Bob Daisley recalls how he wrote “Mr. Crowley” and “I Don’t Know”

Ozzy Osbourne was always known for his vocals, being a great frontman and for coming up with melodies. However, he was never a really good lyricist, since in Black Sabbath it was the bassist Geezer Butler who wrote most of the lyrics and during his solo career, one of the most successful lyricists of his band was the bassist Bob Daisley.

In an interview with Johnny Beane TV (Transcribed by Ultimate Guitar), Daisley recalled how he had the idea to write songs like “Mr. Crowley” and “I Don’t Know”.

Bob Daisley recalls how he wrote “Mr. Crowley” and “I Don’t Know”

“Ozzy would come up with a title like ‘Mr. Crowley’. I thought, ‘Well, it’s obviously got to be about Aleister Crowley, but I don’t want to be pro-Satanist. So, I wrote it in a way of, ‘Crowley, what the f**k were you thinking like that?'”

“‘I Don’t Know’ was from actual situations Ozzy had told me about. Because he was in a band called Black Sabbath, people, or fans, used to come up to them, thinking that they had the answers to things. I remember one story Ozzy told me [about how] they heard a kerfuffle in the hotel corridor. They went out of their rooms, and down [at] end were all these fans in robes and with black candles, and they were having some sort of mass.”

“And they all went down there, blew their candles out and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to them. But that was the sort of stuff that Ozzy was attracting from being in Black Sabbath, you know? So, ‘I Don’t Know’ was just my way of saying, ‘Don’t ask me, I don’t know what’s the future of mankind.'”

Daisley was part of Ozzy’s band from 1979 to 1981, 1983 to 1985, 1988 (As a session musician), 1990 to 1991 (As a session musician) and from 1995 to 1995.