Ozzy Osbourne knew he’d found a gem in the wild when he landed Randy Rhoads as his guitarist in late 1979. Rhoads was a virtuoso whose skillful use of two-handed tapping, intricate scale patterns and whammy-bar dive bombs gave Osbourne’s early solo albums the guitar pyrotechnics metal required in the early 1980s.

But Rhoads’ talent came at a cost to Osbourne, the former Black Sabbath singer who died on July 22. The guitarist practiced nearly all the time, including after hours on tour, which could drive Ozzy mad.

At the dawn of 1982 — the final year of his life — Rhoads received a custom pedalboard, one intended solely for practice, that would solve this problem. The board was built to his specifications by Jon Graves and Domenic Turlace of Zeus Audio Systems in Alhambra, California, which made a line of guitar pedals as well as mini guitar amps designed for practice. Randy’s pedalboard was presented to him on New Year's Eve, 1981, roughly two months into the tour for Ozzy’s second solo album, Diary of a Madman.

Keen-eyed Guitar Player readers got their first — and likely only — look at the board in a photo of Rhoads, taken by photographer Neil Zlozower, that ran in our November 1982 Rhoads tribute issue. Spread across two pages, the photo showed the guitarist practicing on a sofa alongside three of his electric guitars: his 1974 Gibson Les Paul Custom, Jackson Concorde and Karl Sandoval Custom Polka Dot Flying V.

Sitting on the floor in front of them was the tiny pedalboard, bearing a few obscured devices.

Two months after the photo ran, Graves and Turlace described the board in Guitar Player’s January 1983 issue in response to a reader’s question.

Although it was small, the pedalboard included a Boss Dr. Rhythm drum machine, three MXR pedals — a 6-Band graphic equalizer, a Commande Time Delay and a Micro Chorus — and a Zeus 8401 Mini Amp. Red in color, and roughly the size and dimensions of a brick, the 8401 mini amp had controls for preamp, volume and tone, plus preamp and external speaker outputs. A second amp with a 4 1/2–inch speaker was also provided for the Dr. Rhythm.

And because Ozzy was driven to distraction by Rhoads’ constant practicing, the pedalboard included an accessory designed to keep him happy.

"A unique feature is the 'Ozzy Jacks,' added at Ozzy Osbourne's request,” Turlace explained to GP. “These jacks provide separate signals from the gui­tar amp and rhythm machine for a head­phone mix, while shutting off the main speaker."

According to Graves, Ozzy had also requested a remote switch so that he could turn the pedalboard off from the next hotel room while on the road, because Randy tended to play into the wee hours. He probably wasn’t joking. It was never added.

The entire thing was built into an ABS plastic case salvaged from a Casio keyboard. (Some might say it’s the best use ever made of a Casio keyboard.) In addition, the lid included a battery pack as well as an AC adapter. Graves designed the pedalboard so that the battery would shut off when the lid was closed.

As a final touch, the board boasted a gold-plated plaque that read "Custom made by Zeus Audio Systems for Randy Rhoads,” along with his Rolls-Royce–style logo, bearing two R's.

In their response to our reader's question, the builders made clear they had no desire to repeat their efforts. “Anyone wishing to duplicate the pedalboard,” they said, “will have to build one themselves.”

Sadly, Rhoads would not get to use the device for long. He died tragically on March 19, 1982, when the small plane in which he was a passenger crashed during a tour stop in Leesburg, Florida.

The late Ozzy Osbourne spoke on many occasions about his love for Randy Rhoads after the guitarist’s death in 1982. He released the 1987 double live album Tribute in Rhoads’ memory and once said, “I owe my career to him,” referring to Rhoads’ work on Osbourne’s first two solo albums: 1980’s Blizzard of Ozz and 1981’s Diary of a Madman.

Osbourne and his wife Sharon were also present alongside Rhoads’ mother, Delores, when the guitarist was posthumously inducted into Hollywood’s RockWalk in 2004.

But in a new interview, Bob Daisley says the idea that Rhoads had a “family bond” with Ozzy and Sharon is a myth.

Daisley should know. The bass guitarist was there alongside Osbourne when the electric-guitar virtuoso was hired for Ozzy’s band. He worked with Rhoads on Blizzard of Ozz and its subsequent tour before being fired — along with drummer Lee Kerslake — in 1981, prior to the tour’s U.S. leg.

“They built it up to make it sound like the Ozzy and Randy show,” he says of the Osbournes in a new interview with Cassius Morris. “But it was not like that, I can tell you right now.

“We all bonded in our own way. Randy and I, musically, got on very well together, and we used to sit on chairs opposite each other, just coming up with ideas and working on music. And we’d all sort of have meals together — we’d go out together, we’d socialize together.

“It was a nice situation, but there wasn’t any particular bonding of one or two — of anyone. It was not a Randy-and-Ozzy thing.”

Daisley also disputes the oft-repeated Blizzard of Ozz–related claim that Osbourne “had half the album written before we even got there.”

“That’s lies. It’s bollocks.”

Of course, Daisley was long gone from Osbourne’s band at the time of Rhoads’ death in a plane crash, having been replaced by the guitarist’s friend and former Quiet Riot bassist Rudy Sarzo. But Daisley says he later heard from former Ozzy drummer Tommy Aldridge and keyboardist Don Airey that Rhoads had been planning to leave Osbourne at the time of his death.

“Randy was not happy towards the end. I wasn’t there, but I know because Don Airey and Tommy Aldridge told me what was going on. Ozzy and Randy were not close anymore, and Randy wanted out.”

Daisley adds that Rhoads had even agreed to record a live album of Black Sabbath songs with Osbourne as a way to end his contract with the singer.

“He wanted to pursue his master’s degree and go to Europe to study,” he says. “The only reason he was gonna do the Black Sabbath stuff — he didn’t like Sabbath; he was not a fan — but he agreed to do it to get out of his contract so he could go free.”

The album was eventually made with guitarist Brad Gillis and released in 1982 as Speak of the Devil.

Asked whether Osbourne — who died in July 2025 — recast his relationship with Rhoads after the guitarist’s death, Daisley concurs.

“Oh, sure, sure. There are things right now I can’t talk about because of legal reasons, but in answer to your question, yes.”

It’s unclear what legal action could be preventing Daisley from discussing the matter. Daisley and Kerslake unsuccessfully sued the Osbournes in the 1990s over unpaid royalties, songwriting credits and performance fees related to their foundational work on Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman.

The bassist also filed a lawsuit in 2016 against Osbourne and Blizzard Music Limited seeking $2 million in unpaid royalties. Daisley alleged that Osbourne and his company were using a sham entity to siphon fees from his publishing payouts. The case was dismissed in 2022 on the grounds that the disputes stemmed from original songwriter agreements that required arbitration.

Ritchie Blackmore recently grabbed headlines with a surprise livestream Q&A in which he shared a notably pessimistic view of guitar players.

What received considerably less attention were his thoughtful reflections on the late virtuoso Eddie Van Halen, whom he remembers as both extraordinarily gifted and strikingly modest.

“[He was] very humble, almost too humble,” Blackmore says. “He would often come backstage at our shows and go, ‘You don’t want to talk to me, because I’m nobody,’ and I could never understand why he would say that. He always used to underestimate himself. He basically reinvented the guitar with his hammer-on technique.”

Blackmore says he particularly admired Van Halen’s intuitive approach to the instrument. While he described Joe Satriani and Steve Morse — who joined Deep Purple following Blackmore’s 1993 departure — as “fantastic players,” he suggested that technical perfection does not necessarily equate to the highest level of musical expression.

“If you’re always playing the correct notes, there’s something wrong,” he says. “You’re not searching, you’re not reaching for anything.”

Van Halen, he adds, does not fall into that category.

Blackmore believes Eddie’s sensitive nature sometimes made it difficult for him to find common ground with the older guard of guitar greats, including himself and Eric Clapton. Van Halen was heavily inspired by Clapton and was hurt when he was rejected by him.

“Unfortunately for Eddie, he was too sensitive,” Blackmore says. “And of course the business brought him down. He started drinking because he needed to drink to socialize. He was very sensitive, and I can relate to that.”

Blackmore says much the same about Randy Rhoads, the late guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne. Although many pitted Rhoads against Van Halen for the title of world’s greatest guitar player, their rivalry was largely fictional. As Blackmore sees it, both guitarists were cut from the same cloth.

“He was almost like Eddie Van Halen; very similar attitude, very humble, which I always appreciate when I talk to people,” Blackmore says. “There’s no reason to be conceited about music.”

Blackmore has been in a particularly chatty mood lately. In addition to his online Q&A, the guitarist recently gave Guitar Player an extensive interview about his time in Rainbow to promote the new box set Rainbow — The Temple of the King 1975–1976, a nine-disc collection of recordings from his post–Deep Purple group.

During the conversation, he also reflected on his relationship with Jon Lord, describing the late keyboardist as “my best friend in the band.”

In the late 1970s and early ’80s, Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen were routinely cast as rivals. Both were young, technically dazzling and widely viewed as the most important guitarists of their generation, fueling a narrative that divided fans and gave the guitar press an irresistible storyline.

The media’s role in amplifying such rivalries was nothing new — as seen in the much-publicized tensions between Metallica and Megadeth. But according to original Quiet Riot bass guitarist Kelly Garni, the supposed animosity between Rhoads and Van Halen bore little resemblance to reality.

When Van Halen exploded onto the Los Angeles club scene, his revolutionary technique — immortalized in “Eruption” — quickly made him a local phenomenon. At the time, Rhoads was still performing with Quiet Riot. Later, after joining Ozzy Osbourne and helping launch the singer’s solo career, the perceived rivalry intensified in the public imagination.

But Garni says Rhoads himself had no interest in competing.

Speaking on the Booked On Rock podcast (via Ultimate Guitar), Garni recalled how Quiet Riot became aware of Van Halen’s growing reputation while playing the same Hollywood circuit.

“We became well aware of Van Halen,” he said. “When we’d play the Starwood, we knew they were playing down the street at Gazzarri’s. But there was no competition.

“It just wasn’t in Randy to try to compete. He couldn’t. The way his brain was wired, he could not form a thought like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be better than that guy.’”

Still, the buzz surrounding Van Halen eventually sparked Rhoads’ curiosity. According to Garni, he went to see the guitarist perform and came away impressed, if understated in his assessment.

“Randy said, ‘I’ll go see what the deal is,’” Garni recalled. “He saw him play and said, ‘Yeah, okay, the guy’s good.’”

Rhoads did make it backstage, but the timing wasn’t ideal.

“Eddie was acting kind of crazy and bouncing off the walls in his underwear,” Garni said. “And Randy was like, ‘Oh, okay … not the best time to meet this guy.’”

The two guitarists shared a bill only once, at Glendale Community College on April 23, 1977. Whether they ever properly connected remains unclear, but the mythology surrounding their supposed rivalry only grew in the years that followed.

Van Halen would later claim that “everything he did, he learned from me,” while Osbourne said in 2022 that his late guitarist “didn’t have a nice thing to say about Eddie.”

Yet decades later, Osbourne appeared to signal reconciliation of sorts. During his 2024 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he invited Wolfgang Van Halen — Eddie’s son — to perform “Crazy Train.”

Even so, Van Halen’s legacy remained entwined with rivalry. Guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen, who rose to prominence after Rhoads’ death in 1982, has claimed that Van Halen avoided sharing bills with him to sidestep direct comparisons.

True or not, Garni’s recollections suggest that at least from Rhoads’ perspective, one of rock’s most famous guitar rivalries may have existed more in headlines than in reality.

“When I first met Randy Rhoads, something inside me said, ‘This man’s not going to live to be an old guy,’” Ozzy Osbourne remarks in a newly unearthed interview. “‘There’s something different about him.’”

Osbourne reflected on the late guitar virtuoso in a video interview conducted at his home in what appears to be the early 1990s. Rhoads was instrumental in helping Osbourne launch his solo career shortly after the singer was forced out of Black Sabbath in 1979.

In addition to providing Osbourne’s songs with the necessary electric guitar firepower, Rhoads cowrote many of his solo breakthrough tracks, including “Crazy Train” and “Mr. Crowley,” both from his 1980 debut, Blizzard of Ozz.

But as Osbourne explains in the newly revived video. Rhoads was very serious about his guitar playing. He would practice constantly, much to Ozzy's dismay.

Moreover, at the time, Rhoads had his eyes set on a more sedate life and planned to return to school to study classical music. That never happened. During a stop on the Blizzard of Ozz tour, Rhoads died when an airplane joyride with the tour bus driver ended in tragedy.

Osbourne, who died in July 2025, recalled his last conversation with Rhoads, in which the guitarist told him of his future plans.

"I remember in the last journey I ever had with Randy Rhoads, that fatal journey from Knoxville, Tennessee to Orlando, Florida," Osbourne said. "And we had to stop off at the bus depot for some parts, or a fucking jack or something.

"And he was learning classical music. And every town that we would go to, he'd go and get a classical lesson. He's a fucking guy in a rock band. I said, 'What, are you mad? Why don’t you go and get a chick and get a fuck or a blow job in the back of the bus? What's the matter with you?'"

He then imitated Rhoads studiously playing guitar.

"And then he said to me on this bus journey from Knoxville, 'I think I want to give up rock and roll. I want to go to university, UCLA, and get a degree in classical.'

“And my head goes, 'What? Are you crazy?’ I said, ‘We're just about to explode, man. Wait until we get the fucking dough. Don't start fucking giving me the shits at this point, because I've come a long way to get here.'

"He says, 'Oh no, not immediately.'"

Even so, Osbourne says he suddenly understood that Rhoads was serious about his growth as a guitarist and intended to leave him.

"Where 90 percent of the players today, they use their instrument as a means to becoming a millionaire, well, he wasn't interested. He would have liked to have been wealthy, but it didn’t really particularly bother him."

Moreover, Osbourne said, Rhoads defined what it means to be a musician, something he spoke about in a 1982 Guitar Player interview following Rhoads' death.

"He was the only musician — in the sense of ‘musician’ — that I’ve ever had the honor to work with. His love, first and foremost, was his instrument.

"I remember when [Guitar Player called him] ‘Best New Guitar Player of the Year,’ he was shy. I have photographs of him and he’s like shy, you know. ‘Why me?’ [The award was actually for Best New Talent of 1981.]

Rhoads recalled in a 1981 interview how he first learned that he was to receive the award through Ozzy's wife and manager, Sharon Osbourne. He also suggested that there was more than playing with Ozzy in his future.

"When they told me, I thought they were joking, because Sharon always jokes with me anyway," he said.

"And they called me one day and told me, and... I just didn't believe it for a week. Still, I don't believe it, 'cause I'm really proud and honored — and I don't want to stop here."

Jake E. Lee has opened up on his experience auditioning to be Ozzy Osbourne’s next guitar player in a candid new interview with the Talk Is Jericho podcast, offering a fresh look into the singer’s recruitment process.

Lee became Ozzy’s second full-time guitarist in late 1982, when he succeeded the late Randy Rhoads, who helped kickstart singer’s solo career. Following Rhoads’ death in a plane crash while the band was on tour in early 1982, Ozzy and his group forced themselves to carry on, with Bernie Tormé and Brad Gillis each helping to complete the tour.

Even before the road show was over, Ozzy had begun looking for a permanent replacement for Rhoads. George Lynch had been tagged and was touring with the group to shadow Gillis, watching him from the side of the stage.

But Ozzy clearly wasn’t sold on Lynch. As Lee explains, he had turned to Slaughter guitarist Dana Strum, who had introduced him to Rhoads, and asked for his help to find another electric guitar virtuoso.

At the time, Lee was working with Ronnie James Dio, who was assembling a band for a solo project.

“So Dana checked out all the bands and saw what he thought were the 10 best guitar players,” Lee says. “We all went into his studio and he took our photo, and then said, ‘Play something.’

“I'm like, ‘Play what?’ He goes, ‘Whatever you want.’ So I just doodled for about a minute and a half.

“They sent all those to Sharon and Ozzy, and they picked three: Me, Mitch Perry and someone else.”

From the start, Lee’s audition went sideways.

“I showed up late because Wendy Dio tried to prevent me from going to the audition,” he goes on. “All my gear was in a storage locker, and when I got there, one of our roadies said, ‘Wendy says you can’t take anything.’”

After 15 minutes of back and forth, he quipped, “Are you gonna be the guy that stops me from auditioning for Ozzy Osbourne?”

The roadie relented, but Lee says, “I had to lug all my shit out myself.”

“When I got to the audition, I was late. And according to Sharon, my whole attitude after that helped me get the gig,” he says. “She said, ‘You’re late. We just about walked out.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m here now. Do you want me to play or not?’

“I didn’t know that much about Sharon. I might not have put it that way [if I had]. But she went, ‘Yeah, okay. Go ahead and play.’

“I kind of messed the songs up because with ‘Crazy Train’ and ‘I Don’t Know,’ you could swap parts in those songs. And I did, because I’d just learned them the night before. So I was kind of screwing up, and I thought, Yeah, I'm not getting this gig.”

Lee says Ozzy nodded after the audition before going over to Sharon for a quiet word.

“Then Sharon asked, ‘Can you do a solo?’ ‘You mean, like ‘Eruption?’ And she went, ‘Yeah, could you do that?’

“I said, ‘Yeah, if I worked one out. I don’t have anything prepared, and I’m not going to do it because I already fucked the songs up.’”

Despite his attitude, Ozzy and Sharon knew Lee was the guitarist they wanted. All that was left was to tell him — and George Lynch.

Unfortunately for Lynch, he was about to find out in the worst way.

“So I’m packing my gear up, and George walks in,” Lee continues. “I’m about to introduce myself, because I hadn’t met him before that, and then Ozzy comes up, looks at me, and goes, ‘You want the gig?’ And he turned to George and said, ‘He’s got it. You don’t. You’re fired.’”

Much has been said of Ozzy’s caring and paternal side, but Lee learned in that moment how brutal he could be, too. Lynch was booted before playing a single note onstage, and, with Lee, Ozzy’s band could enjoy an element of stability once more.

Lee has also revealed the last conversation he had with Ozzy, after burying the hatchet of their soured relationship at Back to the Beginning. Lee's desire to bring 'jazz' into the band had led to a “frustrating” final chapter in the group, with Zakk Wylde ultimately taking his place in 1986.

Sharon Osbourne has opened up about the tragic death of Randy Rhoads that took place on Ozzy Osbourne’s tour more than 40 years ago, on March 19, 1982.

Speaking in Hulu’s eight-part documentary series Into the Void: Life, Death & Heavy Metal, Ozzy’s wife and manager said she’s still haunted by the young guitarist’s death and thinks about Rhoads “all the time.”

Osbourne explains that the band’s tour bus made an early morning stop at Flying Baron Estates, an aviation compound in Leesburg, Florida, after the air conditioner broke down. While the others slept, the driver, Andrew Aycock — a private pilot — commandeered a small plane on the property and took Rhoads and the band’s makeup artist Rachel Youngblood up for ride.

It quickly turned to tragedy when Aycock tried to buzz the tour bus and lost control. One of the plane’s wings clipped the bus, sending the plane toppling into a nearby house, where it crashed and burst into flames.

“There was this terrible smell of fuel, and all we could see was fire,” Osbourne recalled in the documentary. “I just went out, and the tour manager was on the grass with his hands over his head. I kept thinking, You’re asleep, you’re asleep! Wake up, wake up!”

Tommy Aldridge, Ozzy’s drummer at the time, remembers her reaction to the horror that unfolded that morning.

“When Sharon realized that Randy and Rachel had been killed, she came unglued,” he says. “She just went off on our tour manager, screaming, ‘How could you let that baby get on that plane!’”

Osbourne recalled the difficulty of having to tell Rhoads’ mother the news and “try and make sense” of the tragedy.

“Now you know why I didn’t want to talk about Randy,” she said, breaking into tears.

Ozzy, who died this past July 22, said in recent interviews that the accident continued to haunt him decades afterward.

“Every time I talk about that, the tape starts to run in my head of that day when he died,” he told British GQ in 2020. “It was awful. It was like a bad fucking horror movie. The house was on fire. The bus had been hit by the plane. There was glass and gasoline everywhere. The fucking house was engulfed.”

The singer said he felt responsible for the guitarist’s death, noting in his autobiography, I Am Ozzy, “if he hadn’t been in my band, he wouldn’t have died.”

Osbourne said was enamored both of Rhoads and his abilities on electric and acoustic guitar.

“He was not only a great rock and roll player, but in the classics, and in every other field, he was phenomenal,“ he told Guitar Player in a 1982 interview, shortly after Rhoads died.

“I loved him in an instant,” he added. “I fell in love with him as a player, and I fell in love with him as a person.“

It’s no understatement to say that the death of Randy Rhoads turned the world upside down for Ozzy Osbourne and the rest of the band. And while bassist Rudy Sarzo, then in Ozzy's band, defended the group's decision to continue touring after Rhoads' death, drummer Tommy Aldridge now reveals the chaos involved in finding a replacement for the guitarist on short notice.

“There was so much drama going on, so much tension,” Aldridge tells Get on the Bus of the aftermath of the plane crash that killed Rhoads. “Everybody was nervous about different things..”

Sharon Osbourne, Ozzy's wife and manager, was focused on the shows ahead.

“Sharon wanted to keep the momentum going,” Aldridge says. “She had dates that were booked, Madison Square Garden dates. These were all sold-out shows months and months in advance.”

Despite the bookings, the decision to carry on came down to Ozzy's sanity. As Sarzo has previously reported, Rhoads’ death had devastated him. .

“I felt compassion for Ozzy,” Aldridge says. “He had no rudder. But after Randy's gone, and we're trying to regroup, we get this assignment of trying to find a guitar player to meet this deadline for the dates.”

Their choice: Bernie Tormé, an Irish guitarist known for his gig as foil to Deep Purple vocalist Ian Gillan’s solo project. He would later play with Atomic Rooster and form Desperado with Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider.

“He was a Strat player," Aldridge notes. The guitar was a far cry from the Gibson Les Paul Custom and sleek Jackson metal machines Rhoads was known for. "I felt for whoever came in,” the drummer adds.

After three days of rehearsals, Tormé understood the unrelenting challenges that lay before him.

“Even if I played okay, even if I played a nice solo or whatever, if anyone looked at me onstage they thought, ‘Oh, shit. It isn’t Randy,'" Torme told Ultimate Classic Rock two years before his death.

He was soon thrown into the first on his first date with Ozzy, on April 1 — April Fool’s Day, no less — 1982 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

“The first show was appalling,” Tormé said. “I didn’t have my amps, my pedals and I had one guitar. There were three or four tracks where we re-tuned and I had to use a hire guitar that was a piece of shit. And apart from anything else, I did not know the songs.”

Aldridge says Tormé's state of mind was made perfectly clear whenever he spoke.

“I was nervous, but poor Bernie had a little bit of a stutter,” he says. “And the more pressure he got under, the greater it would manifest.

“I learned this about him in that short amount of time because we were in his time compression zone, trying to do three months of work in six to eight days. It was unholy, man. Rudy and I were twisting him, rehearsing with him. His calluses were falling off his fingers.

“He was so dedicated to doing it right and trying to learn those solos that were not his genre,” he adds. “He could play Gary Moore stuff, but these solos are Randy. These solos are the Holy Grail.

“By the time we're going onstage, I said, 'Bernie, bless you, man, we're gonna get through this.' He couldn't speak. He was so stressed.”

All his hard work didn’t amount to much, sadly. After only a handful of shows, Tormé stepped down from the role, with Brad Gillis taking his place after a hotel room audition saw him hired overnight.

Afterward, Jake E. Lee would become Rhoads’ full-time successor, producing two albums with the band before Zakk Wylde’s longstanding reign. Lee reunited with Ozzy, whom he hadn’t seen since his dismissal nearly 40 years earlier, at Back to the Beginning, and has since revealed the final message he got from the Prince of Darkness while he sat at the airport the next day.

From the moment Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sabbath following 1978’s Never Say Die! album, his guitar player slot has been one of the most coveted gigs in the industry.

Ozzy’s eye for white-hot guitar players has been indisputable ever since. He pulled Randy Rhoads away from Quiet Riot to launched his solo career. With his ample fretboard acrobatics, Rhoads quickly rose to become a guitar star put in the same league as Eddie Van Halen. When he tragically died in 1982 at just 25, a teenage Bettencourt was certain he would be his successor.

“When I was 14 and his guitar player passed in a plane accident in 1982, I believed I was going to replace him,” Bettencourt says. “There was an ad to send a cassette in, so I put a cassette together thinking, This is my gig. I'm going to get it. Of course, I didn't. Nobody ever called.”

Ozzy instead recruited Jake E. Lee as his second full-time guitarist, after Bernie Tormé and Brad Gillis had held down the fort in the interim.

Three years later, Bettencourt, having plied his trade in hair metal group Sinful, joined Extreme, the band with whom he'd make his name.

Their self-titled debut album arrived in 1989, bolstered by the song "Play with Me," which was featured in the film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Extreme's stock continued to rise with Extreme II: Pornograffitti (1990) and III Sides to Every Story (1992) packing plenty of chart-bothering hits.

That caught Ozzy’s attention.

“Cut to 12 years later.” Bettencourt says. “I'm opening for Aerosmith with Extreme in London, and my booking company goes, ‘Sharon just called. Ozzy wants you to be in the band.’ This is like 1995, '96, and I said no.”

Time can change one’s priorities, and though his dream gig landed right on his lap, he felt a loyalty to his bandmates.

“I was in a band that were up and coming with Extreme, and we had hits up,” he explains.

Like many, Bettencourt had his last moment with Ozzy at Back to the Beginning, when taking the group photo.

“I grabbed his hand saying, ‘Thank you for everything, and thank you Ozzy for what you mean to me.’ And he pulls me in by the hand. He goes, ‘You were the only guitar player who said no to me.’”

There were rumors that Ozzy had originally turned to Gary Moore to launch his solo career, and that the Irish rocker had turned him down. Whether or not it's true, there are no known instances of guitarists saying no to the Prince of Darkness. Most — like Slash’s right-hand man Frank Sidoris and neoclassical hotshot Chris Impellitteri — were eager for their chance and now spin tales of their failed auditions.

Bettencourt's timeline seems to line up with Alex Skolnick’s one-show stint in the band, about a year after Zakk Wylde was temporarily pushed out of the band as a chance to join Guns N’ Roses loomed.

“He was a godfather to us,” Bettencourt said to Page Six on the red carpet at last weekend's MTV VMAs. “For him to do what he did with Black Sabbath and then be out of there and have a whole other career as Ozzy Osbourne the solo artist, and be a reality star after that, this guy's affected culture and touched everybody in so many different ways.

Bettencourt said his final exchange with Ozzy was one of good spirits and that they shared a mutual love and respect for one another.

“He was a godfather to us,” Bettencourt said to Page Six on the red carpet at last weekend's MTV VMAs. “For him to do what he did with Black Sabbath and then be out of there and have a whole other career as Ozzy Osbourne the solo artist, and be a reality star after that, this guy's affected culture and touched everybody in so many different ways.”

Meanwhile, Rudy Sarzo has said the band needed to continue touring after Rhoads' passing, else Ozzy would have drunk himself to death.

Grace Bowers has become the latest big-name guitarist to pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne, with a sizzling cover of “Crazy Train” at a recent show, having only learned the song’s classic guitar solo the day before.

Osbourne’s passing shocked the world, coming so soon after his blockbuster final show at Back to the Beginning.

Now the young guitar has followed the likes of Nuno Bettencourt and Wolfgang Van Halen — who featured at his 2024 Rock Hall induction — to play extracts of his solo work on stage as a showing of appreciation for the superlative music he’s left behind.

Her “Crazy Train” tribute also doffs its cap to Randy Rhoads, and the young guitarist said she only recently got the icon's guitar lines under her fingers. But it would be impossible to know that from her Instagram clip alone.

“Honoring Ozzy and Randy last night,” she writes. “Learned the solo the other day, so it’s not perfect, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t fun to play.”

For her performance, Bowers played her 1961 Gibson SG with a Vibrola tailpiece as she tapped her way through Rhoads' iconic licks with a ease. And the whammy-bar dump at the end of the phrase is delicious.

Beyond her honoring of two late greats, the move is an important one for Bowers who, one album deep into her career, is eager to avoid being pigeonholed as solely a blues guitar player.

She may have first picked up an electric guitar because of a blues rock legend, but she cites Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain" as a key song in helping her find her sound, which colors outside the lines of the blues.

In February, she said she “hates” being labelled as a blues-rock player because “that's not the type of music I make, nor is it the kind of music I listen to.”

Recent guest spots on stage with Peter Frampton and Trey Anastasio, with the former calling her “phenomenal,” and on Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton's southern rock–tinged solo album, are helping her redefine how people view her.

“I’ve never tried to copy anyone else,” she said earlier this year. “I take inspiration from a lot of places, but I try to turn that into my own thing.”

But even in this day and age, a fiercely talented and young female guitarist like Bowers is still on the receiving end of sexist comments.

“People take one look at me and immediately get a thought in their head of what I am,” she said last year. “I get disrespected before I even play.”

Still, her rise, which shows no signs of slowing, is helping her silence her doubters one gig at a time. Covering “Crazy Train” is one of her most prominent forays into heavy metal playing so far, and readers can be assured it won’t be her last. The guitarist’s career is still blossoming, and seeing how she handles such a classic slice of shred with such grace and poise will do her reputation no harm.

While a former Van Halen recording engineer has recently revealed why Eddie Van Halen shunned double-tracking his parts, Randy Rhoads’ sister has detailed the late virtuoso’s oddball recording tactics. He wanted to triple-track his Ozzy Osbourne guitar solos despite the singer's protests.

“Nobody would be more shocked than Randy himself,” Kathy tells Guitar World of the seemingly boundless talents he had at his disposal.

The guitarist had featured on two Quiet Riot records before becoming the Prince of Darkness’ talisman as he looked to launch a solo career in the wake of his departure from Black Sabbath. Bassist Bob Daisley said he had a premonition that he was destined for greatness after his audition, but he was still a young, bright-eyed musician. He had a hell of a responsibility on his shoulders.

“When he recorded those albums, he was 21 or 22,” Kathy echoes.

But his youth and lack of experience didn’t stop him from going against the grain in the studio.

“He triple-tracked his solos,” she continues. “Ozzy told him, ‘Nobody can do that!’ Well, Randy could. That was just the genius of Randy.”

Traditionally speaking, rhythm guitar parts are double-tracked – and sometimes quad-tracked – to produce a thicker sound. They are then panned to the far sides of the stereo sound.

Leads, however, are usually single-tracked, save for harmonies. Eddie Van Halen avoided going down this route for his riffs, as there were so many nuances in his playing. Those differences would create glaring clashes in the mix. The other option was to simplify the part, or his approach to their performance, but he wasn’t willing to do that.

That Rhoads triple-tracked his solos shows the extraordinary accuracy with which he could play.

However, Rudy Sarzo, who played in Ozzy’s band during the latter part of Rhoads’ life, says he didn’t carry that mindset onto the stage – he rarely played the same lick twice.

“On the road, Randy would take what he'd already recorded and take it to new levels of intensity,” he said earlier this year. “From being there, and listening to him playing, the portion of [Ozzy's] set where Randy would be the most experimental was during the solos.

“Randy was not really wired to play the same thing every night,” he went on. “He was too creative for that.”

Kathy’s Guitar World interview also sees her reflecting on what could have been, had her brother’s life not ended so cruelly at the age of just 25.

“There was a charisma about Randy,” she beams. “He had the looks, and everybody just gravitated toward him. There was a charm that seemed to glow.

“He was only beginning [when he died]. Ozzy once said Randy was somebody that comes to this planet and bursts off like a shooting star.”

She also talks about the fact his name is still regularly mentioned in conversations about influences, heroes, and the cream of the crop players, generations later. That, she says proudly, “puts a smile on my face. They carry his memory to this day.”

Meanwhile, it's been revealed that Ozzy had a remote switch to turn off Rhoads' pedalboard from his hotel room, as his constant thirst for practicing and improving drove the singer crazy.

When Rhoads died, some questioned why the band were back out on the road so quickly, despite the tragedy. Sarzo, conversely, has explained the band's thinking and how doing so kept Ozzy alive.

Brad Gillis leaped to the forefront of heavy metal in the spring of 1982 when he became Randy Rhoads’ first full-time replacement in Ozzy Osbourne’s band. Following Rhoads’ untimely death — and the temporary hiring of Bernie Tormé as his replacement for seven dates on the Diary of a Madman tour — Gillis stepped in wielding an aggressive style, an unusual vibrato-bar approach and a killer tone, supplying Ozzy — who died on July 22 — with much musical fire and brimstone during their six months on the road.

But as Gillis explained to Guitar Player one year later in our April 1983 issue, he wouldn’t have landed the job in the first place if it weren’t for the lack of success he was having with his band Ranger. Strictly a concert act in the San Francisco area, the group had opened shows for Eddie Money, Sammy Hagar, the Doobie Brothers and Judas Priest. But with few gigs and no immediate income, Gillis had started the Alameda AllStars, a cover band that specialized in mastering overnight any tune shouted out by the audience. On request, he learned Rhoads' solo from Osbourne's “Flying High Again.”

When Rhoads died, news of Gillis’s achievement was passed to Ozzy’s drummer, Tommy Aldridge, via mutual friends. Within a few days, Ozzy’s manager and soon-to-be wife Sharon Arden gave Gillis a call.

“‘Bradley,’ Sharon said, ‘I’d like to know if you could fly out to New York tomorrow and audition,’” Gillis recalled. “Bernie Tormé, Randy's original replacement had commitments to tour with his own band in England, so they needed somebody right away.

“I thought to myself, Man, give me a chance to think about it, much less learn the material! You don’t pass those things up, though.

“Sure enough, I flew out there thinking there were going to be 20 other guys on the same flight as me, all meeting at the airport for this big audition.

“I got to New York on the night they played Madison Square Garden, only to find out that I was the only one there for an audition. Ozzy’s people told me to come to their hotel after the show. Here I was by myself in New York with $150 in my pocket, being limoed around by who knows who, going up to the penthouse thinking, This is it! This is where it’s at.

“I opened the door and they were having a big party with all these record executives. Ozzy comes up and says, ‘Brad! How are you doing? I gotta hear you play. Go get your guitar.’”

So I brought in my electric — no amp — and I sat on the bed as Ozzy sat on the floor and sang ‘Flying High Again’ while I played it.”

Gillis laughed at the memory.

“He’s singing the song, and then he says, ‘The solo, the solo! Let’s hear the solo.’ I played all the licks, and he was chanting along with me, going, ‘Yeah, yeah.’

“After five minutes he stands up; I stand up. He gives me this big hug and says, ‘Bradley. I love you. Please pull me through.’

“He was having a real hard time. It was pretty heavy. But I had the gig.”

As it happened, Gillis wasn’t much of a fan of Ozzy’s first group, Black Sabbath.

“To tell you the truth, I liked the song ‘Paranoid,’ but I never was into Black Sabbath,” he said. “I had never met Randy Rhoads either, although I did see him once at the Oakland Coliseum.”

Although his initiation into the band was a whirlwind, Gillis won a few days’ reprieve courtesy of a snowstorm.

“After Ozzy hired me, a big blizzard hit New York and dropped a couple of feet of snow,” he explained. “They had to cancel some shows, so I sat in my hotel room for three days with a live tape with Randy on it and went over all the songs and segues. I pretty much just learned from that and then started traveling with the band on my fourth day. I think the fifth day on the road was my first show with the band.”

Gillis — whose primary guitar for the tour was his red 1962 Fender Stratocaster fitted with a Floyd Rose tremolo — was helped along by Tommy Aldridge and bass guitarist Rudy Sarzo.

“Ozzy never told me that I had to play the songs a certain way. It was either Rudy or Tommy who said, ‘You better play it this way — better do that.’ I pretty much knew what I had to do. There were some licks or lines that I obviously had to do.

“Where there was a long solo, though, I felt like I didn’t have to play Randy’s stuff note for note. I wanted to establish my own identity in doing this trip. Plus, I had my own style, which was a little different. There were things that didn’t flow the same.

“So my basic format was to start out the way Randy would and then go off into my own type of solo. If it ended with a line or certain melody, I would always end on that. I also had my own five-minute shot to go out and do a guitar solo and get out any frustrations I couldn’t get out during the rest of the set.”

The tour ended on August 8. Roughly four weeks later, Gillis was back on a flight to New York City to record what would become Speak of the Devil, a live double-album featuring Black Sabbath tunes recorded with Ozzy’s current band. The venue chosen was the Ritz, a New York City club with a capacity of about 1,000, which was booked for September 26 and 27.

“The reason it was all old Black Sabbath material was that Ozzy had to put out an album by the end of the year, and we didn’t have time to go in and write and release an album,” Gillis explains. “So basically I had to do the same thing I did for the Ozzy Osbourne material: fly to New York, rehearse for four days and then record the 13 songs in two days.

“I was really disappointed with that album,” he says. “Rudy and Tommy were too. We were so rushed in getting that stuff together that it really didn’t come off as well as it should have. I mean, we were just starting to get tight at the soundcheck of the show, you know? I was concentrating so much on the arrangements of the tunes that when the solos came around, I had to remember at the last minute what the hell key the solo was in. I really didn’t have time to put together any solos on that thing. I felt I played pretty sloppy.

“But I had a good guitar sound. When I was rehearsing for the show, playing three-piece, I noticed that I had a lot more space to fill and needed a bigger sound. So I got together with my guitar roadie, Mark Neuman, and we started plugging and unplugging effects. We went stereo to two Mesa/Boogie tops and ended up with this setup that just flanged against each bottom [cabinet] with an amazingly big, fat sound.

“I crushed a chord and was letting it ring when Tommy walked into the room and said, ‘What in the hell did you do? Mark, don’t touch a thing. Don’t be touching a knob now.’”

As Gillis explained to Guitar World in 2021, they used a 10-millisecond delay between the signals going to each amp to create the chorusing effect.

“Everyone was excited with the sound I got. Ozzy came in a couple of hours later and was blown away. So I decided to run stereo during the show using two microphones.”

Gillis had been hired as a tour guitarist, but Ozzy hadn’t said whether he would become a permanent member of the group for future records. Fortunately, the guitarist had kept his options open with his former group. Prior to touring with Ozzy, Gillis and Ranger had recorded an album. Suddenly they had a label, as well as a new name — Night Ranger, which they chose after another group had claimed Ranger.

Coincidentally, as Speak of the Devil climbed up the charts toward the top 10 in November 1982, Night Ranger’s debut album, Dawn Patrol, was released by Boardwalk Records.

Although Gillis continued on with Ozzy for the first few dates of the Speak of the Devil tour starting in December, he left at the end of the month and was replaced by Jake E. Lee, who would remain with Osbourne for the next five years.

“Ozzy asked me too late to be in his band permanently,” Gillis said. “A week before I signed Night Ranger’s contract, I asked Sharon, ‘What’s the plan? Does Ozzy want to keep me?’ Sharon said that Ozzy didn’t know who he wanted to keep in the band, so I committed myself to Night Ranger.”

At the time of his Guitar Player interview, Gillis said he was open to working with Ozzy in the future. “I’m pretty much done playing with Ozzy, although he asked me to do a second album with him,” he said. “If I have the time I will, but if he’s got a new guitar player happening, it’s only right to let that guy do it.”

Gillis never did make another album with Ozzy. Night Ranger had success out of the gate with "Don't Tell Me You Love Me.” Their second album, 1983’s Midnight Madness, moved the band to headliner status with hits like “(You Can Still) Rock in America,” “When You Close Your Eyes” and “Sister Christian.”

“I just want to play hot rock,” Gillis said. “Whether it has melody or if it's heavy three-chord metal doesn't matter: I just want to play my ass off.”

Bob Daisley was an emotional and musical pillar for Ozzy Osbourne after the singer was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979. It was Daisley who helped Ozzy put together the band that appeared on his debut solo album, Blizzard of Ozz, and who stuck by him through the 1980s, even after he was fired.

Now, after Ozzy’s passing on July 22, 2025, the bass guitarist is the last man standing from the Blizzard of Ozz days.

“It just felt like it was all meant to happen,” Daisley tells Guitar Player while reflecting on his initial meeting with Ozzy.

Whether it was divine or happenstance, there’s no denying the watershed impact of Daisley on Ozzy’s music. Albums like Blizzard of Ozz and its followup, Diary of a Madman — both of which were recorded by Randy Rhoads on electric and acoustic guitar, Lee Kerslake on drums, along with Ozzy and Daisley — are proof of that.

Daisley likens the foursome’s chemistry and subsequent music to a “good pudding.”

“It was a special relationship. It didn’t need forcing or consciously making an effort. It was a real, comfortable, natural process. All of that came out in the music we did because personality-wise, we got on like a house on fire.”

What’s more, he says, those records “set up the empire for everything that came thereafter.”

Although Ozzy and his wife/manager, Sharon, fired Daisley, along with Kerslake, in the early 1980s, Daisley was repeatedly asked back in some form or another. As Ozzy carried on with different bands and guitarists — including Jake E. Lee and Zakk Wylde — he was the linchpin, as a bassist and/or songwriter, for albums such as Bark at the Moon, The Ultimate Sin, No Rest for the Wicked, and No More Tears.

Then came the fallout. What followed was nasty litigation, years of legal battles over songwriting credits, and legions of confused and heartbroken fans.

But more importantly, a friendship and musical partnership died.

“I always had the idea or hoped for a possible reconciliation or getting back together or doing something together before the end,” Daisley admits.

“But it wasn’t to be,” he sighs. “I know that over the years, what we have done has become more and more iconic as time has gone on. So the fact that we did stuff that will outlive both of our bodies — all of our bodies — means a lot to me.

“The most important thing that we left behind is the legacy — the music, what we gave people, how many people we reached, and the positive effect that it has on millions of people.”

I imagine Ozzy’s death was jarring. It must have brought up a lot of feelings for you.

Well, it sure does. It brings up a lot of past memories and thoughts, and nostalgia. It brought me to tears the day that I found out because Ozzy and I had done so much together. It was with various lineups, the ones with Randy and Lee. And then with Jake, and Zakk and other people throughout.

Many people felt you should have been a part of the Back to the Beginning show.

Yeah, but I didn’t expect to be. I didn’t expect to be mentioned at the induction at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I didn’t expect to be invited to Back to the Beginning. It was sort of a given, you know: “Well, that’s not going to happen.” Even if I had been invited to the Birmingham show, I probably wouldn’t have gone. I’m in Sydney, Australia, and it’s just an awfully long flight. And I don’t know… it’s probably just been too long.

It goes without saying that there’s been a lot of nasty litigation between you and Ozzy’s came over the years. But can you remember the last civil interaction you two had?

I remember it well. It was in Sydney, Australia, not long after I came out here myself. He was here with Sharon, and they were staying at a hotel down at Circular Quay, near the Opera House. I went to see him there.

We just sat and chatted. I think he was just here doing some sort of promo thing, or something. I didn’t see Sharon that night; she was in the room. Ozzy and I just sat in the hotel lobby, drank tea and chatted. It was pleasant. It was nice. It was friendly. Even then, we were talking about old times.

You were able to put aside the negative things. Are you able to do that now that Ozzy has died?

I don’t know… it’s a bittersweet thing. There was a lot of stuff that need not have happened. And there’s a lot of stuff that happened that did leave a bad taste.

I didn’t know how I was going to react when [Ozzy’s death] did happen. We knew it was on the way. We’d been warned. There’d been stuff in the press.

What was your reaction to the news that Ozzy died?

Well, I’m really pleased, actually, that I felt sad. I didn’t feel bitter or angry about anything that had gone on. The only thing that surfaced in my mind was all the good times: the fun, the jokes, the humor, the laughter, and all the creativity that we had together over the years, and the many albums. That’s the main thing I’m focusing on because that’s what’s heartfelt for me.

When we look at Ozzy’s career, as far as bass players go, a common thread is that he always seemed to go back to yourself and Geezer Butler. What was the secret sauce between you and Ozzy dating back to when you first hooked up in 1979?

I think it was just a chemistry and a personality thing. I’d just come out of Rainbow, and he’d just come out of Sabbath. He said, “I’m putting a band together, would you be interested?” I said, “Yeah, sure.” And as soon as we met up at his house, we knew straight away that this was going to work.

We both could just feel it. It was an energy thing. Ozzy would say, “Oh, Bob and I get on like a house on fire. The fire brigade’s just left!” That’s what his words were, and that’s how it was.

You also helped put together the Blizzard of Ozz band — and that was actually the band’s name at the time.

He didn’t have Randy at first; he had two other guys — a guitarist and a drummer. I said to him, “They’re nice guys, good players, but I don’t think they’re world-class.” And Ozzy told me about Randy then, and I said, “Well, let’s get him over.” That was when we decided to form the band with Randy.

Was your chemistry with Randy immediate?

As soon as Ozzy, Randy and I started writing songs together and auditioning drummers, it felt like it was fate. And as soon as Randy and I played together, it was the same thing. We said to each other after about 20 minutes of playing together — and we said it almost simultaneously — “I like your playing!”

A common misconception is that the genesis of Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman came from Ozzy and Randy alone. But you wrote those lyrics, the bass licks, of course, and had a huge hand in the arrangements.

Yeah, I didn’t just write lyrics. Randy and I used to sit on a chair opposite each other and work out all the music together. So it was the two of us doing that, working music out.

And to be clear, I don’t want to diminish Ozzy’s contribution.

Oh, Ozzy’s vocal melodies were integral. They were very important and very good. With all the music, he sang melodies over it, and then, I’d write lyrics to his melodies and phrasing. So that’s how it all came about. And of course, the puzzle was completed after Lee came along on drums.

Without any one of us, I don’t think it would have worked as well as it did. And the proof is in the pudding, and the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and that pudding is a good pudding. [laughs] I think with any other different ingredients, it wouldn’t have had the same flavor. It did take the four of us together.

What was it like for you, Ozzy and Randy when you were just hanging out?

We didn’t have to try. It was just natural. We got on very well together. But Ozzy was going through a dark patch because he was still reeling from the effects of being out of Black Sabbath. And it did get to him.

Quite often, he would go into sort of dark places. So we were always trying to keep him up in spirit.

But Ozzy had such a great sense of humor. And he and I had a similar sense of humor, so there was no effort, really. It wasn’t a conscious effort of, “Let’s have fun.” It was just natural. It was as much about the fun and humor and clowning as it was about the music and the creating. And I think a lot of that stuff came through in the music. I think that’s what attracts people and what they feel, too.

You make a good point about Ozzy’s mental state after being fired from Sabbath. I think it’s taken for granted how traumatic that was, probably because Ozzy had success relatively quickly as a solo artist. With that success, did you notice his spirits and confidence start to lift?

At first, he was quite down. The way he described it was that it was like going through a divorce. So he was very affected by that departure from Sabbath. And I did make a conscious effort to get him out jogging, to not drink during the day, and to try and get serious about putting a band and the music together.

Was he hard to keep on track at first?

Because we were still auditioning drummers, some days were sort of non-productive because of the situation. But eventually I got through to Ozzy. I’d take him out jogging with me, we’d go out for meals together, and we’d go out for walks, or whatever.

I did try to keep his spirits up, and I think I succeeded. But it wasn’t easy. He was unsure of himself, and I suppose he had lost a certain amount of confidence having been fired from Black Sabbath. He did need reassuring, and Randy and I did plenty of that. It helped a lot, I’d say.

One has to wonder where Ozzy would have been without you then.

Well, that’s it: Where would it have gone? You see, you’ve got to consider the musical climate of those times in 1979. I was being warned against working with Ozzy because he didn’t have a good reputation.

Why did you ignore those warnings?

I just knew in my heart of hearts that I had to do it. And we didn’t think, “How can we make records that are going to get airplay? How can we have a hit album?” We just went in and were ourselves. We did what we did, hoped for the best, hoped people liked it, and it went well.

Your bond with Ozzy continued after Randy’s death. Was the vibe very different while working on Bark at the Moon with Jake E. Lee?

I thought Jake did a very, very good, admirable job of playing those songs live, making them his own and doing his version of them.

Trying to copy Randy would have been a fool’s game.

Right. He wasn’t copying Randy note for note. He still made the songs obviously recognizable, but with his flavor and style.

And I thought Jake had great ideas for songs when he came in, too. He and I got together in New York, where we were for a month or so, before we went back to London, while writing the Bark at the Moon album.

But in New York, I remember being in Jake’s hotel room at the end of the thing, and Ozzy and the tour manager were there, and I said to Jake, “You’re doing well. You’ve got really good ideas. This is going to be great.” And Jake said to me, “Yeah, but you turn the ideas into songs.” I thought, Great. That’s nice of you to say.

One day, Ozzy came into one of the rehearsals while Jake and I were working out our parts. Ozzy looked at me and said, “You know, I’d forgotten how much you did toward writing the songs.” How quickly he could forget that, I don’t know. But that’s what he said.

So I had a reputation of not only writing the lyrics but putting the songs together musically, no matter what guitarist it was — Randy, Jake or Zakk.

You’ve made a point over the years that the Blizzard of Ozz was to be a proper band, not just a group of backing players for Ozzy. It ultimately wasn’t marketed that way, which has led people to have an unclear vision of that music’s original intent. So what do you want people to understand about what you created with Ozzy?

What I want people to understand is, yes, it was a band. It was four integral ingredients of Randy, Lee, myself and Ozzy. And it wouldn’t have been the same without any one of us. It was a band called the Blizzard of Ozz.

It was meant to continue as the Blizzard of Ozz, but Ozzy and Sharon started pulling me aside, saying, “Let’s get rid of Lee.” I wouldn’t agree, and I said, “Why are you trying to fix something that’s not broken?” Lee worked perfectly.

But they kept asking, and I kept refusing. Eventually, they got rid of both of us. But then, I was asked back six weeks later to a third album, which was shelved after Randy died, but eventually did happen with Bark at the Moon, and with Jake. But that’s it, really. A lot of the magic came from me and Ozzy just being together.

In your eyes, what is the legacy of Ozzy’s first two post-Sabbath albums, with you, Randy and Lee?

The Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman albums, I think, set up the empire for everything that came after. They’re the foundation that everything was to be built on because they were such classic albums. And it was a classic lineup, not something that was contrived or put together on paper. It just happened. We met up, the magic was there, it happened, and it kept on happening.

