Daisley, Who's Amidst Battling

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It would take several pages to fully list the works of songwriter and musician Bob Daisley, but here are a few golden goodies that have undoubtedly chewed your ear through the years. Rainbow’s Long Live Rock & Roll, Black Sabbath’s Eternal Idol and everything worth listening to by Ozzy Osbourne. Certainly no small contribution to rock and roll, and you would think more than enough to ensure the man some respect from his peers as well as the music industry in general. Still, some would deny Daisley what he is owed in both respect and financial compensation.

The Osbourne's, specifically Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne who have reportedly amassed a personal fortune in excess of 100 million dollars, can’t seem to put the pennies together to pay Daisley for the work he did on the landmark albums The Blizzard Of Ozz and Diary Of A Madman. These discs are easily the most significant pieces of work in Osbourne’s solo career and quite possibly all of heavy metal but they have been despoiled as a result of the conflict between Daisley, original Blizzard Of Ozz Band drummer Lee Kerslake and The Osbourne’s.

You see, rather than simply and properly crediting the storied rhythm section for their work and paying the agreed upon compensation, The Osbourne’s went the punitive route and chose to replace all the bass and drum sections of the original albums with those from other musicians. These bogus discs have been released and all editions of the true and original product recalled leaving little to no choice for those who want to hear classics like “Crazy Train” or “Over the Mountain.” In my mind, and simply as a fan of the music, these are the actions of a couple of conciousless and deluded industry whores. Then again The Osbourne's have increased their fortune considerably by exposing just that on MTV so, as angering as it may be, one shouldn’t expect anything more from this bunch.

Fortunately for you, me and any who would hear the real thing over what is being printed now there are copies to be found on e-bay or in the used shops. While there you might want to pick up some of the Rainbow or Uriah Heep material that features Daisley as well, you simply won’t hear better hard-rocking this side of 1990.

Daisley now lives in Australia where he is writing and recording with a blues outfit known as The Hootchie Coochie Men. During a moment of calm between the Osbourne legal entanglements and musical endeavors aplenty, Bob found a few free hours to speak with me by telephone about the good, the bad and the ugly of his career in music.

KNAC.COM: Can we knock the Ozzy stuff on the head right up front before we get to the other stuff?
DAISELY: Sure, sure.

KNAC.COM: From where I sit and I admit I don’t know the entirety of the situation, but what has been done to you guys is just an outrageously shitty thing. What I wonder is, can the money that is owed each of the parties really be all that much to an organization like the one run by the Osbourne’s?
DAISLEY: Oh certainly not, they wouldn’t feel it a bit.

KNAC.COM: Is it a case that they are so far in arrears that they just don’t want to part with that kind of money and think the better business decision would be to pay the lawyers to try and get out of it? I am sorry, I just don’t get this at all -- can you help me to understand how it is this would happen in the first place?
DAISLEY: Oh yeah. I mean, we went to court in ’86, in London, and got one payout and then we thought the royalties would continue and that the artwork would be fixed for the lack of credit and all of that -- but it just didn’t happen. It went on and on and on and now we are at it again to finally get it resolved once and for all.

KNAC.COM: Was the mangling of your name and other former band members on The OzzMan Cometh “hits” CD a swipe at you all as well, do you think?
DAISLEY: Well, that looks pretty deliberate to me. They have to oversee things that happen on album covers and give them the okay and if it had been one name it might have been swallowable -- but three names? Like, Rudy Sarzo is called “Trudy Sarzo” and Phil Soussan is “Bill Sousan” and my name has obviously been spelled incorrectly as well. Who knows why they did it. Is it supposed to be some kind of funny joke or is there another reason. I mean, it was just kind of stupid. The fact that Kerslake and myself never ever had our credits on Diary Of A Madman fixed... They put stickers on them for a little while and then I think that on some of the CDs we had our name on it as playing on Diary, but now they have it saying that we played on the original versions and now here is somebody else doing it. It is a fucking joke.

KNAC.COM: It is a sad situation for sure.
DAISLEY: All the letters that have been coming in to my site, and even if you look at a lot of other sites, have been one after the other saying what idiots they are and “How dare they?” What a bastardization of a great product it was. I spoke with Mrs. Rhodes the other day, Randy’s Mother, and she told me how disappointed she was that they actually had done something like that. I mean, it affects Randy as well, you know. Randy’s playing doesn’t shine like it did on the original version because that was a band playing together and that is what made all of the difference. Randy is not here and he didn’t have a say in who they put his playing with. They copied the parts, but you can get a machine to copy the parts, but it is not going to have the human emotion or the vibe or the energy or the magic that the original ones had.

