Veteran bassist Bob Daisley looks back on his epic career, from the 'magic chemistry' of Ozzy Osbourne's 'Blizzard of Ozz' band to his years with Black Sabbath, Dio, and Rainbow.
s] I can tell you that the world doesn’t end on Wednesday.
A little bit later on, I discovered blues. That really rang a note in me. It struck a chord within me. Don’t forget, early-Sixties young white people didn’t know about blues. They didn’t know about Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf and all the greats. But the Rolling Stones came around and introduced people. They were like crusaders. I loved the Rolling Stones. I saw the original lineup of the Stones in early 1965 when I was 14.The Sydney Showground.
I loved Mungo Jerry. It was blues music, but more Lead Belly and that kind of blues. They’d already had big hits, and a huge one with “In the Summertime.” They went off the scene for a bit after that, but Ray wanted to re-form Mungo Jerry with new players and be a bit more rock. The Chicken Shack management had a word to me and said, “We’d like to put you in Mungo Jerry with Ray Dorset. He’s reforming the band with new members.
We finished the tour, got back to England, and auditioned John Butler, who I thought was a way better singer anyway. I preferred his voice tone. Then we did the second record, which wasAnd we went on the road in America. But then we had more problems with fights and squabbles within the band. Luther ended up getting nutted by John Butler. He hit him and his eye turned about six different colors.First off, I loved Widowmaker. I wanted to see it make it. It was my band as much as anyone’s.
And so I played the Whisky that night with Widowmaker. At the end of the night, we went up to the dressing room and another squabble broke out. I was like, “Oh, fuck. Oh ,God. Here we go again.” I said, “Fuck this.” Things were changing, but this was 1977. The punk thing was just getting off the ground. It wasn’t that established. There were the Sex Pistols and the Ramones and some of those other bands that came out of CBGB in New York. But it was still finding its sea legs and wasn’t taken that seriously. The big bands — like Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Rainbow — were still very revered and they filled big halls everywhere they went.
It was Ronnie and me that went first. And then Cozy got to the point where he just didn’t like the music and he left. But then Ritchie continued on with [vocalist] Graham Bonnet and then [bassist] Roger [Glover] came back in the band. And they had chart success with “Since You Been Gone” and “All Night Long” and all that. You can’t knock success. But for me, personally, I thought, “Oh, he sold out.”Well, Ronnie Dio phoned me when I went back to London.
Two other guys were at Ozzy’s when I arrived. One of them had red hair. I can’t remember their names, but they were a guitarist and a drummer. They were OK. They were decent enough players, but not what you would call virtuosos or world class or that impressive or anything. We went to David Arden. And he still says it today. He said, “Against my better judgement, I paid for this young, unknown kid to fly to England.” He flew Randy over. What he meant by “against my better judgement” is that nobody had heard of him or even knew if he was a good player. Did Ozzy know that he was a good player? Ozzy wasn’t really a musician.I went to Jet Records and met him. I had this vision in my mind of Randy because he’d been described to me by Ozzy as a guitar teacher.
I want to ask you about a few songs you wrote. I think with “Crazy Train,” many people just hear the chorus and miss the broader message of the song. It’s about the state of the world then. Ozzy was, in some ways, a bit like me in being philosophical. He was a little bit worried about the state of the world. There were always threats of World War III, and the Cold War was raging between Russia and America. I wanted to interpret some of that into the song. The thing was, it was “Crazy Train” and it was “Crazy, but that’s how it goes/Millions of people living as foes.” Why? It’s all so foolish and silly that that should be happening on a potential paradise planet.
] It’s supposed to be a little tongue-in-cheek. What happened is that had gone to the city. This is Randy, Ozzy, me, and I think Sharon was there. We went to this porn cinema in the West End of London. Don’t forget, there was no internet, so porn cinemas were still there. Just for a laugh, we went. Randy had his girlfriend there, Jodi [Raskin-Vigier]. She was trying to take photos of the screen with a flash. [When we got to Ridge Farm and we were recording, we came up with “No Bone Movies.
The only thing we could do was go into the studio, be ourselves, do our best, and like it or not. That’s what we did. We didn’t go in trying … ”What would be a good single? What will be a hit single? How can we make this album a commercial hit album?” 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 can’t speak for Jake. I don’t know what his situation was. I know he’s spoken out about it. I won’t go into his side of things. My side of things was, I had signed publishing with Uriah Heep. We had a discussion about buying the songs from me and me getting a lump sum. The other thing I had to take into consideration was this was a new band. Ozzy and I were the only ones from those first two albums. Lee had gone. Randy had died. It could have flopped. Nobody knew what it was going to do.
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