Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal (22 page)

RUDY SARZO (ex-Whitesnake, ex–Quiet Riot, ex–Ozzy Osbourne):
The first face-to-face meeting I had with Randy was at my audition for Quiet Riot back in 1978. He got to show me some of the musical things they were doing, and my first impression was this guy really knows how to teach. I got to teach alongside Randy at Musonia. He really cared about teaching even though it was a monumental task for him. He used to teach ten hours a day and then go to rehearsal for Quiet Riot. Students wanted to learn the popular songs of the day, so he would have to learn Van Halen songs and whatever. But I never heard any other guitar players’ influences—especially his contemporaries—on his composition or on his playing.

GEORGE LYNCH:
Randy was a good-looking guy and I found out the hard way that all his students were girls and would go there and not care about learning guitar. I went in [to teach in his stead] and they’re like “Where’s the guy with the polka-dot bowtie?” But you know, I was married and had kids.

RANDY RHOADS (1956–1982) (ex–Ozzy Osbourne, ex–Quiet Riot):
Ozzy auditioned a lot of guitar players, and this guy called me and said “Ozzy’s heard everybody and he liked [your] playing.” He said, “You should go down and audition.” At first I said, “I don’t know, I couldn’t do that.” Apparently Ozzy went through every player in LA. I never even knew about it. I never looked for auditions or gigs.

FRANKIE BANALI:
When Randy started playing with Ozzy, I get this call, and it’s Randy. He was this tiny little guy, but he had a really low, deep voice. “Frankie?” he goes. “Look, I’m playing with this guy. Ozzy.” “
This guy
?” I said. “You mean Ozzy, like the Black Sabbath guy?” He goes, “He’s putting a band together. He doesn’t have a drummer. Do you want to come down and play?” I said, “Sure, but you know, I don’t have a car.” He arranged for somebody to come and get me, and I threw the drums in his car and went to Mars Rehearsal Studio. I walked in with my drums, and there’s a bass player and Randy, and Ozzy is sitting on this piano bench. He was very, very quiet, very nice. He had this little ghetto-blaster he was recording everything on. We sat down and started playing, and we ran down a number of tunes, all of which ended up on the first Ozzy record. For all intents and purposes, I had the gig. But as it turns out, Jet Records had spent a good deal of money on Ozzy, flying him from the UK to New York to LA multiple times looking for musicians, and finally the label decided they were going to record in England, and they were only going to pay to take one musician, and of course, the choice was obvious. It was Randy.

OZZY OSBOURNE:
I fell in love with Randy as a player and a person the instant I saw him. He had the best smile in the world. Randy was the best guy in the world to work with. I was attracted to Randy’s angelic attitude towards the whole business. I didn’t have to teach him anything. All he was lacking was guidance. He listened to every word I spoke to him, and we had a great rapport.

KELLE RHOADS:
Randy loved playing with Ozzy. He felt a bit rushed for
Diary of a Madman
. He wished he had a little bit more time. He was a perfectionist. Of course, what’s on there is pretty good. Randy’s music with Ozzy was absolutely timeless. It’s going to be as exciting and vibrant in fifty years from now as it is now.

On March 19, 1982, twenty-five-year-old Randy Rhoads was killed in a plane crash in Leesburg, Florida, along with the pilot, Andrew Aycock, and the Ozzy Osbourne band’s hairdresser/seamstress, Rachel Youngblood. The flight was meant to be a short joyride. But as the pilot banked, the left wing clipped the back side of the tour bus and sent the plane spiraling into the garage of a nearby mansion, where it burst into flames. All three bodies were burned beyond recognition. Aycock’s autopsy revealed traces of cocaine in his system.

RUDY SARZO:
I was on the bus when the plane clipped it. That’s how I woke up. It was a thunderous boom. I ran out of the bus and thought that we were involved in a traffic accident.

OZZY OSBOURNE:
When the wing hit the bus, Randy and Rachel were thrown through the windscreen, or so I was told. Then the plane—minus its wing—smashed into the trees behind, fell into the garage, and exploded. The fire was so intense the cops had to use dental records to identify the bodies. Even now, I don’t like talking or thinking about it. If I’d been awake, I would have been on that fucking plane, no question. But it makes no sense that Randy went up. He hated flying. By the time the fire engines arrived, the flames had already burned themselves out. Randy was gone. Rachel was gone.

RUDY SARZO:
Information started unraveling slowly from everybody that had witnessed the crash—our tour manager and Don Airey, our keyboard player. It was one of those chaotic moments. You’re wondering what was going on and it was very traumatic.