You mentioned that despite the ugliness between you and Ozzy, you were pleased to feel sadness after he died. Is your memory of him forever reframed toward the positive now that he’s gone?

Oh, it was natural. What came to me felt very real, and I felt natural to where I felt great sadness, nostalgia, nice memories and feelings of what we created together, what it meant, and how big it was. At the time, it was sort of like being in the eye of a hurricane, where you don’t really notice the importance of it all when it’s going on.

And then, later, when it’s all over, and people start dying — you know, Randy’s gone, Lee’s gone, and now, Ozzy’s gone — I’m the last man standing. It feels really, really strange and weird.

But I feel honored and glad to have been a part of all that. I know that it was important and integral. There was some dirty water that went under the bridge, but that pales against what we actually did, and the importance of what we did together. Now it’s the good feelings that take precedence.

Tony Iommi perhaps said it best when he said, “There won’t ever be another like Ozzy Osbourne.” But beyond his songs — and the wild tales of bat decapitation and ant snorting — was a father figure who got the best out of his guitarists.

The Prince of Darkness may have told Guitar Player that the late Randy Rhoads “was just a fucking born star,” but the former Quiet Riot guitarist entered uncharted territory when he was tasked with helping to launch Ozzy's post-Sabbath career. The eyes of the metal world were on them, in particular the relatively inexperienced Rhoads. Although he's had many great guitar players in his wake, Ozzy often pivoted toward lesser-known players and put his faith in the underdog.

In doing so, he understood that the crown often weighs heavily. To the guitarists whose lives he changed by employing them, he was more than a boss; he was a dad. Rhoads, Wylde and, later on, Gus G., weren't big names when they joined the band. Ozzy's job was to guide them through the chaos and help them shine.

“I grew up on Ozzy and Sabbath. I was starstruck as anybody would be,” Gus G., who replaced Zakk Wylde in 2009, tells That Metal Interview Podcast about getting the gig. “If you're into heavy metal, that's your father! That's the father of heavy metal. It was a crazy moment.”

Unlike Rhoads, Gus, who'd made his name in power-metal band Firewind, entered the fray as the latest in a long, celebrated line of guitarists, including Jake E. Lee, Wylde and Jerry Cantrell. Not to mention that Alex Skolnick had lasted just one gig before falling foul of Sharon's unforgiving management. Osbourne wasn't going to let the prestige of the job drown his new riffsmith.

“He was like, ‘Hey man, take it easy. Let's just jam and don't worry if you play a few notes wrong — it's rock and roll, that's what happens,’” Gus G. relays. “‘Just play with all your heart. Let's do it.’

“He was just a very nice and very sweet guy, very warm-hearted. He broke the ice right away. I was nervous until I met him; once we started jamming, it felt right.”

The two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer cared deeply about his bandmates. When he visited Zakk Wylde's newly bought North Hollywood apartment in the early '90s to work on what would become "Mama I'm Coming Home", Ozzy was struck by the state of the property.

“I drove Ozzy over to my apartment,” Wylde tells Guitar Player. “The area didn’t look great. The grass was 10 feet high, the shingles were hanging off, the paint had flaked off, there was a drug rehab place nearby, you know? The whole thing looked like a drug slum shithole.

“Ozzy took a look around and said, ‘You’re joking, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘It’s a lot nicer on the inside.’ Ozzy just asked, ‘Sharon is paying you, isn’t she?’”

The story may draw a smile from the reader, but behind Ozzy’s ever-sharp and ever-dry humor was genuine care and concern for the guitarist. There’s a reason he calls Ozzy “dad.”

Wylde says he crapped his pants when he beat the likes of Chris Impellitteri and Adrian Vandenberg in becoming Ozzy’s third full-time guitarist.

He adds that there were some insincere auditionees too, who were there for the paycheck, not the love of the job. Ozzy, then, likely saw Wylde's enthusiasm for the job and his deep-rooted respect for those who came before him, and also through the green-eyed eyed among the bunch. He might even have seen a little of himself — a working-class man from Aston, Birmingham — in the guitarist's face.

His advice to Wylde upon joining? “Just play with your heart — that's all you gotta do — and you'll be fine...and by the way, change your pants!'”

Ozzy was a leader who knew how to get the best out of his bandmates. Even when the mountain seemed steep.

However, with his paternal instincts came the harsher side; grief. When Rhoads’ life was suddenly taken in 1982, at the young age of 25, Ozzy was distraught. He hit the bottle.

Rudy Sarzo, who was the band's bass player at the time, has since said that their decision to continue touring within two weeks of the tragedy was made out of necessity.

“Here was the strategy,” he said. “Keep Ozzy moving. You cancel the tour, Ozzy goes home, goes in the hole, dies.”

There was guilt mixed with his grief. He was the reason Rhoads wasn't back home, teaching guitar out of his mum's school.

“Ozzy still to this day feels guilty,” Sharon conceded in 2020. “‘If only I was awake, I would never have let him get on that plane.’ And, you know, it’s something that Ozzy lives with.”

“The day that Randy Rhoads died,” Ozzy once said, was the day a part of me died.”

The pair will be reunited now — a small silver lining to Ozzy's death, coming just weeks after Back to the Beginning. But as the music world mourns the loss of one of its greatest figures, his caring and nurturing side should be remembered just as much as what he did to the face of heavy music over a tireless, eventful, six-decade career.

Randy Rhoads’ death in 1982 sent shockwaves through the Ozzy Osbourne camp. The fact that the band was back out on tour less than two weeks after the tragedy may seem insensitive to his legacy on the surface, but former Ozzy bass player Rudy Sarzo says that doesn’t tell the full story.

The young guitarist’s superlative talents, which saw him regularly pitted against Eddie Van Halen as the world’s best player, had launched Ozzy’s post-Sabbath career in style. As the singer said during his Rock Hall induction last year, “If I hadn't met Randy Rhoads, I wouldn't be sitting here right now.”

That wasn’t hyperbole.

While out on the road on the Blizzard of Ozz tour, Ozzy watched the plane crash that took the 25-year-old’s life. It sent him spiraling into depression. The tour resumed on April 1, 1982, not because they didn’t care about Rhoads’ untimely passing, but because it helped avoid further tragedy.

“We were auditioning guitar players,” Sarzo, Ozzy’s then-bassist, says on The David Ellefson Show. “Here was the strategy: Keep Ozzy moving. Do not cancel the tour.

“You cancel the tour, Ozzy goes home, Ozzy dies. Goes in the hole. So we gotta go back out there again. And then we're gonna pick it up here, 10 days later, after Randy passed away.”

Considering Ozzy’s predilection for substances at that time, coupled with the weight of the loss, the plan made sense.

Putting it into practice, however, was another story. The controversial manner in which Rhoads’ replacement came onboard didn’t help matters either.

The story goes that Gary Moore was initially approached but declined. Afterward, most of the camp wanted Sarzo’s brother, Robert, to help finish the tour. Movements made by management in London forced some awkward conversations.

“Dave Arden, Sharon's brother from the office in London, sends over Bernie Tormé,” Sarzo explains. The Irishman had raised his stock with Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan in his group Gillan. “He comes in, and during auditions, he's already been hired. He's already been paid in advance to come in and play in the band. But he comes in, and he sits in the corner waiting for his turn.

“My brother was part of the audition, and Sharon and Ozzy wanted him to be in the band, to continue. So when Bernie hears that, he says, 'Oh. But I've already been paid. I've been sent here.' Bernie was just sitting there, knowing he already had the gig! This went on for two or three days.

“Meanwhile, we were going to services for Randy and for Rachel Youngblood, the band's seamstress, who also died in the crash],” Sarzo continues.

The emotional weight of it all took its toll on the band, which was still very much in mourning.

“I was one of the pallbearers [at Randy’s funeral],” Sarzo adds. “There was no way that we could emotionally return to rehearsal... having already buried Randy. So we took that night off.”

The tour restarted at the Stabler Arena in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with Tormé in tow. His stint, though, was brief. Within two weeks, Night Ranger’s Brad Gillis stepped in and remained onboard for Ozzy's next solo album, Speak of the Devil.

The guitarist merry-go-round never truly stopped after that, with Chris Impellitteri missing out on the gig to Zakk Wylde after Jake E. Lee left in '87. Wylde has said that other auditionees weren’t taking the opportunity as seriously as they should have, and the chance of auditioning for Guns N’ Roses later cost him a place by Ozzy’s side.

Then there was Alex Skolnick’s one-show tenure in the band. It was always high drama where Ozzy was concerned.

Rudy Sarzo’s time in Ozzy Osbourne’s band was fleeting, and his time playing stages with Randy Rhoads was even shorter. But they were together long enough for him to gain a fascinating insight into how he approached the material presented to him.

Their only stint on a tour bus together was on the Diary of a Madman tour, which kicked off in Essen, Germany, on November 1, 1981. The run, cut short by Rhoads’ untimely death, saw Sabbath’s “Paranoid” regularly appear on the tail end of their set, with “Iron Man” and “Children of the Grave” also getting occasional airings.

Rhoads spoke against the idea of doing a full live album of Sabbath songs. Having established himself as a player in his own right, he felt such a move would be a step backward. But he understood that some Sabbath material had to be included. It was business., after all

But he’d do it in his way.

The covers record would ultimately morph into Speak of the Devil, which was released in November 1982 and featured Brad Gillis in the late guitarist's place. But it would have been Randy, had he still been alive.

It’s well documented that Rhoads wasn’t the biggest Sabbath fan, and there was talk about him wanting to take a break from rock at the time of his death. He regularly sought out guitar tutors while on the road and dreamed of obtaining a degree in classical music.

This created a melting pot of factors that ultimately saw him handling Tony Iommi’s material with a real freedom of expression. It even extended to the material he’d written and recorded with the Prince of Darkness. As Sarzo tells MusicRadar, Randy would never play a song the same way twice.

“To the people who never got to see Randy play live, all you have are the records,” he says. “But I've got to tell you, on the road, Randy would take what he'd already recorded and take it to new levels of intensity.

“From being there, and listening to him playing, the portion of [Ozzy's] set was where Randy would be the most experimental, during the solos."

“Playing those Black Sabbath songs was new territory for Randy. And in his solos, he found a way to make the Sabbath songs more interesting for himself.

“He needed some kind of outlet. He would come in, throw in new ideas, though not too much, just enough to feed his creativity,” the bass player adds.

“The thing was that Randy was not really wired to play the same thing every night. He was too creative for that.”

One such example was when he took on “Children of Grave”. Iommi, who had started to experiment with lower tunings around the time of Master of Reality, tracked the song in C# tuning (low to high C# F# B E G# C#). Rhoads, an advocate of standard tuning, navigated the song without retuning.

That would find Rhoads completely reinventing the track’s low-slung groove in favor of playing more akin to his signature style, with fast-paced flurries, triads on the D, G and B strings, pinch harmonics and plenty of octave jumping.

As heard on the live album, Tribute, it was more frenetic and supercharged. Even with certain parts an octave higher — or more — than the original, it still had a cutthroat heaviness. And there are flashes of tapping and Floyd Rose whammy wails aplenty in the solo. It embodied Rhoads’ inventiveness and his downright refusal to stick to play songs chapter and verse to the original.

He only wrote two albums with Ozzy, 1980’s Blizzard of Ozz and, a year later, Diary of a Madman, and he likely would have departed Ozzy if he'd lived long enough .But Sarzo believes that, had he stuck around, Randy Rhoads' best work was still ahead of him.

“In my opinion, as someone who was there, Randy never reached his peak,” he ascertains. “He was just getting started. I'm laughing at the thought of Randy reaching his peak with just two albums!

“He had so much more to explore and to create,” he concludes. “But unfortunately, he passed too soon.”

Sarzo has also recently revealed he initially rejected the chance to join Ozzy's band and, having also played with Ronnie James Dio and said the two bands were on completely different levels.

Meanwhile, Jake E. Lee is preparing to reunite with Ozzy at Black Sabbath’s final show, but he’s casting doubt over which song he’ll play. Health issues have left a question mark over his preferred song choice.

Iommi, likewise, is concerned about the health of Ozzy and Geezer Butler as the show draws nearer.

Rudy Sarzo is one of the most respected bassists in all rock and heavy metal. He’s also of the kindest, and busiest, players in the biz. As bassist with Quiet Riot and Ozzy Osbourne, Sarzo worked — and was good friends with — Randy Rhoads, whom he holds in the highest esteem.

If you follow Rudy on social media, you’ve certainly seen one of his many tributes to Rhoads. Beyond Randy Rhoads, Sarzo has held court alongside other great guitarists, like Carlos Cavazo in Quiet Riot, Brad Gillis in Osbourne’s band, Tony MacAlpine in the supergroup M.A.R.S., Adrian Vandenberg and Steve Vai in Whitesnake, Doug Aldrich in Dio, Alex Grossi in Quiet Riot, and many others.

