THE GUITAR LEGEND THAT WAS “TOO GOOD TO LAST”
It is the sixth of December. A solemn crowd gathers before a guitar-adorned mausoleum in Mount View Cemetery.
They have traveled here by bus, car, plane and train. From halfway around the world they have come to pay tribute to an individual whose life was cut tragically short more than 15 years ago.
His name: Randy Rhoads. And he was without question one of the finest electric guitarists ever to grace a stage. A gifted young man, he would undergo the astonishing metamorphosis from unknown musician to heavy metal icon in the span of a single year. His small body of work would have an enormous – and continuing – impact on heavy metal music.
How does a guitarist who was in the public eye for little more than a year continue to have such widespread popularity among guitar aficionados a decade and a half later? What is it about Randy Rhoads the person that still draws heavy metal fans to his gravesite twice a year, on the anniversaries of both his birth and his death?
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Born Randall Rhoads on December 6, 1956 in Santa Monica, California, Randy was the youngest in a family of musicians. His mother Delores had played professionally before forming a successful music school. His father, who left when Randy was just 17 months old, was a music teacher in the public schools. Randy’s brother Kelle was a rock drummer and singer. His sister Katie played guitar.
Even though the family never owned a stereo, there was always music in the Rhoads household. Randy’s first guitar was an old Gibson acoustic that had belonged to his grandfather. He didn’t learn to play by “copping licks” off records the way other people did. He had to develop his own style, right from the very beginning. He got his first electric guitar – a semi-acoustic Harmony with f-holes – at the age of seven. That guitar was almost bigger than he was when he began playing in the school band. But it wasn’t until his brother took him to his first rock concert – the 1971 Alice Cooper tour – that Randy saw what he could do with his talent.
Convinced that he wanted to play rock for a living, Randy put together neighborhood bands at the age of 13. Two years later, he started teaching at his mother’s school and soon had over 50 students. “I started to get a style when I started teaching,” Randy would later say. “Every day, from every student, I’d learn something.”
He would spend his evenings teaching, rehearsing or playing local gigs and perfecting his guitar skills while he waited for his big break. He thought that break had come with the formation of Quiet Riot in 1973.
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By the age of 17, Randy was the main attraction in the Los Angeles area’s most popular local band, Quiet Riot. Shy and unassuming offstage, he was a great showman onstage; a fireball of activity. Quiet Riot quickly developed a following among L.A.’s avid rock fans.
“Randy unquestionably stole the show, says Quiet Riot bassist and long-time friend Kelly Garni. “Here was this little guy…his guitar was almost bigger than him. But he’d run around like a wild man with it. He was…the star.” Kevin Dubrow of Quiet Riot echoed those sentiments. “I don’t think he even knew how good he was.”
It was at this time that Randy began using his trademark polka-dot Flying V, built by Carl Sandoval. The “V”, in addition to the white Gibson Les PaulÒ, are the two guitars he performed with up until the time he joined Ozzy Osbourne.
Despite their local success, the band struggled to get the record deal they wanted so badly. The best that they could do was a deal for two albums for Sony/Japan. Quiet Riot I, a pop-edged metal album featuring Randy’s patented technique of triple-tracking solos with uncanny accuracy, proved very successful overseas. But it never made it to the United States. Quiet Riot II, unfortunately, suffered the same fate.
Without a U.S. record deal, the band had run into a brick wall.
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At the same time that Quiet Riot was losing its momentum, Ozzy Osbourne showed up in L.A. to audition guitarists for his new band.
The former lead singer of Black Sabbath listened to one rock guitarist after another. Some were good. Some were awful. But none had the unique sound he was looking for. Finally, Ozzie determined that he wasn’t going to find what he wanted here. He was making plans to return to England when a friend convinced him to listen to just one more guitarist. Reluctantly, Ozzie agreed.
Randy was just as reluctant to audition. He had to be coaxed into going up to Ozzy’s hotel room that evening. Ozzy sat on the couch and watched as the 22-year-old with long blonde hair plugged into a small practice amp and began to warm up.
Before he’d even begun to play in earnest, Randy Rhoads had the gig.
Randy’s style was a unique fusion of heavy metal and classical guitar, with a touch of the blues to round out the sound. That sound proved instrumental to the success of the band’s first album, The Blizzard of Ozz. His demanding, intense style in the studio and his fiery, impassioned performance on stage quickly earned him a place among the finest rock guitarists of the time. And his quiet, gentle nature earned him a place in the hearts of all who knew him.