KELLE RHOADS:
I was driving a flower truck, which was a really good job for people in bands. I stopped by my mom’s house for a very brief moment to borrow some money, and everybody was crying and my sister was beside herself. My mom was white-faced, but she’s an extremely strong woman and she just laid it right out. She said, “Your little brother passed on in a plane accident this morning in Florida.” I didn’t believe her at first because I thought, “Oh, right. Ozzy bites the bird. Ozzy bites the bat. Ozzy pisses on the Alamo. And now his lead guitar player’s dead. I get it. That’s pretty sick and fucked up.” So I didn’t pay attention to it. I got back to the place I worked and my boss put his arm around me and said, “Go home and be with your family. Come back when you’re ready.” When I got home I turned on the TV and all the channels had pictures of my brother playing guitar. It took me about five hours to accept it. Randy had this charmed Cinderella life and people flocked to do things for him. At twenty-five he’s gone in a plane accident? Uh-uh. Can’t be. He hated flying. Every single day of my life I miss him so much.

OZZY OSBOURNE:
I honestly don’t know how we did any of those gigs after Randy died. We were all in a state of shock.

RUDY SARZO:
When Randy died he was still living at home. He had not made a major purchase from his royalties. He was still basically the same guy that he was in Quiet Riot. At the core he was a very simple guy and all he wanted to do was be the best he could be and to play. Even though Randy was born with all the goods that you need to be a prototypical rock star—looks, performance chops—deep down inside he was just a great friend, someone who really cared. He helped me so much in the Ozzy days, not only to get the gig but also to understand all the sociopolitics in the band.

DELORES RHOADS (Randy’s mother):
Ozzy and the rest of the band went to the funeral, as well as all of the people from Jet Records. Members of Ozzy’s band and Quiet Riot were pallbearers. My teacher Arlene Thomas, who was a close friend of Randy’s, sang and played acoustic guitar. Randy is buried in San Bernardino, which is where I grew up and want to be buried. I had a small bronze guitar put in on one side of his name on the gravestone, and on the other side the “RR” signature that he used. I know he would have wanted that.

After a short grieving period, Osbourne returned to the road, first with a fill-in—British guitarist Bernie Tormé (ex-Gillan) for a few weeks, then with Rubicon guitarist Brad Gillis (Night Ranger), who played on the 1982 live album
Speak of the Devil
. The band found some stability for a few years when Ozzy discovered ex-Mickey Ratt guitarist Jake E. Lee, who played on 1983’s
Bark at the Moon
and 1986’s
The Ultimate Sin
.

BRAD GILLIS (ex-Ozzy, Night Ranger):
I got my stage presence together on the road with Ozzy. I’d been thrown to the wolves. I went from playing to five thousand people a night to twenty thousand a night with Ozzy. The main thing I learned was professionalism and showmanship, and of course I grew from playing Randy’s parts as well. It was quite a learning experience and definitely the heaviest time of my life.

GEORGE LYNCH:
I got closest [to joining Ozzy after] Brad [Gillis] left. I did the audition tape; they were interested in me. I was still working at my liquor delivery job when I got the call from Ozzy. I flew out to Ireland with their publicist and toured a little bit with them. Then I came back and rehearsed with them in Dallas. I remember that Sharon and Ozzy came walking in with their big giant bags of money and fur coats looking like royalty. They started whispering to each other and I was told by their handlers that they didn’t like my guitar because I built my own guitar, a green tiger. Sharon thought it looked like a booger.

JAKE E. LEE:
At first I said no [to the audition] because I didn’t want to step into Randy Rhoads’s shoes. It’s hard enough to replace a good guitar player—and I don’t want this to sound callous—but when they die they turn into a legend. I’d make it on my own and I didn’t want to be compared to somebody else for the rest of my life. But I went down there anyway. I think there were twenty-five guitar players, and we all spent fifteen minutes in the studio. We had our pictures taken and they were given to Ozzy, and he picked three of us: George (Lynch) was one of them, and he was flown to England and given first crack at it. And there was me and Mitch Perry (ex-Heaven, ex-Keel) left in LA. Ozzy came down and we auditioned at SIR and I got it. And I was forty-five minutes late! [Bassist Dana Strum] said that Ozzy almost walked out the door; he said, “Fuck it, if this guy doesn’t care enough to show up on time and he’s going to be this kind of problem, forget it. I don’t care how good he is.” But [Dana] kept him there.

GEORGE LYNCH:
We went to Hollywood to do more rehearsals and someone was pushing them to try Jake E. Lee, because they hadn’t 100 percent committed to me. I walked into the practice room and there was Jake E. Lee jamming on stage with the band. He looked the part, all decked out in leather from head to toe. He looked great, but the problem was he sucked. He admitted that to interviewers. He went up to me later and said he played horribly. I went backstage and saw Ozzy. It was kind of like
The Blair Witch Project
at the end, where that lady is staring at a wall and not moving. Ozzy turned to me and said, “Oh yeah. We got someone else.” That was it. There was no “Sorry.” Or “Sorry you quit your job and are behind two months of rent and filing for bankruptcy.” But what they were going to give me for the gig, if I got it, was $250 a week. So much for those rock-and-roll fantasies.