Dealing with that level of varied virtuosity isn’t easy, but Sarzo has it dialed in.

“What’s the key?” he asks. “With virtuosi guitar players — and all the musicians that I’ve played with — it’s about being challenged.

“I really like being challenged,” he adds. “I really enjoyed learning from all of them, both musically and as human beings.”

During a break in his schedule, Rudy spoke with Guitar Player to share his thoughts on a handful of the iconic six-string heroes he has played alongside during his 50-year career.

Randy Rhoads

“When I joined Quiet Riot with Randy in 1978, there was a certain standard of musical style on the Sunset Strip from the up-and-coming bands that later became staples of the MTV era, Quiet Riot being one of them. It was pretty much following the glam rock that was so popular before new wave and punk. I’m talking about Queen, David Bowie — you know, melodic but edgy.

“With those bands, the guitar player was usually the star. That was always the relationship going back to, say, Led Zeppelin. The guitar player was definitely the focal point of the group, and Randy, you know, everything about him was suited for that better than anyone I’ve ever known or played with.

“But what really separated Randy from everybody else was his education. He came from a musical professor and academic family. Randy, from a very early age, got a musical education, so by the time I played with him in 1978, he was knowledgeable and had a background in music. That's where his creativity came from. When we worked together on a song, he knew how to structure it.

“Randy knew composition, arrangements, theory and everything about the components that you need for creating songs. He had that, but unfortunately, he was not able to reveal it until he started playing with Ozzy. And unfortunately, even though Quiet Riot could definitely have used the compositional skills that he could apply, like his classical background, I didn’t become aware of his classical background while we were in the band together.

“I would hear Randy pick up the classical guitar and play it between lessons, and I was like, ‘Wow, you can play that!?’ He said, ‘Yeah, that’s my first instrument.’ He explained to me that he grew up playing classical, but he wanted to put together a band, and he started getting into electric guitar. But he always kept his love for classical guitar.

“But his compositions with Quiet Riot were more driven toward trying to please record companies, rather than when he started playing with Ozzy. He asked Ozzy, ‘What do you want me to write?’ Ozzy just said, ‘Be yourself,’ and that’s what came out.

"That was the real Randy Rhoads. He passed away young, but I’m sure that he left an indelible mark on musicians even today. When they discover him, they want to know more, and they get it.”

Carlos Cavazo (Quiet Riot)

“Carlos was different. Randy focused more on diatonic writing; it was more musically advanced. But with Carlos, especially with his playing on ‘Cum on Feel the Noize,’ I think he set the bar very high from a melodic and thematic soloing sense. He was basically borrowing from the chorus’s melody and just implementing these variations on it. I think it was very clever, and it was perfect for that song.

“Our producer, Spencer Proffer, not only produced the record but owned the label [Pasha], the studio [Pasha Music House], and everything. But the only thing he cared about was 'Cum on Feel the Noize.' He basically said, ‘You guys can do anything you want with the rest of the record. I just need you to deliver this song that I feel will be a hit single.’

"And it worked! Metal Health got to number one, and by then we started thinking, Wow, we’re at the top of the mountain and headlining shows. But then it became more about doing a follow-up with more of the same attributes as Metal Health

"Whereas with a guitarist like Randy, we would have done something very different If you listen to the music he was writing with Ozzy, there’s an exponential advance in his musical knowledge."

Brad Gillis (Ozzy Osbourne)

“By the time Brad Gillis came in to play with Ozzy, our goal was to finish the tour with dignity and for Randy’s memory. We just wanted to go out there and finish the tour with a guitar player who could put across the essence of Randy’s playing.

"It was really challenging, because Randy had just come out with this technique of palm muting, and a lot of guitar players did not have that down. So that was one of the biggest challenges that we found.

"But through a friend of [drummer] Tommy Aldridge, we were told about this young man in the San Francisco area who was playing covers of Ozzy songs and had gotten down that palm-muting technique.

"That’s how we became aware of Brad Gillis. He was tremendous. I gotta tell you: he was under so much pressure. I’ve gotta hand it to him for being able to handle it with so much grace.”

Tony MacAlpine (M.A.R.S.)

“Working with Tony on Project: Driver [the 1986 album by the supergroup M.A.R.S.] was a really interesting experience. Tony is a classically trained pianist. He told me that he started playing guitar because he fell in love with the sound of it.

“He was really into the tonality, expression, vibrato and harmonics that you can get with the guitar, whether you’re playing a chord or a solo. So he took his musical knowledge from the piano and classical music and applied that to rock and roll.

“But he had — and still does have — more of a progressive style than a rock and rolls style. Randy Rhoads could grab a guitar and play something inspired by Johnny Winter, which had the roots of rock and roll, but I did not really hear that from Tony MacAlpine.”

Adrian Vandenberg (Whitesnake)

“With Adrian, it was all about blues-based rock with an English accent to it. But Adrian is very unique. You don't ask him to emulate some other player — he's not one of those guys. He’s like a painter who carries his own palette of colors, and he plays in a way that makes the music more vivid.

“Adrian joined Whitesnake after the 1987 album was completed and John Sykes left. He managed to assimilate all those things that John came up with that were so critical on the 1987 record.

"When Steve Vai joined, they were a really great combination. If one didn’t deliver, the other one would. They just complimented one another.”

Steve Vai (Whitesnake)

“I loved playing with Steve. He really challenged me musically, and that’s my favorite kind of bandmate — somebody whose challenges make me a better player. Steve is a really great human being, too. I learned a lot from him.

"Steve joined Whitesnake for [1989's] Slip of the Tongue, and those songs were written by Adrian Vandenberg. But Adrian suffered a wrist injury and could not record the album, so we went with Steve. I think that's why there’s a certain style to his playing that's not necessarily how he would done it if he'd been the song writer or there from the very beginning."

Doug Aldrich (Dio)

“Doug Aldrich covered all the bases, not just the Dio material but all the Rainbow and Black Sabbath material. Where Doug really shined was in his ability to capture the essence of these playing styles, without necessarily imitating, say, Tony Iommi or Ritchie Blackmore. When Doug played, it fit the song and made it strong. Doug could do that without actually playing exactly the same thing as them. It was like he was capturing the spirit of those other musicians.”

Alex Grossi (Quiet Riot)

“Alex has been with Quiet Riot for about 20 years, and he was groomed by Kevin DuBrow. He’s the youngest guy in the band, so he wasn’t part of the ‘70s and ‘80s Hollywood scene, but he experienced it vicariously. So he’s incredibly knowledgeable, and I can count on him to come up with anything that we need. He can play the classics, but he’s also modern. I can always rely on Alex not only to deliver the goods every night onstage but to bring little surprises as well."

In March 1982, Randy Rhoads would play the final live shows in his all-too-brief life. At just 25 years old, he had already made an unquestionable impact on the world of hard rock and heavy metal electric guitar playing — an impact that, decades on, is still being felt.

But because he left us so young, there are simply far too few clips of him in action — and not enough of them are in decent quality. Hence, a rare glimpse of the guitarist firing up his live rig before a show is like precious metal for Rhoads fans.

And that's exactly what we have here — captured on a handheld camcorder midway through the second U.S. leg of Ozzy Osbourne's Diary of a Madman Tour.

Following the location tag stating "Soundcheck Beaumont, TX, USA 2/18/82" in Ozzy's signature Diary font — though the Beaumont show actually happened on the 15th of that month — the video clip opens with the words: "This is the only known footage of a Randy Rhoads soundcheck... February 1982."

The soundcheck starts around 2:50, but it doesn’t really take off until 3:40.

In the short, rare footage, Rhoads' silhouette and sonics are unmistakable. Playing his Alpine White 1974 Gibson Les Paul through his Marshall Super Lead heads, he runs through some heavily percussive three-note-per-string scale patterns, occasionally dropping in a flat 7 for good measure. The playing section might be brief, but it's incredible how instantly recognizable his style is, even after just a few notes.

Sadly, Randy would only play a dozen more shows, his final performance taking place on March 18th at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The footage is followed by an interview with Ozzy, conducted on the same day the soundcheck footage was filmed. Ozzy reflects on the tour's success so far and says he is struck by the phenomenal U.S. crowds they'd been pulling in — regularly packing out arenas with 18,000 to 20,000 fans a night.

Curiously, he was also perplexed by a new animal cruelty myth circulating at the time, claiming that he'd turned his back on bats and had now set his sights on some new prey.

"We're getting a lot of hassle from the animal society, because there's a rumor going around that I'm blowing up goats," Ozzy says, clearly baffled. "I don't know where that comes from."

Ozzy, at least health-wise, appeared to be in a better place post-Sabbath. "I'm cleaned out now. I don't touch anything… I live on the tour bus now.

Unfortunately for Randy and the band's seamstress, 58-year-old Rachel Youngblood, their tour bus driver, Andrew Aycock, didn't share Ozzy's newfound abstinence from narcotics. On March 19, 1982 — the day after Randy's final gig in Knoxville, Tennessee — the band drove through the night, heading to a show with Foreigner in Orlando, Florida.

They stopped off at the bus depot to pick up some parts and enjoy some downtime. But unbeknownst to some of the sleeping crew, Aycock had taken cocaine before deciding to pilot a light aircraft from a nearby airstrip. Moments later, the small plane clipped Ozzy's parked tour bus and exploded on impact, killing everyone onboard, including Randy.

A little less than two weeks later, Ozzy and the band were already back on the road, with Irish guitarist Bernie Tormé stepping in. However, after ten days, Tormé would exit the role, with Brad Gillis taking over for the remainder of the tour.

Randy’s brief but celebrated turn with Ozzy has been discussed frequently in recent months. Bassist Bob Daisley, who helped Osbourne pull together the lineup featuring Rhoads, reflected on meeting Randy and having the sense that he would be a star. “I had a premonition people would ask what it was like to play with him,” he recalled.

Daisley has also shared the origins of the title “Crazy Train,” perhaps the most famous Ozzy track from the Rhoads era.

"Randy had an effect pedal, and it sort of chugged a bit, even when he wasn't using it,” Daisley says. “If it was switched on and it was going through his amp, it made almost like a train sort of sound. Or it reminded me of that anyway. I knew Randy was a fan of model trains, and so was I.

"And I said, 'Randy, it sounds like a train, listen!’ It had a sort of psychedelic, kind of trippy thing about it. And I said, 'It sounds like a crazy train.'"

Osbourne himself shared his love for Rhoads in an interview with Guitar Player shortly after the guitarist’s death.

“I’m sad by the fact that the guy’s died. The guy was so unique. I don’t think people have ever fully realized what a talent that guy was – not only in rock and roll, but in every other field, you know. He was not only a great rock and roll player, but in the classics, and in every other field, he was phenomenal.

“I loved him in an instant. I fell in love with him as a player, and I fell in love with him as a person.“

Out of all of Ozzy Osbourne’s solo releases, legions of fans hold Tribute in the highest regard, saying it captured the magic of the band like no other. And in truth, it was a release like no other.

The 1998 live compilation paid homage to the late guitar hero Randy Rhoads, who had tragically died in a plane crash in 1982, via live recordings from several shows performed between 1980 and '81. The band — which also featured drummer Tommy Aldridge, keyboardist Don Airey, and bass player Rudy Sarzo — was one of Ozzy's finest.

But as Sarzo tells Matt Pinfield, that classic lineup almost didn't materialize after he initially turned down the offer to join Ozzy's band.

The opening for a bass player occured when Bob Daisley left the group. It was Rhoads who suggested Sarzo, his former Quiet Riot bandmate. Quiet Riot had disbanded when Rhoads left for England to audition for the Black Sabbath singer’s new solo project. Before Rhoads was swept away, he and Sarzo had formed a strong partnership, and both were teaching music lessons at a music school that belonged to Rhoads’ mother.

After Quiet Riot broke up, Sarzo joined an L.A. glam-rock act called Angel. He still shared an apartment with former Quiet Riot vocalist Kevin DuBrow. So he was surprised when Sharon Osbourne called him with an offer.

“She goes, 'Hi Rudy, I'm Sharon, and I manage Ozzy, and Randy's been telling me about you. How would you like to come down to audition?' ” Sarzo recalls.

“Immediately, because I was really so much into Angel, I turned it down,” he continues. “You know, it's like, 'Oh, no thank you. I'm in this band called Angel.' She hangs up on me.”

It’s a classically cut-throat reaction from Sharon — the same wife/manager that gave Rhoads’s replacement, Jake E. Lee, a notoriously hard time and booted Alex Skolnick out of the band after just one show.

Soon after, Sarzo started feeling the weight of his actions.