“He blew me away,” Ozzy later affirmed.
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Randy's time with Ozzy was a whirlwind of activity during the European Blizzard of Ozz tour. Soon afterwards, the band started working on their second album, Diary of a Madman, for which Randy wrote most of the music. Then they hit the road once again, this time touring the U.S.
Despite his hectic schedule, Randy never stopped trying to improve his guitar skills. Mastering the classical guitar became an obsession with him. In every city, his first priority would be to find a classical guitar instructor and squeeze in a lesson during his brief stay. He’d practice classical guitar several hours a day, often right up until showtime. “If you love the guitar,” he once said, “you want to learn as many different styles as possible. Who knows? Years from now I may end up playing classical guitar for a living.”
Randy never bought into the idea of himself as a rock star, or even a heavy metal guitarist. He saw himself as a musician, and constantly worked to improve his sound. “All Randy ever wanted to do was play the guitar,” explains his brother Kelle. “He was a musician’s musician.” His dedication paid off in a metal style that was unsurpassed in technical skill and remarkably imaginative in its construction. The”musician’s musician” even designed his own guitar with the help of Grover Jackson – an offset V with neck-through-the-body solid maple construction that would become the hallmark of the popular Jackson guitar.
“His guitar sound was so huge,” explains Ozzy keyboardist Don Airey. “Sometimes he’d more or less be playing three parts at once. He was the most exceptional musician I’ve ever met.” By the time the band embarked on the Diary tour, Blizzard of Ozz sales had reached 6,000 albums a week, and the name Randy Rhoads had become a household word among heavy metal fans around the world. Randy suddenly found himself on the verge of superstardom. Guitar Magazine described him as “fluid in his technique, brilliant in his construction. Hot as they come on the passion level.” Guitar World proclaimed him “the year’s best new artist.”
And yet, at the time of his death, he was considering leaving the band. “After struggling so much for success,” explains Kelly Garni, “I think it was a big letdown for Randy. I don’t think he enjoyed being famous.” Randy never felt comfortable with the lifestyle commonly associated with rock stardom. He was not into drugs, and he drank very little. On tour, he collected European model trains for relaxation. Near the end of his life, he preferred guitar pawn shops to parties. When he did go to clubs after a show, he would introduce himself to the band and unpretentiously ask if he could jam with them. Randy maintained an unusually close and loving relationship with his mother, living at home with her, even while playing with Ozzy.
Moreover, the heavy metal guitarist wanted desperately to broaden his musical horizons. He wanted to spend more time learning and performing other forms of music. Mastering the classical guitar remained very important to him. He was also toying with the idea of sitting in on other artists’ albums – playing jazz and blues as well as classical.
Unfortunately for us, he would never have the chance.
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Associated Press – March 20, 1982. Leesburg Florida. A small plane crashed into a mansion here and burst into flames yesterday, killing the lead guitarist of the Ozzy Osbourne rock group and two other people, police said.
Randy had a reported fear of flying. That’s why many of the guitarist’s fans have struggled to understand why he would go joy-riding in a single-engine aircraft in the early morning hours of March 19. Even more perplexing is the idea that Randy would fly with the band’s bus driver, an amateur pilot with an expired license.
The band was staying overnight at a friend’s home adjacent to a small airstrip. According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s report, Rhoads, the bus driver and the band’s seamstress commandeered their host’s Beechcraft Bonanza without permission. The plane began to buzz the home and tour bus, where Ozzy and his fiancé were sleeping. On the third pass, the plane clipped the tour bus and spun out of control. The aircraft hit a nearby pine tree and nose-dived into the house. All three passengers were killed in the fiery crash. Remarkable, no one in the house or tour bus were injured.
The deaths had a lasting impact on the band. Nearly three decades after the events of March 19, Osbourne admitted that he still takes antidepressants to deal with the loss. ""We loved each other very dearly. I swear to God, the tragedy of my life is the day he died."
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Randy Rhoads was just 25 years’ old when he died – not even at the peak of his musical career. He is remembered as an enormously talented guitarist, a charismatic onstage performer and a tremendously dedicated musician. And his musical legacy continues to influence heavy metal guitarists 15 years after his death. “I don’t think people will ever realize what a talent he was,” Ozzy Osbourne declares.
“He was too good to last.”