KNAC.COM: It seems a bit cheeky for another musician to even do such a thing -- I am speaking about the guys that actually went in and played over your parts. Isn’t there some kind of “code” you musicians have where a thing like that wouldn’t happen?
DAISLEY: I think that it is actually musically whoreing yourself. It is truly mercenary, though, I do suppose that they could have been in the band and told, “Do as you are told or fuck off!” I don’t know, but then again if somebody asked me, hypothetically, and I was working with Robert Plant or Jimi Hendrix or something and they said “Go in and re-record what Mitch Mitchell or Noel Redding did” or what John Paul Jones did I wouldn’t care how much that they would pay me, I would refuse. I would just say, “I am not going to be a part of this revision of history.” I would refuse to do it, absolutely.

KNAC.COM: Regardless of whether they were paying you and Lee Kerlake, it still seems absolutely pointless to re-record the rhythm tracks on his two best albums. I mean, to what effect? I can’t conceptualize any gain for having done it? I can say that I have noticed that the incidence of the big songs from those albums being played on the radio have increased but they don’t play the new versions so. . .
DAISLEY: Right, so they get more airplay from the old stuff, yeah. Well, people are really pissed off, too, because not only [the Osbourne’s] done this in the first place, but they don’t let people know with the labeling on the front of the album. It doesn’t say, “This is not the original band and these are not the original recordings.” People are pissed off with that. To not let people know and sell it like it was the original product, that is really wrong.

KNAC.COM: I know you are far more intimate with the people than I have ever been, but I would guess that all this is not coming from Ozzy himself, because I don’t think that he has a clue what is going on with the business aspect of his career?
DAISLEY: I really don’t know, but I would have to imagine that he would have to give his consent at the end of the day and I would imagine that he would have to be in there, in the studio, for some of it. That is just an educated guess. I would have thought that he would have to give his consent. I wouldn’t say that Ozzy is totally blameless here.

KNAC.COM: Well, it is being done in his name anyway. . .
DAISLEY: It is his name and it is his product and his history and it is a real slur to the memory of Randy Rhodes as well.

KNAC.COM: I know that you and others have lived with Ozzy’s taking writing credit on songs that he had little or nothing to do with, “Suicide Solution” for instance. . .
DAISLEY: I did.

"The fact that Kerslake and myself never ever had our credits on Diary Of A Madman fixed... It's a fucking joke."

KNAC.COM: Well I mean, it went beyond just the attaching his name as a co-writer to things to the point that when he was sued by the parents of some kid who had committed suicide he would swear that he wrote the lyrics to that song and even would recount a story of what inspired the lyrics. That had to be hard to hear and while you were still in the band too?
DAISLEY: I know, in his interviews he would say, “Well, what I wrote it -- about was Bon Scott. . .” and you know I wouldn’t have even minded it if he said, “When we wrote this” because he wrote one line in “Suicide Solution.” I came up with the title and the whole rest of the lyrics, he wrote one line, “Wine is fine but whiskey is quicker.” That is all that he came up with for that song and I wrote all of the rest, including the title, and I wrote it about him! It was because he had gotten thrown out of Black Sabbath and was drunk all of the time and it wasn’t a solution to the problem, so it was like the word solution had a double meaning, solution like a liquid and solution like the answer to a problem. That is why I called it that.

KNAC.COM: Wow, I really don’t know what to say, I can only imagine how you would feel.
DAISLEY: Well, I wasn’t too pleased, and like I say it wouldn’t have been too bad if he would have used the term “we” instead of “I” when claiming writing credit. When Randy had first died and there was a lot of press about he would say things like, “Oh yeah, Randy and I wrote everything.” He totally left me and Kerslake out of it, and you know Lee came up with a lot of stuff for Diary Of A Madman. Lee came up with some of the vocal melodies and some of the musical ideas and arrangement ideas and all sorts of stuff and that is why he is credited on six songs. We put a lot of work into the musical side of things when Ozzy wasn’t even there sometimes.

