“He’d been getting out of it, being drunk, unprofessional, unreliable, and all the rest of it. But I had a feeling of: ‘I’ve got to do this.’” Original Ozzy Osbourne bassist Bob Daisley was “warned” against joining The Prince Of Darkness’ band

Ozzy Osbourne with his solo band in 1980 — (Image credit: Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images)

Ozzy Osbourne’s first bassist says people “warned” him against joining The Prince Of Darkness’ solo band.

Bob Daisley, who played with Osbourne on-and-off from 1980 to 1995, makes the revelation in a new interview with Guitar World. The singer had recently been fired from Black Sabbath, and the bassist says talk of his bad behaviour had become rampant.

“Ozzy has just come back from L.A. and been fired from Black Sabbath,” Daisley reflects. “People warned me against working with Ozzy because he didn’t have the best reputation. He’d been getting out of it, being drunk, unprofessional, unreliable, and all the rest of it.”

Despite it all, Daisley says he “had a feeling of: ‘I’ve got to do this’” when given the chance to join Osbourne’s fledgling solo band.

He elaborates: “For some reason, I thought, ‘I have to do this.’ When he asked me to go up to his house and play, he said, ‘I’ve got a first-class rail ticket.’ I jumped on a train in London, went up to Stratford, and Ozzy met me at the station. I went to his place and had a guitarist and a drummer there.”

There were still issues, however. When The Prince Of Darkness sought Daisley’s advice on the other prospective members he was eyeing up, the bassist was brutally honest, saying they wouldn’t cut the mustard. Future Osbourne bandmates Randy Rhoads (guitars), Lee Kerslake (drums) and Don Airey (keys) were yet to be involved.

“They were OK,” Daisley says of the other musicians then in contention. “They were OK guys and nice enough. But when Ozzy and I had a tea break, we went to the kitchen, and Ozzy said, ‘Well, what do you think?’

He continues: “I really did like Ozzy, and we got on together, so I said, ‘I’d like to work with you, but I’m not sure about these other two guys.’”

Osbourne responded to the suggestion immediately. “He said, ‘Oh, hang on a minute…’ He went into the rehearsal room, and I heard him say, ‘It’s OK, fellas, you can pack up. It’s not working out. You can go home.’ That was them gone, dismissed.”

Osbourne, Daisley, Rhoads, Kerslake and Airey eventually released the Prince Of Darkness’ solo debut Blizzard Of Ozz in 1980. The album has gone down as a cult classic and launched a now-40-plus-year solo career.

As well as playing bass, Daisley wrote lyrics for Osbourne. In an interview this summer, he described Osbourne and Rhoads’ initial attempts at lyricism as “like Spinal Tap, but worse”.

“And I just thought – we want to be self-sufficient, we don’t want to get writers outside of the band and we want to keep it under our roof,” Daisley said. “So I took on the role of lyricist and lyrics for the songs.”

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Metal Hammer and Prog, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, NME and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.