Terminally ill Lee Kerslake asks Ozzy Osbourne to help him complete his bucket list
Former Uriah Heep and Ozzy Osbourne drummer Lee Kerslake says his prostate cancer has spread and doctors have given him “eight months to live.”
Kerslake has been battling cancer for several years and in a fresh interview with The Metal Voice confirmed his health has sadly deteriorated.
"(I’ve got) prostate cancer but it's moved to rest of my body. I now have bone cancer which is nasty one, so the Doctor gave me about eight months to live,” Kerslake said.
“But I've been fighting all the way. Five years ago, they gave me four years to live and so that gives you an idea. Not only have I got bone cancer I've got psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis and two heart murmurs.
“As I said to you I'm fighting it and there's no telling what can happen and they might have a new drug come out and I'll experiment with it if it keeps me alive. I survived this long and all this time I have had this terminal cancer but I have defied it because the music kept me fighting."
Kerslake also revealed that he’s made peace with Ozzy Osbourne following the bitter legal disputes over the years.
Alongside bassist Bob Daisley he 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 reissue of ‘Diary of a Madman’ infamously removed Daisley and Kerslake’s parts with Robert Trujillo and Mike Bordin playing bass and drums respectively.
Commenting on his relationship with Ozzy now, Kerslake said: "Yes I have made peace, it's all forgotten and forgiven.
“I've written to Sharon and Ozzy recently, a personal letter basically asking them to kindly send me a platinum album certification for Blizzard of Ozz and or Diary of a Madman to hang on my wall before I die, it’s 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 help create those albums."
Elsewhere in the interview, Kerslake confirmed he has a new album called ‘Eleventeen’ he will release in 2019.
“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."