KNAC.COM: Could you give an example?
DAISLEY: When Ozzy came in and heard “Diary of a Madman” for the first time he said, “Who the fuck do you think I am, Frank Zappa? I can’t sing over that.” And then we showed him where the vocal parts would go and what they would do and then he liked it, but early on it was beyond his understanding. I mean, it did have funny timings in it and clever little bits and he couldn’t quite grasp it at first.

KNAC.COM: Legend holds that the material for those first two records was recorded at the same time and then they were compiled and released apart from each other, is that true?
DAISLEY:No, no and I have seen that so many times in print. Blizzard Of Ozz -- we began the writing for that at the end of 1979 and we had pretty much completed the writing for it by the time that Lee had joined the band in the beginning of 1980. Lee didn’t join until February or March and then we completed the writing and went in and recorded Blizzard in March of 1980. Then we went on the road and did some touring around England, Scotland and Wales, and what have you, but toward the end of 1980 we started writing the material for Diary Of A Madman and we completed it in the beginning of 1981 and went into the studio roughly a year after Blizzard Of Ozz was recorded, so they are about a year apart really. I think that people tend to think we went in and recorded a shitload of stuff and went in and recorded two albums and had them both in the can, but they are in fact a year apart.

KNAC.COM: Yes, I remember reading Ozzy interviews where he would say, “I write two albums at a time so that I can tour for two years at a time. . .”
DAISLEY: “I write two albums at a time,” eh? [Laughs] Yeah, right.

KNAC.COM: To my ear, you can tell that the same individuals were involved in the recording of the discs, but sonically there is something different between the two -- did you use a different studios for each session?
DAISLEY: Well, for a start, Randy had some different guitars for the second album than on the first one and I used a different bass and a different amp on the second one. On the first one I used a Gibson EB3 through a Marshall head which was one of Randy’s 100 Watt guitar heads and a 4x12 cabinet whereas on the second one I used my 61 Fender “P” bass through an SVT with an 8x10 Ampeg and that would give it a different sound for a start. Plus by the time of the second album, we had been together for over a year, getting used to each other and the way that we played and the way that we wrote. We were getting more used to the production ideas that we would have in the studio and that is another thing, they dropped our production credit off of Diary Of A Madman and a lot of the production ideas on that album were mine, and I just didn’t get credited for it which was really unfair. We weren’t there for the mix of Diary Of A Madman because they did that in America after they had gotten rid of us, but mixing an album and producing an album are two completely different things. Quite often you will see credits on an album, “Produced by” and “Mixed by” so production credit and mixing credit are two different things. I put a lot of work into the production of that second album and then didn’t get a credit for it.

KNAC.COM: I had always assumed that you and Lee Kerslake had went off to do a record with Uriah Heep and that is how you left Ozzy, but I am guessing that wasn’t really what sent you out of Ozzy’s band?
DAISLEY: No, they fired us, they just dropped us out of it. What had happened was that when we were putting together the first band, it was only me and Randy and Ozzy and we auditioned drummer after drummer after drummer, and it just went on for months, and during the auditions we were writing the material for the first album and we just couldn’t find a drummer. I know that Ozzy would have liked to have Tommy Aldridge in the band, but Tommy was busy doing something else and wasn’t available, but then the last drummer that we had to audition was Lee Kerslake, and fortunately as soon as he started playing we all said, “Thank God for this, he is just the guy that we are looking for.” And he did fit in the band like a glove and we recorded the first album, toured and started writing the second album. Later in that year Sharon had come on to the scene, after we had recorded the first album, and Ozzy and her got hooked up and then Ozzy and Sharon started pulling me aside and saying, “Why don’t we get rid of Lee and put Tommy Aldridge in now -- he is available?” I said to Ozzy, “Look, I know that you wanted Tommy in to start with but we have got Lee in now and he is perfect and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” So, I wouldn’t agree to that. That happened several times, Tommy would be playing in London and Ozzy would say, “Let’s go and see Tommy play?” And I would say, “Yeah, but we have got Lee and he is a great drummer so why change it?” And it went on and on and eventually, I think, that they both said, “Fuck this, we will get rid of them both.” And that they did. As history tells you Ozzy got me back several times so. . . I had actually heard through the grapevine that they didn’t really want to get rid of me, but they got rid of us both because I kind of stood my ground about Lee. Then about 1991 when I was doing the No More Tears album Ozzy actually said to me, “You know, you were right about Kerslake.” I thought, “Yeah, well it is a bit late now but at least he admitted it.” [Laughs] Lee was perfect for the band, there was a magic, a chemistry, it all fitted together like a jigsaw.

