Former Ozzy Osbourne and Uriah Heep drummer Lee Kerslake revealed he has prostate cancer that has spread and “doctors have given me about eight months to live” during an interview with The Metal Voice. The drummer said one of the things on his bucket list are platinum album certifications for Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman, which he said he has requested from Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne.
A founding member of Osbourne’s post-Black Sabbath solo band, Kerslake and bassist Bob Daisley had a number of legal disputes with Osbourne over the years, with Daisley and Kerslake successfully suing for royalties and credit for their work on Diary of a Madman in 1986. However, their late Nineties suit against Osbourne over unpaid royalties was dismissed in 2002.
Despite the litigation, Kerslake told The Metal Voice that he has “made peace” regarding their disagreements and all is “forgotten and forgiven.”
“I’ve written to Sharon and Ozzy recently, a personal letter basically asking them to kindly send me platinum album certifications for Blizzard of Ozz or Diary of a Madman to hang on my wall before I die. It’s on my bucket list,” he said. “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 cost me hundreds of thousands and I had to sell the house and then started to get ill,” he continued. “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.”
Kerslake added that he has been working on an autobiographical documentary and he has a new LP called Eleventeen, which he hopes to release next year. “I’ve done some seriously heavy songs, I’ve done a ballad song about my mum,” he said of the new material. “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.”