BOB DAISLEY vs. THE OSBOURNES feud continues - will the 'Holy Grail' tapes ever be released?

Published November 12 2023 at 11:21

Yesterday November 11th 2023 former OZZY OSBOURNE bassist Bob Daisley responded to Ozzy's recent claim that "the quality is fucking dreadful" when talking about the so-called 'Holy Grail' recordings of the original BLIZZARD OF OZZ band ft. Randy Rhoads.

As the nickname suggests, the 'Holy Grail' tapes have long been the stuff of legends. According to Bob Daisley, there's approx. 8 whole hours of Randy's playing that fans never got to experience, and it was all recorded during the 'Blizzard Of Ozz' and 'Diary Of A Madman' writing sessions between December 8, 1979 and March 23, 1981.

During the latest episode of the Osbournes' new podcast, Ozzy's son Jack brought up the issue of those famed recordings, saying:

"Someone commented on a post and it was like, 'Oh when's Ozzy going to let Bob Daisley release the recordings of Randy Rhoads writing in the studio?'

"......supposedly - I don't know if it exists, does it exist? - but there's audio recordings of Randy, Dad, Daisley writing stuff for 'Blizzard...' or 'Diary...' and Daisley's gone out and said, 'Oh Ozzy's not letting me release it'"

"I turned around and said, 'Why should he release it? He should give it to Randy's family and it should be up to them if they release it or not.'", Jack concluded, while Sharon agreed, adding that Daisley captured the recordings on a "tiny little cassette machine", and that "it's not for us (the Osbournes) to do anything with it."

Commenting on the tapes, Ozzy himself said:

"The quality sucks. Everything we ever did, he (Bob) would record the fucking milkman... The quality is fucking dreadful."

Watch Bob Daisley respond to the stated quality issue about releasing the 'Holy Grail' tapes:

Bob Daisley featured in a phone interview on the 'Artists On Record' Youtube channel - here's a transcript of part of the conversation (as done by Metal Department):

QUESTION:
What about this situation here and what are your thoughts about that? 

ANSWER: 
Well, I don't know if Ozzy's actually heard it - there are snippets of what I have on my website headed 'Features', so if you go to 'Features' you can hear little bits and the quality is not bad at all, it's actually... and it's not a little cassette player, it was done on my boom box, uh, that I used to record all our rehearsals on. I used to record the rehearsals really, really just for us to, um, you know, have a reference of what we were doing as we were writing because, you know, the famous last words "oh we'll remember that tomorrow" and and I'd never ever wanted to take that chance. So I used to record everything, that was the only reason I recorded everything was so I'd have a reference the next day and we wouldn't forget anything but it's it's, uh, it's pretty good quality actually for a, you know, recorded on a
cassette player - big, a big cassette player, one of those boom boxes - but in those days that were called ghetto blasters but people don't call them that anymore - but if anybody wants to hear the quality for themselves I mean they can judge it - it's on my website on 'features', little bit, I put Snippets there you know, I put a snippet for the anniversary of Randy's death, I put a snippet there for when Lee passed away, there's I think three or four Snippets of about 30 or 40 seconds long you can you can, uh, play 40 seconds of something legally without having to get permission so, but you know, that was, my management offered to them about oh I don't know how many years, a good good 10 or 12 years ago for the anniversary box set but, um, they wanted to buy it from me and then just let me hand it over, something which I wouldn't do, but if it was you, know, if it was such shitty quality why would they want to buy it and they did want to buy it so you know, they, um, my manager and I took it to their representative in London - we played them, I didn't leave it
with them - I wouldn't leave it with anyone, I played him some stuff and he relayed to them and then they said they wanted to buy it from me, so if it's so shitty why would they want to buy it you know, but I wouldn't sell it anyway because it would be, it would just turn
into another Randy and Ozzy show sort of thing, it'll be edited and made to look like, oh here we are, Randy and Ozzy did everything, you know, so I wouldn't sell it you know, I would certainly love to be able to release it, um, and it's it's you know, you know, she (Sharon) just said oh it's not for us, no, because I wouldn't sell it to them....

QUESTION:
But when you see Ozzy answering in the video he looks aggravated, like his eyes like the way he says it's in his
something in his eyes like he looks aggravated," it's effing shit" you know...

ANSWER:
Yes, I remember there was a couple of guys that came here claiming their goal was to do a film on Randy - many years ago, it must
be 10 or 12 years ago or something - and I played, um, Andrew Klein some of what I had and as soon as I started playing it he said, oh, he said, man, people would just shit, that's what his words were. I'm just repeating exactly what he, because I remember it word for word, he said people would just shit if they could hear this - so you know it's, you know, it's rehearsal studio quality it's not bad, it's not recording studio quality, mastered in you know like a finished product although having said that, in this day and age with modern technology we can, you know, clean things up, separate things, do all sorts of, um, things to improve it so, but, you know, I have about eight hours worth of the stuff you know, of us writing songs, yeah, so I mean, you know, there's there's repetitions of songs, you know, there might be six different versions of "Crazy Train' or or several different versions of "Crowley" or whatever else but it's and there's us you know with ideas that didn't get used and us clowning about and us jamming and it's all good stuff, though".

If you want to listen to the available tape samples and judge the quality for yourself, you can find them here:

HOLY GRAIL SAMPLES