Some thought Quiet Riot was through when Rhoads left to join Ozzy’s band. Actually, it was just getting started. A quick audition later and Carlos Cavazo was the band’s new guitarist. (The two albums Quiet Riot recorded with Rhoads were only released in Japan but are widely available on the Internet.) DuBrow hit the Strip hard with his new group, gaining the attention of Pasha/CBS Records. Much to everyone’s surprise, the band’s first album for the label, 1983’s
Metal Health
, shot to number one on the
Billboard
album chart, knocking the Police’s
Synchronicity
out of the top spot. By 1995 it had sold more than six million copies in the United States. What seemed like overnight success to the rest of the world were the rewards of years of dues-paying for the LA veterans. As bassist Rudy Sarzo noted, “From October 1978 until October 1979, Quiet Riot performed approximately three dozen shows at various Los Angeles nightspots. We watched a number of New Wave bands get signed to major record labels as apathetic record executives passed on Quiet Riot, dismissing us as local rock dinosaurs.”

FRANKIE BANALI:
I don’t agree with the notion that
Metal Health
is the first “glam metal” album, because we really were not a glam band by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn’t until later in the band’s history that the hair got bigger and the show got bigger and the stages got bigger. I’ve always had the Sicilian poodle hair thing; it’s much tamer these days. The whole idea of wearing the tights and stuff, that was really not a fashion statement, it was something that was light, easy to pack, and would dry overnight when you hung it up at the local Super 8 or Motel 6 or whatever terrible place we were staying at. We weren’t traveling on a tour bus, there was no wardrobe girl to make sure that the next day’s stuff was nice and fresh and clean. Sometimes we’d wear it for two or three weeks before we had an opportunity to wash it, which would be Woolite in the sink. Kevin would room with Carlos [Cavazo] and I’d room with Rudy [Sarzo] and it was a blessing when we got into a hotel that had two sinks because that meant that we could both put our clothes in the sink and Woolite it at the same time instead of, “I got dibs on the sink!”

CARLOS CAVAZO:
We were on tour with Black Sabbath on their
Born Again
tour with Ian Gillan when
Metal Health
went number one. The guys from Black Sabbath came into our dressing room with cocaine and champagne and we drank up and snorted up before the show. I went onstage and I felt so crappy I decided I would never play on this crap again. It was the worst feeling.

FRANKIE BANALI:
I will always, forever be grateful that [producer] Spencer [Proffer] recommended we do [“Cum On Feel the Noize”]. Spencer felt that Kevin’s vocals and [Slade singer] Noddy Holder’s vocals were very much alike, something that Kevin never agreed with. Kevin and I were aware of Slade because we both appreciated English bands from the sixties and seventies—although I will say that they were not on our top list of bands we looked at, because our bar was set so high—we’re talking the Who, Led Zeppelin, Free. So Kevin flat-out refused to do it. In order not to make waves we decided not to rehearse the song at all. Spencer would call the rehearsal studio, always, and whether it was the beginning, middle, or end of the conversation, he’d say, “Are you working on ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’?” The answer was always, “Oh yeah, absolutely, every day.” Of course, we never played it. We planned to go into the studio and play it so poorly that Spencer was going to say, “You know, it’s a great idea, but maybe not for this band.” So we go in to record and Spencer goes, “Okay, let me hear ‘Cum On Feel the Noize.’” Now, earlier that day, knowing that this day was going to come, I said to the engineers, “Do me a favor. When we play ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’ hit record, because whatever we’re going to play, it’s going to be awful, and you’ll have it for comedic value.” So here we are in the live room at Pasha. I’m behind the drums, Rudy’s on bass, Carlos is on guitar, Spencer’s sitting on a stool about two feet away from the drums, and Kevin is in the far corner, and you can just see him smirking because everything was about to fall apart. I didn’t even have an intro for the song because we hadn’t worked on it. So I start an intro and Kevin’s smiling away, waiting for the total train wreck. Well, I can’t do anything intentionally poorly, so I’m playing the song, and I’m not making any mistakes, and I’m powering through it, and slowly but surely, Rudy and Carlos are finding their way through it, and now they’re joining in, and there were some errors there, but I kept playing. About halfway through, Kevin’s smirk turns into this scowl, and he’s angry. He’s trying to mess me up, so he’s making all these faces, he’s pulling his eyelids down, pulling them up. I’m laughing, but I’m powering through it. We get to the end of the song, and Spencer goes, “That sounds great; I wish we’d recorded that,” and the engineer says, “We did.” So what you have on the record is the first time we actually ever played that song! Kevin grabbed my arm, almost pulled it out of its socket, takes me out of the room, and goes, “What the fuck was that?” I said, “I don’t know, I went into autopilot.” And he goes, “That was great, but what am I supposed to do now?” I said, “You could always sing it shitty. You know how to do that, don’t you?” He kind of had a smile on his face, but he was pissed off, and it was quite a while before he actually came to terms, after everyone else had put their parts on. He finally just said, “It’s just another song,” and he sang it and sang it great.