‘Like Spinal Tap But Worse’: Bob Daisley Recalls Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads Trying to Write Lyrics

“There was a couple where Ozzy had had a line or a title or something like that. But, you know, 99% of it was me.”

Bass legend Bob Daisley looked back on working with Ozzy Osbourne and why he had to start being the lyricist in the singer’s band.

Before joining the former Black Sabbath singer’s band, Daisley had experience in other big rock bands. However, lyrics were never really his thing. Today, he’s known as one of the biggest lyricists in rock music, which, along with Geezer Butler, could prove that bassists were the only ones with enough of a talent for this aspect of songwriting.

Recently, speaking to Johnny Beane in an interview, Bob revealed that his lyricist career started with Ozzy Osbourne. When asked how he began coming up with stuff for bands, the bassist said that it was “out of necessity” and that when he was in Rainbow, it wasn’t his role at all since Ronnie James Dio handled that pretty well. Daisley explained (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar):

“In Rainbow — Ronnie was a good lyricist, so that was sort of monopolized by Ronnie. And Gary Moore was pretty self-sufficient in the writing department so he wrote all his own lyrics.”

“But I wrote some in Uriah Heep, I wrote a lot in Mother’s Army, I wrote all of them for in the Ozzy situation. It varied from camp to camp sort of thing.”

Going more into it, Bob recalled a moment when both Ozzy Osbourne and guitarist Randy Rhoads were trying to come up with something but it just wasn’t working. He continued:

“But how I first got into it really was that Ozzy wasn’t a lyricist and neither was Randy. It was only the three of us to start with. And we were auditioning drummers and writing songs at the time.”

“I remember, we were at a rehearsal place called TransAm Trucking in a place called Ilketshall in Suffolk in England. And I came down, it was a live-in situation, and we were auditioning drummers and writing, and I came down one morning, and Ozzy and Randy had tried their hand at writings and lyrics with one of the songs.”

“And I thought, ‘God, this is awful.’ [Laughs] It was like Spinal Tap, but worse. [Laughs] So I thought, ‘I’m gonna have to wear the lyricist hat.’ And I just thought — we wante to be self-sufficient, we don’t want to get writers outside of the band and we want to keep it under our roof. So I took on the role of lyricist and lyrics for the songs.”

Of course, Daisley is open about the significance that Ozzy had in the songwriting process, particularly when it came to vocal melodies. However, lyrics just weren’t going well for the former Black Sabbath singer. Bob concluded by saying:

“There was a couple where Ozzy had had a line or a title or something like that. But, you know, 99% of it was me.”