Ozzy Osbourne grants terminally ill Lee Kerslake his dying wish
Ozzy Osbourne has helped his terminally ill former band mate Lee Kerslake complete his bucket list.
Ex-Uriah Heep drummer Kerslake revealed in December that doctors had given him just eight months to live after the prostate cancer he’s been battling for several years spread to other parts of his body.
Kerslake also said he’d made peace with Ozzy Osbourne following their bitter legal disputes over royalties in the eighties and nineties and had personally penned a letter to Ozzy and Sharon asking them to send him a Platinum album certification for ‘Blizzard of Ozz’ and ‘Diary of a Madman’ to hang on his wall before he dies.
He explained to The Metal Voice at the time: “(Getting the Platinum albums) is on my bucket list. I really wrote a nice letter to them and I hope they will come to terms with it and say yes.
“I went belly-up bankrupt when I lost the case to Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne in the courts it costs me hundreds of thousands and I had to sell the house and then starting to get ill. I never managed to get back up but a platinum certification on my wall for these albums would be fantastic and it would say I helped create those albums."
Confirming he’d come good on Kerslake’s plea, Ozzy took to social media over the weekend to post a picture of his former band mate proudly clutching the Platinum discs and a letter he had written to him.
“I’m so glad that Lee Kerslake is enjoying his Blizzard and Diary platinum albums,” Ozzy wrote on Twitter. “I hope you feel better. Love, Ozzy.”
Alongside bassist Bob Daisley, Lee Kerslake successfully sued Ozzy for royalties and credit for his work on ‘Diary of a Madman’ in 1986, however a 1998 lawsuit over unpaid performance royalties was dismissed.
The much-derided 2002 reissues of 'Blizzard of Ozz' and ‘Diary of a Madman’ infamously removed Daisley and Kerslake’s parts with Robert Trujillo and Mike Bordin playing bass and drums respectively.
Ozzy later said he didn't make the decision to remove Daisley and Kerslake, explaining to Pulse Radio in 2010: "Believe me, it wasn’t my doing. I mean, I didn’t know that was being done, ’cause Sharon (Osbourne) was fighting all the legal things that were going down at the time. I said, ‘What did you do that for?’ And she said, ‘The only way I could stop everything was if it went to that level.’ And I said, ‘You know what, whatever the circumstances were, I want the original thing back.’ I mean, I wouldn’t have done that.”
The two albums were reissued once again in 2011 with Kerslake and Daisley reinserted into the recordings.
Despite his prognosis, Kerslake hopes to release a new album called ‘Eleventeen’ this year. “I've done some serious heavy songs,” he said.
“I've done a ballad song about my mum, there is a pub song, it has a lot of variety on the album and it is completed mixed and finished and now we are shopping it around."
> I’m so glad that Lee Kerslake is enjoying his Blizzard and Diary platinum albums. I hope you feel better.
> Love, Ozzy pic.twitter.com/nhc8stldQz
>
> — Ozzy Osbourne (@OzzyOsbourne) January 18, 2019