KNAC.COM: And whatever love it was that they had for Tommy Aldridge superceded all that?
DAISLEY: Well, I don’t think that they recognized it. I think that they got carried away with their own importance or with their own power or whatever. You know, “This is Ozzy’s band and he can do what he likes!” You can do what you like but don’t shoot yourself in the foot, which is kind of what I think he did. But, you know, Sharon was on the scene and it was sort of Ozzy and her had the power between them, and Sharon and Kerslake didn’t really see eye to eye from day one, they weren’t exactly President of each other’s fan clubs. [Laughs] I don’t think that they recognized the magic that we had in that first lineup, and it wasn’t until later years that they found out it couldn’t be recreated. It was too late to recreate it after Randy had gone anyway. The next lineup after that was Ozzy and me and Jake [E. Lee] and Tommy Aldridge for Bark At The Moon, but by then it was obviously only me and Ozzy who were the original members.

KNAC.COM: This all fills in the gaps for an incident that occurred last summer when Lee was on tour with Uriah Heep here. Someone had handed him a photo of the original Blizzard Of Ozz band to sign and he just stared at it and said, “What a waste.” Now I can understand better what he was thinking there.
DAISLEY: Yeah, and that is right because who knows what might have happened had we kept that band together and just done it how it was supposed to be done as a band called “The Blizzard Of Ozz.” Originally the band was to be called “The Blizzard of Ozz" and the first album was going to be called just that, and then in smaller writing “Featuring Ozzy Osbourne” which we didn’t mind, but instead they went ahead and called it an “Ozzy Osbourne” album and when the success came it was like, “We can do anything that we like.”

KNAC.COM: And it seems like they did! [Laughs]
DAISLEY: Yeah but then they had Rudy Sarzo in the band, and Ozzy calls me up and says, “Well Rudy is a nice guy and he is a good bass player and he is good at playing what you have already thought of, but he doesn’t think of new things to play.” I don’t think that Rudy was really a writer.

KNAC.COM: Yeah, he is an interesting guy actually and a very interesting case in hard rock/heavy metal because he is on the cover of all these albums -- Whitesnake, Quiet Riot and Ozzy’s -- but he doesn’t play on most of them. I do like his playing on the live albums, though. [Laughs]
DAISLEY: Yeah. Well, like that Whitesnake album that Neil Murray and Aynsley Dunbar played on and then in all the videos it was Tommy Aldridge and Rudy Sarzo, again so history repeats itself, I guess. [Laughs]

"I don’t think that [Ozzy and Sharon] recognized the magic that we had in that first lineup... It was too late to recreate it after Randy [Rhodes] had gone anyway."

KNAC.COM: Well Rudy always has kind words to say about Ozzy, I know, but there are others that have followed you in that band who have not faired as well -- Phil Soussan, who you mentioned earlier, has a suit against Ozzy as well I believe?
DAISLEY: Yeah, Phil’s discrepancies are with his song “Shot in the Dark” because he brought that song in pretty much finished, I think, to the Osbourne camp. He said that he has a recording of it from before he even joined the band.

KNAC.COM: And that is not over with yet either?
DAISLEY: No, it is still ongoing at the moment. I think that is probably why Sharon kicked him at Randy Castillo’s funeral.

KNAC.COM: Wait, Sharon Osbourne kicked Phil Soussan at a funeral?
DAISLEY: Oh, yeah, Sharon kicked Phil in the knee at Randy’s funeral, which was really disrespectful.

KNAC.COM: What a class act she is! [Laughs]
DAISLEY: Yeah, I mean, if you are going to go to a funeral to pay your respects, you know, take your problem somewhere else, not at a funeral! [Laughs] Then again, if you are going to do something as disrespectful as put Randy Rhodes playing with two other bogus characters that is pretty disrespectful as well, isn’t it? Somebody who is dead that can’t come back and do or say anything about it -- that is a disgrace.

KNAC.COM: I still don’t get it?
DAISLEY: Yeah, I am at kind of a loss for words myself. I couldn’t believe it when somebody first sent me an e-mail when they had first learned about it and I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I was like, “Naw! My God!” Then I found out that they had withdrawn all of the old copies of the original product to promote the new one -- that was even worse.

