“People warned me, ‘If you work with Ritchie Blackmore, you could last 5 minutes. He could chew you up, spit you out. You could end up with nothing.’ So I did have to think about it”: Bob Daisley on Rainbow, Ozzy – and pairing-up with Randy Rhoads

Bob Daisley.

Bob Daisley believes he was always destined to play bass. “When I saw an actual bass guitar in the flesh in front of me, it was just… wow,” he says. “I thought, ‘This is the heartbeat. This is the backbone. This is the pulse of the song.’ That’s all I wanted to do.”

With a recording career including records Rainbow’s Long Live ‘n’ Roll (1978), Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Ozz (1980) and Diary of a Madman (1981), along with loads of others, Daisley has made his mark. Few bassists could handle the temperament of Ritchie Blackmore or the whirlwind classical chops of Randy Rhoads – but he did just fine.