“Now, I'm sleeping on the floor of Kevin DuBrow's apartment,” he relays. “I don't have any money to eat, but I've always been a 'band guy.' "

Nevertheless, DuBrow took a dim view of Sarzo's actions and told him he'd made a mistake.

“The next day, I get another call, this time it was Ozzy," Sarzo continues. "And by then, Kevin had yelled at me for turning down the audition. He put some sense into me, and I said, 'Oh God. Okay, I made a big mistake,' because the reality was that I was going to get to play with Randy again. I had never played with Ozzy, so I had no reference or connection with him, but it was like 'Hey, you're going to play with Randy again.'

“So, I get the call from Ozzy, and he says, 'Listen, we checked out a bunch of guys, and Randy still says, 'You're the guy.' So, how would you like to come down?' By then, it was like, 'Yes! I'll be right there.'”

Sarzo's reunion with Rhoads was painfully short, but he says it was important for the rest of the band to continue touring in his memory.

“To actually be there to experience the tragedy that left so many scars on everybody,” he says, “I lost the joy of making music. I kept going onstage because it was decided that we're gonna keep moving on. Because if Ozzy would have gone back home, he would have most likely drank himself to death.”

The bassist is in the uncanny position of having played with Black Sabbath’s two biggest singers in their respective solo guises. He was part of Dio’s final lineup, having joined in 2004. And while he says he has the utmost respect for Ozzy — especially considering what the gig meant for his career — Sarzo says Dio’s band was “a different level”.

The bassist has also credited Rhoads’ talents as a rhythm guitarist, which he feels often get overlooked because of his lead chops. It wasn’t missed by Zakk Wylde, though. The Viking shredder became Ozzy’s third full-time guitarist and quickly drew on Randy’s galloping rhythms to write ‘Miracle Man’, his first song with the singer.

“I’m no great guitarist technically,” Leslie West once said, “but you wanna know why people remember me? If you take a hundred players and put them in a room, 99 of ’em are gonna sound the same.

“The one who plays different…that’s the one you’re gonna remember. I learned that you should think about the song, think about the chords you’re playing behind. Most of my solos come right out of those chords. You play the notes within the chords and try to pick a melody from there.”

Long before Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads and Michael Schenker arrived on the guitar scene, each of these three transformative rock guitarists was tuned into West’s guitar work. The Mountain guitarist was a singular force in early 1970s rock, with a style and tone all his own. It even made fans of his contemporaries like Pete Townshend, who at one point enlisted West to help on early sessions for the Who’s 1972 album, Who’s Next. Like the best electric guitar stylists rooted in the blues, West peeled off economical single-note lines as memorable as any melody, using his picking technique and frequent use of pinch harmonics to add interest or drive home the tail end of a line or solo.

West arrived on the blues-rock scene in 1969 with his solo album, Mountain, a long-player created with the help of bassist and producer Felix Pappalardi, who was fresh from his years producing Cream. West and Pappalardi would use Mountain as the springboard and name for their own band, which would go on to create such timeless tracks as “Mississippi Queen,” “Theme for an Imaginary Western” and “Nantucket Sleighride.”

While Mountain’s music was a yin-yang mix of West’s gutbucket blues rock and Pappalardi’s prog-inspired balladry, what was common to all of it was West’s guitar, overdriven and snarling as he unloaded lines and solos unmistakable from any other guitarist's, giving each track never more than it needed while imbuing each note with plenty of heart and soul.

What made West’s guitar lines so memorable was not only his note choices but his distinct way of picking and articulating them. As he explained to Guitar Player in our April 1972 issue, his stinging lead tone and frequent use of natural harmonics came down to his method of picking.

“When I use a pick — and I use one most of the time — I try to bury it between my thumb and my first finger and just let a little bit of the corner stick out,” he explained. “I can make a string jump harmonics that way. Albert King does that without using a pick; he uses his thumb.

"It really is a great sound, because if I'm playing along like, say, on the B string and all of a sudden I want a note that will really stick out and be an important part of the phrase, I can make a note jump an octave, and it is really effective."

A good example of West's ringing harmonic technique is the last note of his solo in the middle section of "Theme for an Imaginary Western,” from the album Climbing! West would rest the side of his right hand's palm on the bridge or on the strings he wasn't picking, but his technique seldom allowed his hand to remain stationary for long. Along with the pick, he occasionally used his third finger for double picking.

In his early years with Mountain, West’s main studio guitar was a single-cutaway Les Paul Junior with a single P90 pickup. (For performances, he also used a Gibson Flying V and a Dan Armstrong Plexi set up for slide.) As West said of the Junior, the space provided by having just one pickup was useful for his pinch harmonics. “You gotta have the Junior to do ’em right, because of the single pickup,” he explained once while demonstrating his technique. “See the way the strings can bend down when you hit ’em? If there was a neck pickup, it’d be in the way. You bury the pick with your thumb and you have all the room you need.”

Unable to find extra-light string sets in those early years of rock guitar's dominance, West strung his guitars with standard sets of La Bella strings, substituting a .010-gauge banjo A string for the high E and moving the other five strings down one position.

West was also adept at bringing other techniques into his playing. For the instrumental prelude to Mountain's “Pride and Passion,” from Flowers of Evil, he used a hammering technique with his left hand that produced a "violin sound — like what Segovia does,” he said. “You can do it in rock and roll too." To demonstrate for the interviewer, he hammered on a string and then turned up the volume of the guitar. As he explained, the metallic sound of the string rattling against the fretboard was never amplified, and West could control the intensity of the sound by adjusting the guitar's volume knob.

For the prelude to "Pride and Passion," West tuned every string to the same note, or that note's octave, and then played the instrument bottleneck-style through an echo unit. "It sounds like a string section," he said. "I figured that if I can make a guitar sound like a violin, why not make it sound like a couple of violins." The same technique on the low strings would allow him to produce a cello-like sound.

West would also use his "harmonic jump” technique with his guitar at full volume to produce seemingly infinite sustain, as he did during the guitar solo of "Dream Sequence" on Flowers of Evil.

"The note catches, man," he told Guitar Player. "There is a feeling you get; you can feel as soon as you hit the note if it is going to go into that sustain. You can hold it for days if your guitar is wide open."

Notably, West hadn't used a fuzz tone in four years when he spoke with Guitar Player in 1972, preferring to use his amp volume and hands to get all the dirt and sustain he required.

Combining that with his sweet, smooth finger vibrato, West created a guitar voice like none other. "Vibrato is all in control; it's like a voice, you know.," he explained. "Some opera singers control their voice to get that slow vibrato. Eric Clapton has got about the best vibrato I ever heard in my life. Hendrix and Mick Taylor have beautiful vibratos too. I'd take these guys over anybody else because they control the whole thing. Some guitar players hit a note and go into a vibrato that's really fast and intense with no control, and it sounds like an opera singer with a bad voice."

Perhaps the ultimate proof of West’s power is not that he influenced guitarists at the peak of his early fame but that he continues to years after his death on December 23, 2020. Consider Grace Bowers: Just 18, the gifted guitarist cited Mountain’s Climbing! as one of the 10 records that changed her life, calling out West’s guitar solo on “Theme for an Imaginary Western” as “one of the most perfectly crafted guitar solos ever. His tone — not even just on this album, his tone in general — was so good. He's one of those players you can recognize right away. It's that distinct.” If young players like Bowers are tuning into him, there is perhaps no greater proof of Leslie West’s indelible power and influence in guitar.

Songwriters draw influence for words and music from any number of places. Ozzy Osbourne’s hit “Crazy Train” might be one of the few instances where a song’s lyrics were inspired by a faulty stomp box.

And that’s no small act of serendipity. After all, “Crazy Train” played a major role in Osborne’s career. Released in 1980 on his debut solo album, Blizzard of Ozz, “Crazy Train” was also his first solo single, and it was a huge success. Although the track reached a rather modest number 49 on the U.K. charts, “Crazy Train” hit number three on the U.S. Billboard Mainstream Rock charts, giving credibility to Osbourne’s solo career following his departure from Black Sabbath.

Just as significantly, the song established Randy Rhoads — Osbourne’s new guitarist and the song’s co-writer — as a sizable talent. From his menacing opening riff to his blazing solo, Rhoads makes “Crazy Train” a showcase for his guitar talents, employing hammer-ons, pull-offs, tapping, slides and more. Playing his 1974 Gibson Les Paul Custom electric guitar through a Marshall Super Lead 100-watt head and cabinet, with an MXR Distortion+ pedal, Rhoads cut one of the defining tracks of his short career.

Apparently, his rig didn’t just power his performance — it also helped inspire the song’s title, according to bassist and lyricist Bob Daisley. As he explained recently on the Talk Louder Podcast, he and Rhoads were working on the guitarist’s “Crazy Train” riff when the inspiration struck.

"Randy had an effect pedal, and it sort of chugged a bit, even when he wasn't using it,” Daisley says. “If it was switched on and it was going through his amp, it made almost like a train sort of sound. Or it reminded me of that anyway. I knew Randy was a fan of model trains, and so was I.

"And I said, 'Randy, it sounds like a train, listen!’ It had a sort of psychedelic, kind of trippy thing about it. And I said, 'It sounds like a crazy train.'"

The phrase would prove to be descriptive of more than Rhoads’ pedal. Daisley developed it into a vehicle for his message about a world going off the rails. By then Osbourne had already developed the song’s vocal melody line. It was just left for Daisley to write the lyrics.

"And so, I wrote the lyrics to 'Crazy Train' about world events and the threat of World War III, and how many people [were] living in countries that are opposing each other for what reason, for nothing. It doesn't even make sense."

While “Crazy Train” would prove important to both Osbourne’s and Rhoads’ careers, it was also a significant boost for Daisley. Just one year earlier he’d been out of work after being fired from Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. Connecting with Osbourne — who was in similar straits after getting sacked from Black Sabbath — was the chance of a lifetime. In short order, Daisley encouraged Ozzy to fire his guitarist and drummer and build a better backing band.

Which is how Rhoads came to join them. While Ozzy's label, Jet Records, was skeptical of hiring the young unknown, Daisley told the Johnny Beane YouTube channel he knew almost immediately that Randy was destined for good things. “I had a premonition of, 'One day, people will ask me what it was like to play with Randy Rhoads,'” he said. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”

When a fresh-faced Zakk Wylde joined Ozzy Osbourne’s band in 1987, he landed a coveted role that guitarists of far greater stature had vied for. Among them was neoclassical shredder Chris Impellitteri, a fast-rising talent who Ozzy is said to have “loved”. In the end, as when he hired Randy Rhoads, Ozzy took a gamble by putting his faith in a guitarist few had heard of.

Of course, everyone knows how the story ends. Still a part of Ozzy’s outfit today — save for the odd parting of ways over the years, which saw Testament’s Alex Skolnick join for one night only and Gus G replace him for one record — he stands as the most loyal six-string servant of the Prince of Darkness.

Perhaps his ability to bend to the singer’s strict rules about guitar playing and gear is to thank for that. That seems to the case based on comments from the guitarist's early days with Ozzy that recently resurfaced.

Wylde was just 20 years old when he joined the band, which featured new keyboardist John Sinclair and original bass player Bob Daisley, who was returning to the fold for the first time since 1983's Bark at the Moon. Their first release with Ozzy, No Rest for the Wicked, came out the following year. The pace was fast, and Wylde had to adapt quickly to the pressure cooker environment of life in one of heavy metal’s biggest acts.

“I wanted to play more slide guitar and use the wah pedal more on No Rest for the Wicked,” the guitarist told Guitar World back in ‘89. “But the minute Ozzy hears a wah-wah, he immediately thinks of Jimi Hendrix.

“I could be playing 'Mary Had A Little Lamb' with a wah-wah, and he'd be going, ‘Hendrix, Hendrix, Hendrix."

And the rules stretched far beyond his anti-wah stance.

Wylde’s custom-painted Bulls-eye Les Paul quickly became part of his signature look — and it was a subtle nod and variance to Randy Rhoads’ preferred polka-dot styling. Ozzy was fine with it — but there were caveats.

“I only used the guitar's back pickup on the album,” Zakk revealed. “Ozzy hates the sound of the front pickup. He calls it the ‘cow tone.’”

Those requests may seem harsh to seasoned players, but Wylde was happy to bow to his boss's demands.

“The thing is, Ozzy’s been rocking out since before I was born,” he said. Indeed; Wylde was just three years old when Black Sabbath released its change-making debut album in 1970. “I had to respect his opinion as to what would work in the studio.”

Speaking recently to Guitar Player, Wylde has hailed Ozzy’s ability to see greatness in even the most primitive ideas.

“The funny thing with Ozz is that, when I played things like, 'I Don’t Wanna Change the World,' I was just messing around having a joke, riffing, singing crazy shit. But Ozzy heard something that clicked for him. He turned that into a Grammy-winning song.”

