In a recent interview with Scott Penfold of Loaded Radio, veteran bassist and songwriter Bob Daisley offered rare insight into the status of his famed “Holy Grail” tapes — a trove of recordings featuring early Ozzy Osbourne sessions and the late guitar legend Randy Rhoads.
The 75-year-old musician, who contributed heavily to Osbourne‘s early solo catalog, described the tapes as roughly seven to eight hours of rehearsal material, jams, and candid studio moments.
“Well, you see, the copyright on those songs and on those performances is not owned outright by me,” Daisley explained. “They’re my tapes and I made them. They’re only really reference tapes of when we were writing stuff in the rehearsal room.
“I had a big portable cassette player and a condenser mic on it, so I just recorded everything on the tape, just as our reference so we wouldn’t forget parts. If we had new bits or were adding bits or changing bits or whatever, we’d have a record of it the next day so we didn’t forget. That’s the only reason I recorded them.”
Daisley described the tapes as a mix of material ranging from serious rehearsal snippets to lighthearted moments captured in the studio. “Some of it’s us just clowning about and being silly and talking daft and messing about, having a laugh, sometimes half drunk, but it’s all there as the band.
“There’s even some bits of us jamming at Ridge Farm [studio in Rusper, England, where both Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman were recorded] the day we got there, which was the 22nd of March, 1980. We were just getting sounds and getting used to the studio. Max Norman, he was the house engineer. He was just getting used to miking us. So there’s some jam stuff and us clowning about, so I’ve got all that on tape.”
When asked if fans might ever get to hear the recordings, Daisley remained candid. “Look, if I’d had my way, I would’ve had it out there and released years ago. It’s really out of my hands.”
The so-called “Holy Grail” tapes remain one of rock and metal’s most legendary unreleased archives, offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the creative chemistry between Osbourne, Rhoads, and Daisley during a formative period in heavy metal history.
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