, Daisley spoke out about some of his memories from his years playing with Osbourne, and talked about the making of “Crazy Train,” as well as the hours of unreleased recordings from the years that Rhoads played with Ozzy’s band. Rhoads joined his band in 1979 and was a member until he died in a tragic plane accident while the band was traveling in Florida. In the interview, Daisley says he approached Sharon Osbourne’s accountant about including the demos and outtakes that he had of Rhoads in the band’s 30th anniversary box set. He says the sticking point was over the payment. The accountant wanted to pay a flat fee and take the demos and all of the rights to them along with the purchase. But Daisley said he wanted the rights to the material indefinitely, saying he’d been “screwed enough.” Daisley said he didn’t want to give the material away for free and wanted to collect a royalty on it, but the accountant refused.
I said, “Well, I’ve got these demos and I’ve got tapes of this recording, outtakes, I’ve got rehearsal takes, I’ve got us just chatting, clowning about, songwriting tapes,” I said, “I’ve got loads of stuff, I’ve got hours of it. Why don’t you include that on the boxed set?” And I said, “Well, I’m not just giving it away, I’m the only one that’s got this stuff. So I want a royalty on it.” She wouldn’t do it. She just wanted to buy it off me for a pittance and I said no. I’m not doing that again. I’ve been screwed enough.
“The fans suffered. Everybody wants to hear that stuff and I was willing to put it out there. But I said, I’m not just giving it to her. Because also what I have to be careful of is if they control it, they can edit it to make it sound like that same old fairytale that they come up with about how Ozzy and Randy wrote everything, which is total bollocks.”
There’s no word on whether Daisley has plans to release the outtakes and recorded footage of Rhoads and other members of the band joking, talking and practicing. For now, the unreleased Rhoads demos will stay behind closed doors.
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