KNAC.COM: Well, as I say, it is obviously your version that the radio stations here are playing, because you can definitely tell the difference.
DAISLEY: Yeah, somebody sent me a copy of each one and what they have done is they just went into the studio and just soloed the bass and soloed the drums and just copied exactly what we did but without the feeling and the emotion, and obviously they couldn’t have been there at the time when the magic was created between the four of us. Even Randy sounds different because of it.

KNAC.COM: Another complaint that people have had about these discs is there is not much in the way of “Bonus Tracks” which has pretty much become the standard when you re-issue already-available titles -- are there many tracks that you guys did that remain in the can from these sessions?
DAISLEY: Well, there is a song called “You Looking at Me Looking at You” which was a track used for a B-side of a single, I think it was “Crazy Train,” and that was originally going to go on the album and the B-side was going to be “No Bone Movies” which was written specifically as a B-side, but we thought in the end that it turned out better than “You Looking at Me Looking at You,” so we put it on the album and used “No Bone Movies” for the B-side. Then there was another song called “You Said It All,” which was written on the road because they were going to release a twelve-inch live version of “Mr. Crowley,” which they did. That was pretty much written at a soundcheck one afternoon. I took a tape of the idea from soundcheck back to the hotel before getting ready for the gig and wrote the lyrics for it, and I think that we recorded it that night live! [Laughs]

KNAC.COM: That is a great story to hear because that song has been one of my absolutely favorite songs from that period of the band. . .
DAISLEY: What? “You Said It All?”

KNAC.COM: Absolutely! I remember waiting and waiting for the studio version to show up somewhere, but now I guess you are telling me there never was one?
DAISLEY: No, it was never recorded as a studio song. It was just that live version done with the mobile studio at the gig and that was it.

KNAC.COM: How was it that you came to work with Black Sabbath?
DAISLEY: What happened was that I had already worked with a producer called Geoff Glixman when I was with Gary Moore, and so I knew Geoff and he knew me, and we knew what to expect from each other and I guess he liked my playing. He knew the connections with me and Ozzy and Tony Iommi, probably would know my playing from that, and so I got a phone call saying, “Black Sabbath is in Montserrat in the West Indies and their bass player [Dave Spitz] had to go back to the States and would you fancy doing the Black Sabbath album?” and I said, “Yeah!” It was the sort of music that I like so sure, you know? So, I got on a plane the next day or maybe a day after that and I went into the studio and I said, “Play me a track but without the bass on it because I don’t want to be influenced by what somebody else has done.” I had a listen, I did the track and then Tony Iommi came in and had a listen back and he looked up at Geoff Glixman and said, “Let him do whatever he wants” and then he walked out! [Laughs] Obviously, he loved what I had done on that first track and he said to give me a free hand and I ended up doing the whole album. I think that there is a credit on that album for Dave Spitz because he was the bass player in the band and had been on the road with them and I had just come in to do the album but I did play on the whole album, it is all me.

KNAC.COM: Thank you for predicting and answering the next question! [Laughs]
DAISLEY: [Laughing] Quite all right!

KNAC.COM: I think that was the same story with Bev Bevan and Eric Singer with the drums.
DAISLEY: Yeah, sometimes they will do that because it is like somebody is still in the band but somebody else played on it or is going on the road with them and I think that it is unfair because it is not a proper credit. It is like on No more Tears, I played on the whole album, but they put Michael Inez’s name on the album sleeve as well just to have the continuity of having him on the cover and then going out on the road, but I did the whole of that album as well. Give credit where it is due, you know? I know Michael Inez came up with the initial idea for that little riff at the beginning of the song “No More Tears,” but I changed the positioning of it, where it falls on the beat, and all of the other stuff on there was all me, all my ideas. I know that if I am replacing something that somebody has done or there are demos to be done, I always say, “Give it to me without the bass” and it is because I don’t want to be influenced by something that someone else has done.

KNAC.COM: So that is actually you playing on the song, “No More Tears?”
DAISLEY: Yeah, all of it.

KNAC.COM: Wow, another example of how the party line at the time was something other than reality because I distinctly remember Ozzy saying that playing was Inez’s work.
DAISLEY: Yeah, that was crap.

