Bob Daisley says Ozzy initially disliked the song “Diary of a Madman”

The bassist and lyricist Bob Daisley, who worked extensively with the late Ozzy Osbourne during his solo career, writing most of the musician’s lyrics, recalled in an interview with Johnny Beane that the musician initially disliked the title-track of “Diary of a Madman” (1981) when he first showed him. Besides Daisley, were also part of that album the drummer Lee Kerslake and the guitarist Randy Rhoads.

Bob Daisley says Ozzy Osbourne initially disliked the song “Diary of a Madman”

“I know it’s weird. By that by that point, we’d written a lot of the songs for ‘Diary.’ But I’d come up with the title ‘Diary of a Madman’ for the album. But we still didn’t have a track, a title track, a song called ‘Diary of a Madman.'”

“And Randy had the parts – he’d been practicing these classical parts that his tutor had given him, called ‘Étude.’ And he sort of used parts of that, or was influenced, or at least inspired by that. And we started working on the song, ‘Diary of a Madman.'”

“But it didn’t have a title and it didn’t have lyrics and it didn’t have a vocal. It was just us three of us working out the musical part. Ozzy wasn’t there at that time. He was in and out of rehearsals quite often, a lot of the days.”

He continued:

“When he came back and we showed him what we’d done with that song, he actually didn’t like it. He said, ‘Who do you think I am? Frank fucking Zappa?’ But Lee showed him where the vocal would fit, and what it would do, and that sort of thing. Then he was fine. (So) I thought, ‘Well, this could be ‘Diary of a Madman.” Because it’s weird, it’s got weird timings, it sounds a bit nuts,” Bob Daisley said (Transcribed by Ultimate Guitar).

Despite the legal battles over the years, the longtime Ozzy Osbourne bassist and lyricist Bob Daisley recently lamented the death of his former boss and bandmate. 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 1994 to 1995.

After leaving Ozzy’s band there were legal battles against Ozzy Osbourne and his wife/manager Sharon to claim songwriting credits and royalties over the successful lyrics he wrote for most of Ozzy’s successful records. In 2002, Sharon called Rob Trujillo and Mike Bordin to re-record the bass and drum tracks on “Blizzard of Ozz” and “Diary of a Madman” to avoid paying Daisley and the drummer Lee Kerslake royalties. Eventually, the original versions were restored in later reissues.