In a recent interview with Talk Louder, Bob Daisley discussed his struggles with songwriting credits. He also claimed Sharon Osbourne falsely promised to help him get credited on ‘Diary of a Madman’ if he returned to work on ‘Bark at the Moon.’
Daisley remembered seeing a copy of ‘Diary of a Madman’ after its release while he and Lee Kerslake were at the Roundhouse studios with Uriah Heep. He was frustrated because he had done a lot of work on the album, even co-producing it, but didn’t get a co-producer credit.
“I put a lot into that album, ideas, and that album would not have sounded like it did if I hadn’t been there, and then I didn’t even get a production credit,” the songwriter said of the record.
When asked why he returned to work on ‘Bark at the Moon,’ ‘The Ultimate Sin,’ ‘No Rest for the Wicked,’ and ‘No More Tears,’ Bob Daisley said Sharon promised to help him with his lawsuit over the ‘Diary of a Madman’ credits, but he was deceived again.
“[It is] a very complicated, but interwoven, interrelated story that you really do need to read in my book, because it would take a long time to explain the whys, wherefores…”
He continued, “But when Lee and I were ousted, Sharon had a fallout with her father, Don Arden. I was supposed to do a third album with Randy, Ozzy, and Tommy Aldridge on drums, but then Randy was killed, and that third album got put back, and it became ‘Bark at the Moon’ the following year, ’83, but we were meant to do a third album in ’82, even though I was in Uriah.”
“Sharon said, ‘If you come back and do that third album with Ozzy and Randy and Tommy, we’ll help you in your lawsuit against Don Arden to get your credits and get paid, as we won’t get no royalties.’ So, I agreed, but then later, I found out that Sharon had already bought the rights to Ozzy from her father before they offered me that deal. So it was all pretty backstabbing,” Daisley added.
The loss of momentum hurt Uriah Heep’s success with ‘Head First’ in 1983. Daisley left the band and rejoined the Osbourne camp to appear on ‘Bark At The Moon’ later that year.
“To be honest with you, I didn’t really want to go back to Ozzy, but I kind of had to,” he said in another interview about the ‘Bark At The Moon’ era. “Things weren’t taking off like I had hoped for with Uriah Heep, and it was down to really getting the record company behind it and doing something with it, which they didn’t. We passed them a really good ball, and they wouldn’t run with it.”
On ‘Bark at the Moon,’ Ozzy Osbourne is credited as the writer for all songs except the title track, while Daisley eventually got credit on the next albums.