KNAC.COM: So, with Black Sabbath, it was a very different thing by that point, kind of Tony and the name only by that point. . .
DAISLEY: Yeah, there was Eric Singer playing drums, which is where I first met him. There was Tony and the same keyboard player, Geoff Nichols, and Ray Gillen was singing when I was doing that album. All of the vocal parts and the melodies and the phrasing was all Ray Gillen and I think that Tony Martin went in after that and replaced everything, but at least when he replaced what Ray Gillen had done the album hadn’t been released yet, so I guess that was okay. [Laughs] It wasn’t like they withdrew it and took it back into the studio -- it was just that what they had done they ended up replacing with Tony Martin.

KNAC.COM: Were there things knocked about in the studio for that record that didn’t make it to the actual release?
DAISLEY: Yeah, there was one song -- and I can’t even remember if it ever ended up with a title -- but it is something that Tony and I were working on.

KNAC.COM: Okay and on to Rainbow. You kind of came in on that band in a transitional period. How was it that you got the gig in the first place?
DAISLEY: I joined Rainbow, roughly, around July of ’77. That lasted for a bit more than a year, I think, because I know that when I joined we rehearsed for about six weeks into August of ’77 and I know this because it was in rehearsals that we heard about Elvis dying and that was in August of ’77. We rehearsed up until the end of August and then we did a Scandinavian and European tour into September and October, and maybe even November, and then we were into the studio to finish up Long Live Rock And Roll around December. January of ’78 we went to Japan and in February we went to America and were there for quite some time. I think that everything folded around the autumn of ’78 so it lasted a year and a bit with that lineup. A lot of people tend to think that was the classic lineup but I wouldn’t comment on that. I mean I liked it, and I thought it was a good lineup with Ronnie and Cozy and David Stone, he was a guy from Toronto and a good keyboard player.

KNAC.COM: Yeah, it was a good band and the album was great, but it seemed that it was about that time where Ritchie Blackmore started to accelerate the hiring and firing of band members to the point where the band didn’t really have any kind of identity beyond Ritchie’s solo project.
DAISLEY: Yeah, he did change lineups but he did keep Cozy Powell on drums for a while, but then he did get rid of him after a tim,e too, so that whole lineup had all gone. The newer version of Rainbow was a lot more commercial with Graham Bonnent and all of the other people that he had at that time were good players, but it was just a bit more commercial than I expected, but it did do well. You can’t knock the success of it, but I still think that the heavier lineup with Cozy and Ronnie was better.

"[My gig with Rainbow] lasted for over a year and I learned a lot from it and it was a good experience. It put my name around more and it was just a good situation and I enjoyed working with that band."

KNAC.COM: How was it that you actually got the call to come into Rainbow in the first place?
DAISLEY: I was on tour in a band called Widowmaker and we had finished an American tour in Los Angeles in about July of ’77 and I met up with a friend of mine, Dick Middleton, who I had known from England and had worked with in a band in the early days called Mungo Jerry, anyway, I went to see Dick in LA and he said, “Hey, Blackmore is here and he is looking for a bass player, would you be interested?” I said that I would be, and so I met up with Ritchie and had a few beers and that happened a couple of times and then Ritchie said, “Would you like to come in for an audition?” I did, and they put me through the paces and got me to try different songs and different ways of playing things. Ritchie was particularly interested in a bass player who played with a pick, he didn’t want a finger-style player, he wanted the precision of a pick and that is how I played. At the end of the audition he said, “Yeah, that’s it, you can have the gig if you want it.” Funnily enough, I had actually thought about it a while because I had heard stories about Ritchie being fickle and Ritchie chewing people up and spiting them out and saying, “Next!” [Laughs] “Well, he lasted three months so let’s get someone else now,” and I felt like, “Do I really want to be in that position?” In the end I said to myself, “Yeah, it is a good position and an opportunity and a stepping stone so take the chance, why not?” Like I said, it lasted for over a year and I learned a lot from it and it was a good experience. It put my name around more and it was just a good situation and I enjoyed working with that band.

KNAC.COM: Strangely enough after wanting a picking-bass player he hired Roger Glover who, at the time, was a finger player, I believe! [Laughs]
DAISLEY: Yeah! [Laughs]

KNAC.COM: There are the completist kind of fans out there who put together these intricate time lines for groups and one that I saw had you in the band in the morning with Graham Bonnent and then by the evening you were replaced by Roger Glover which sounds strange to me, but so do a lot of things in this business! [Laughs] Was this at all accurate?
DAISLEY: Oh, is that what happened? [Laughs] I don’t know, I don’t know too much about that really.

