Legendary Australian musician Bob Daisley might have spent the majority of his career playing with some of the biggest hard-rock bands in the world, but a recent interview has seen the famed bassist revealing that he’s still owed quite a few dollars from his days working with Ozzy Osbourne.
Back in 2017, former Ozzy Osbourne producer Max Norman opened up about how he felt that Sharon Osbourne “shafted” Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslake in an effort to rob them of future earnings.
“It’s well-known that in Black Sabbath, Geezer Butler wrote the lyrics; and for Ozzy solo records, Bob told me from album one all the way through [1991’s] No More Tears, he was actually not only playing bass, but writing lyrics.
“That’s a very weird situation and they [Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake] both got shafted pretty badly,” he continued. “They would be like, ‘What’s going on with the publishing?’ So there was a little bit of it going on and I tried not to get involved in that stuff.”
Now, in a new interview with The Metal Voice (via Ultimate Guitar), Bob Daisley has outlined how he’s allegedly owed “millions” by Ozzy from this time period.
“I phoned [Sharon’s] accountant in London and I said, ‘These royalties that Lee and I were meant to get – that we don’t get – where do they go? Does Don Arden get them? Does Jet Records get them? Do Sharon and Ozzy get them? Are they going to charity?’ We didn’t know.”
“We found out that Osbournes were getting them after they bought the catalog from her father. So I went to see a lawyer in LA and he said, ‘You’ve got a good case here.’ So we started suing them over those royalties. And that was in about 1999 I think,” he explained.
When asked whether or not he’d be attempting to pursue Ozzy again for these unpaid royalties, Daisley responded in the negative, but did attempt to outline how much he’s still owed. “That’s difficult… Who knows how many of those albums have sold, probably four or five million each,” Daisley mused.
“And the record royalties for performance… It’s gotta be in the millions that we didn’t get paid.”
Bob Daisley performed as Ozzy Osbourne’s bassist from 1979 until 1981, before sporadically working and performing with him again numerous times over the next 13 years, with his last performance occurring in 1994. Since then, he performed alongside late blues-rocker Gary Moore, as well as serving as a guest musician for a wide variety of famous artists.
Check out Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Suicide Solution’, co-written by Bob Daisley:
