Greg Prato of Songfacts recently spoke with Quiet Riot drummer Frankie Banali, who during their chat, said he came up with the opening drum pattern on the Ozzy Osbourne song "Over The Mountain". Of course this classic tune initially appeared as the opening track on the 1981 album, Diary Of A Madman; yet the liner notes credit drummer Lee Kerslake as the writer.

"How that came about was really interesting," recalls Frankie Banali. "I had an apartment in West Hollywood - this small, one-bedroom apartment - and I was having to hustle as many gigs as I could and as many sessions as I could just to meet my monthly rent while all my other friends were still couch-surfing. I get a call one morning... from Randy Rhoads."

"Randy goes, 'Frankie, do you want to play with Ozzy?' And I said, 'The guy from Black Sabbath?' He says, 'Yeah.' I go, .OK! I have my drums, but I don't have a car'."

"So he borrowed a car that was big enough. He came and picked me up and we went down to rehearsals. And when I say, 'pick me up,' he picked me up with my 1969 green Ludwig sparkle set with a 26-inch bass drum. I brought a gong - the whole thing. We went to this rehearsal studio called Mars - on Melrose and Western - and we rehearsed for about a week. It was interesting. It was great to play with Randy, and the bass player oddly enough was Dana Strum, who eventually became the bass player in the Vinnie Vincent Invasion and then Slaughter. Essentially, that was the band."

"Ozzy was interesting - he was nothing like what I expected. He was quiet and he sat down on a piano bench with a little ghetto blaster, and he was recording essentially everything we were doing. That ended up becoming 'Over The Mountain', which at that time wasn't really fleshed out. A lot of those parts were guitar parts that Randy brought in from older Quiet Riot songs from the '75-'79 period, and that triplet thing is something that I was doing at every session because I figured, 'If it ever comes out, I'm finally going to get it on a record,' because I really enjoyed it. It's derivative of the 'John Bonham triplet.' John Bonham is one of my favorite drummers, so that's how that came about."

"Now, originally, they were going to record the record in LA, but Jet Records had spent so much money flying Ozzy between London, LA, and New York looking for musicians and they were really unsure what Ozzy's future was going to be. Ultimately, they decided to just record it in England, because it would be less expensive, and they would only pay to fly one guy over. And obviously, 'the guy' was Randy Rhoads. That was my brush with Ozzy-ness, so to speak."

"The interesting thing about that one is, I read - I think it was in Bob Daisley's book [For Facts Sake] - that it's nonsense and that I didn't come up with that drum part, that he was there when Lee Kerslake - who is a friend that I really love, from Uriah Heep - came up with the drum part. It is fascinating that Bob Daisley would say something like this, because this happened a year before he was involved with the band, and he wasn't in Hollywood. So, how could he pass judgement like that? I know what I played."

"In '87, Kevin (DuBrow) and I were doing press for the QR III record, and Ozzy was doing press. It was at a Mexican restaurant on Melrose in Hollywood. Ozzy pointed to me, and he goes - I'm paraphrasing, but something to the effect of - 'That's the bloke that came up with the drum part that Lee recorded, that Tommy Aldridge got all the credit for'!"

To read the interview in its entirety, click here.