KNAC.COM: How was it that you got your papers to leave Rainbow? Was it a formal thing or did Ritchie just not renew your contract when it came time?
DAISLEY: It was a civil thing. I think that it came to the point where, I can’t remember who it was that told me, it probably would have been Bruce Payne or it may have been Ronnie but someone phoned and said, “Ritchie is changing the band and it is going to go in a different direction. . .” So it wasn’t like nobody told me or anything, so I think that it was okay. I saw Ritchie a couple of years after that when I was walking down Sunset Blvd in LA with Lee Kerslake while we were on tour with Uriah Heep and we met up with Ritchie and he said, “Why don’t we go and get some breakfast somewhere?” and we did that at Ben Frank’s, I think it was, and that was the last time I spoke with Ritchie, twenty years ago. [Laughs] It doesn’t seem that long ago, but I guess it was.

KNAC.COM: When Rainbow gave way to the Deep Purple reformation they compiled a “live and rare” disc with a couple of tracks from your period on it, what did you think of those performances?
DAISLEY: Yeah, they were all right I thought -- I thought they were quite good, actually.

KNAC.COM: Have you kept up with any of the other guys from Rainbow through the years?
DAISLEY: I did a tour with Ronnie at the end of 1998, which is something that not many people know about because it was a last minute thing. He had a bass player that had another commitment to do something and couldn’t make it and Ronnie said to me, “Do you want to do some shows?” And so I went in with them and rehearsed a bit in LA and then we went to England and Scandinavia in October and November of ’98. I was in kind of a bad frame of mind then, though, because my Dad had just died and I was just not in a good place and it got really weird and it probably wasn’t the ideal mental space to be in to be working with somebody for the first time after twenty years, but that was no fault of Ronnie’s or the band’s. Ronnie sang great and the band was great, but it just didn’t seem an enjoyable time to me because of my thing, but it was only like a three week tour or something and I just went in and did it and came out. We did some Rainbow stuff and obviously his Dio stuff and a few Sabbath things.

KNAC.COM: You also did some work with Joe Lynn Turner, another Rainbow alum albeit from the time after you had left the band. . .
DAISLEY: Yeah, the Mother’s Army thing, as well as the first time that I worked with Joe on the Yngwie Malmsteen album and that was in 1987 or ’88. Joe and I talked about maybe getting a band together and we spoke with Carmine Appice, but it didn’t happen until the Mother’s Army thing. Carmine had phoned me and said, “What are you doing?” and I told him that I was going out to Australia soon, this was when I was in England, and he said, “Well, fly via San Francisco and come in and have a play with Jeff Watson [Night Ranger] and me.” And so I did that and played on a track or two of Jeff’s solo album and then I came down to Australia. The next year, ’92 or so, we got the Mother’s Army thing together with me and Jeff and Joe Lynn and Carmine and it was starting to do good and we did two albums with that lineup and the third album, Carmine wasn’t with us and we had Anysly Dunbar on that one -- what a great drummer that guy is! I love his playing, that guy. Business-wise the Mother’s Army thing never got off the ground but personnel-wise and musically it was great, I like everybody in the band. I think that we might try and release one of those albums through MP3 or one of those things, and if we do, people can hear about it through my website, I am sure.

KNAC.COM: Lastly, Uriah Heep. You played with them for a time and made some good music with them, but it never really caught fire in the same way your work with some of these other bands did -- what was that period of your career like for you?
DAISLEY: Personally I liked that band and it was like a family, which I really liked. It was a happy situation and I played on Abominog and Head First, but it became a little frustrating because I knew the band was good and the music was good, but it didn’t seem to be getting as far as it should have gone. It had some success, but it should have gotten a bit more push from the record company and the management or whatever and it wasn’t quite breaking the ice and that was frustrating.

KNAC.COM: What do you have going on musically now?
DAISLEY: I just did a blues album, and the band is called The Hoochie Coochie Men, after the old Muddy Waters song, although that song is not on the album. [Laughs] There is some original stuff on there, and there are some blues covers and it is very much a blues album, but it is very listener-friendly, if you know what I mean. I have played it for lots of people who are not particularly blues fans but even they like it, so it has had a good reaction and there will be some news about that on the website as well.

KNAC.COM: Is this something that you are taking out to play live?
DAISLEY: I don’t know, we will see what the reaction is and what the sales are like and just seeing if people are buying it or not buying it! [Laughs]

For more info, please visit Bob Daisley’s official web site.