Anecdotes like that show that Wylde was shrewd to lean into Ozzy’s expertise. After all, No Rest for the Wicked was the singer’s 13th album release; it was Wylde’s first.

He’s also admitted to stealing ideas from Jimi Hendrix and his Ozzy predecessors – Randy Rhoads, and Jake E. Lee, to help pen his first riff for the band.

Ozzy Osbourne made a bold decision when he hired a then-unknown Zakk Wylde as his third permanent guitar player in 1987, but there was method to his madness.

Randy Rhoads' fiery talents helped launch Ozzy's post-Sabbath career, presenting the world with a brand-new guitar hero in the process. Bassist Bob Daisley said he instantly knew Rhoads was destined for greatness after their first jam together. Such greatness, though, was ultimately cut short when Rhoads passed following a plane crash in ‘82.

Jake E. Lee, hisi successor, had previously established himself with Ratt and Rough Cutt. He never caught on with fans in the way Rhoads did, even though Lee believes he and Rhoads out-gunned one another in different aspects of their playing.

After two records, Lee departed the band, and competition for the vacant spot was fierce. Neoclassical shredder Chris Impellitteri — then at the height of his powers — auditioned, but Ozzy took a shot in the dark when he offered a 20-year-old Wylde the gig instead. It would prove to be a magical pairing, similar in many ways to what the singer enjoyed with Rhoads.

Indeed, Wylde not only became a veritable guitar hero to millions — he also helped Ozzy write some of his biggest hits, starting with his very first attempt.

“The first riff I wrote for Ozz was 'Miracle Man,' ” the guitarist says on his YouTube channel. “And I got the fingering from 'Foxey Lady.' And that's how that came about, just from messing around with it.

"Like everybody always says, something comes from somewhere. And Jimi Hendrix probably would have said, 'Yeah, Zakk, I got that from this thing.'"

As Zakk has explained, in addition to playing his riff faster, he added "some 16th notes and some Marshall chunk, and next thing you know it’s 'Miracle Man.'" Played in Eb standard (half a step down), the riff relies on chugged bass notes on the low E string, and a variety of double- and triple-stops on the higher strings, much like "Foxey Lady." It gives the riff a greater dynamic and octave-spanning range.

Beyond that, as Zakk's recent chat with Guitar Player attests, was a deep-set appreciation for the talents that came before him and whose legacy he was continuing to honor.

“I’m obviously aware of some of the great rhythm guitar parts that have been laid down in the past, like Jake E. Lee’s work on 'Bark at the Moon' and Randy Rhoads’ on 'Crazy Train,' ” he says. “Those songs are part of my education as a guitarist. If I’m learning covers, I’m going to nail those rhythm parts or else I’m not really playing the song.”

The way Wylde attacks "Miracle Man" with the almost galloping rhythms is instantly reminiscent of the main riff to "Bark at the Moon" and the chunky verse riff in "Crazy Train."

“It’s like a cocktail or a new dish,” the guitarist says. “You use the ingredients that you have on hand to mix up something new that’s your own. I felt like my job as Ozzy’s guitarist was to bring something that held all the elements of the song together the way those parts did. All the things I absorbed like a sponge found their way into my own playing.

“The 16th-notes rhythm guitar part was informed by my ability to play those rhythm lines from Randy and Jake,” Wylde continues. “I’m pouring little elements of a whole bunch of things into the mix and coming up with something new that I probably wouldn’t have created if I hadn’t spent the time working out what those great players had done.”

The song, which Ozzy and Zakk co-wrote with Bob Daisley, pokes fun at televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who blamed the 1985 suicide of a teenager Ozzy fan on the singer’s depravity. Swaggart was later caught with a prostitute and confessed to a pornography addiction that saw him rightly branded as a hypocrite.

The song’s music video took Wylde and company to a U.K. cathedral, with Ozzy dressed as a televangelist and surrounded by pigs for what was a fairly transparent narrative. However, while the guitar world would fall in love with Ozzy’s new plucked-from-out-of-nowhere guitarist, the pigs were less enamored by his noise-making.

“When the music went on, the pigs all took a massive shit at the same time, because it was so loud in there,” Ozzy recalls. “The playback started and they all went pfft! Sixty pigs shitting! I had a pair of brand-new suede boots on, and I never wore them again. I couldn't get the smell out of them!”

Wylde, who has capitalized on Ozzy's retirement from touring to join Pantera, has played on six of the Prince of Darkness’ studio albums. That includes 1995’s Ozzmosis, which included writing contributions from Steve Vai, and 2022's Patient Number 9, on which Jeff Beck made two standout guest appearances.

Wylde would leave the band on a number of occasions, one of which provided Alex Skolnick the opportunity to take his place, although his stint lasted just one show.

Meanwhile, Wylde has hit out at those who have criticized his picking technique, citing two greats who defied convention with their oddball methods.

When Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sabbath, few could have expected how much his solo career would take off. Randy Rhoads’ talents were paramount to that success, and it set a precedent for the level of talent Ozzy’s future lead guitarists would be required to bring.

Bernie Tormé and Nightranger's Brad Gillis temporarily filled in for the late Rhoads after Gary Moore had turned down an offer to join. When Rhoads' first permanent successor, Jake E. Lee, left after two albums, the rumor mill started up all over again.

At that point in time Chris Impellitteri was considered one of the fastest shredders in the world thanks to his neoclassical exploits in Impellitteri. In a new chat with Guitar World, he reveals he’d been approached by Ozzy’s wife and manager, Sharon, for the job. Recalling exact details proved hazy, but his guesses do align with the end of Lee’s reign in the band.

“Let me not exaggerate that, because it's been so many years,” Impellitteri says. “What I remember — and I don’t know if Jake was still in the band – is that I was living in an apartment and I had roommates.

“I came home one night from rehearsal, and my roommate goes, ‘Oh you've got to listen to this message,’ which said, ‘This is Sharon Osbourne. Me and Ozzy have been checking you out, and we really love your guitar playing. We want you to come down and audition.’”

Impellitteri had his own band at the time, and the Osbournes' interest in him demonstrates just how his talents outshone those of his group. “I got a lot of attention for it,” he recently told Guitar Player of his talents. “Sometimes that overshadowed the band. It's been a constant tug of war trying to bring the real fans back into focus that the band's not just me."

Although Impellitteri had just signed a record deal with Relativity Records, he auditioned anyway.

“I talked to Sharon, and I think Ozzy, probably three to five times,” he continues. “There was some back and forth. They basically just asked if I would come down and play with them.”

He says he played two or three songs with the band, and that they were “very interested” in the prospect of him joining. Ultimately, he missed out to a young, unknown guitarist by the name of Zakk Wylde.

But Impellitteri admits his own preference was for Ozzy's early solo albums with Rhoads and thinks he would have been the wrong choice for where the Osbourne was headed.

“I would have wanted to do something more like Blizzard of Ozz or Diary of a Madman,” he says, referring to the singer's first two solo albums. Impellitteri believes Zakk and the songs he wrote with the singer "elevated Ozzy.

"So imagine if you had this little brat kid like me, going, ‘No, no, no, we're going to do another Diary of a Madman,’" he said, laughing.

Wylde made his Ozzy debut with 1988's No Rest for the Wicked, and he says parts of that record were informed by the foundation Rhoads and Lee had laid down before them.

“I’m obviously aware of some of the great rhythm guitar parts that have been laid down in the past, like Jake E. Lee’s work on 'Bark at the Moon' and Randy Rhoads’ on 'Crazy Train,'” he says. “Those songs are part of my education as a guitarist.

“All the things I absorbed like a sponge found their way into my own playing. It’s not stealing or borrowing; it just becomes a part of your knowledge. I’m pouring little elements of a whole bunch of things into the mix and coming up with something new that I probably wouldn’t have created if I hadn’t spent the time working out what those great players had done.”

Meanwhile, Jake E. Lee, who is recovering after being shot multiple times near his Las Vegas home, has reflected on his time in Ozzy’s band and the comparisons that were naturally drawn between their playing styles.

“I don’t think it’s wrong for certain people to like my style of playing better. It’s about who speaks to you,” he had said, believing he and Rhoads excelled at different things.

Jake E. Lee took to social media to “clarify the events” leading to his shooting in Las Vegas in October.

The former Ozzy Osbourne guitarist, who became Randy Rhoads’ successor in 1982, was walking his dog, Coco, when the incident occurred. He says he saw two men “dressed in black, hoodies pulled down low,” checking out a motorcycle in a driveway.

“They saw us coming up on them and exited the driveway and quickly walked down the street, the same direction we were headed,” a Facebook post dated September 30 reads.

The men “kept checking over their shoulders at us,” as Coco “pulled hard on the leash.” The guitarist says they then warned him: “You need to quit following us, turn around and f*** off.”

Lee stood his ground, believing the men were intimidated by the dog, an 80-pound pitbull. Lee explains that, “after some macho back and forth,” he continued to walk home, the men leaving in the direction they’d come. It was then he was shot.

Police found 15 shell casings at the scene. Three bullets made contact with the guitarist.

“We were about 50 feet apart when I heard the shots,” Lee says. “I quickly realized he wasn’t aiming at me. He was aiming at my dog. I threw my end of the leash at Coco and yelled to go home. He did. He’s a good boy.

“One bullet went through my forearm, one through my foot, and one in the back, which broke a rib and damaged a lung. All the fingers still move.”

Lee has since regained the feeling in the back of his hand, and his fretting arm shows no sign of long-term damage. As a result, his electric guitar talents should be unaffected.

In an interview with Tone-Talk recorded prior to the shooting, Lee responded to how people compared him to Randy Rhoads after he got the Ozzy gig.

While he championed one “unparalleled” aspect of Rhoads’ playing style, he believes he and his predecessor each excelled in areas where the other didn't.

“Still to this day, there’s people that like my playing, and like it better than Randy’s,” he said. “We're different. I’m not saying I’m better than Randy, but I don’t think Randy’s better than me, either.

“If anything, he added, my shit’s a little bit harder to play than Randy’s.”

In the same Tone-Talk interview, Lee reported that he hated the mix on 1983's Bark at the Moon, his first of two albums with Ozzy, but was told by manager Sharon Osbourne to “get used to it."

Ozzy Osbourne recently joined an elite cast of musicians — including Eric Clapton, John Lennon and Jimmy Page — who have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame multiple times.

His induction ceremony was the kind of glamorous and gothic affair one would expect, but among the frivolities was a groundbreaking moment when Wolfgang Van Halen stepped up to play the role of Randy Rhoads on "Crazy Train."

When Rhoads shot onto the national scene in the early 1980s as Ozzy’s guitar star, rock fans keenly debated whether Randy or Eddie Van Halen was the better guitarist. Both players helped fan the flames. For Randy's part, he's known to have said only one positive thing about his shredding adversary.

With Wolfgang performing Rhoads' licks on "Crazy Train," the part rivalry was extinguished once and for all.

As Wolfgang explained, the gig was simply too good to turn down.

“I got the request from Ozzy, so you don’t say no,” he tells the Talking Rock with Meltdown podcast. “You’re like, ‘I’ll do what I can, sir.’ We had two rehearsals in Los Angeles before we came out and then a rehearsal the day before in Cleveland, so it was nice. The band got to gel, so it wasn’t just thrown together.”

The group included Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, Metallica bass player Robert Trujillo, and Tool singer James Maynard Keneean. Zakk Wylde also performed later that night.

Wolfgang says producer Andrew Watt, who helmed Ozzy’s last two records — Ordinary Man and Patient No.9 — was the brains behind the operation.

“He was kind of the one setting everything up,” Wolfgang said. “It was a crazy supergroup of people, I felt so out of place. It was nice to have Zakk there so I could be like, ‘Hey, am I doing this right?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, you’re doing fine.’

“I was certainly incredibly nervous, but everybody made it really easy, and it was really comfortable,” he adds. “And it was really cool to be able to hang out with Maynard. I’ve been a huge Tool fan my whole life, and he’s one of my favorite singers. I kind of had to put away the fan shirt and just kind of be like, ‘Yes sir, hey, how’s it going?’”

Though Wolfgang is — understandably — trying to forge a career away from his father’s shadow, he has spoken about the key lesson his dad taught him about soloing. He believes it’s an aspect of Eddie’s playing that too many players look past.

Meanwhile, former Van Halen Michael Anthony has said it's up to Wolfgang if anything happens to the vast archive of demos that Van Halen created during their time together.

And in related news, MXR has opened up Rhoads’ iconic “chip pan” pedalboard for the creation of the MXR Randy Rhoads Distortion+ pedal, and luthier Jim DeCola recently explained how he modded Randy Rhoads’ polka-dot V backstage just minutes before he played the guitar.

Jim DeCola was just 19 years old in 1982, when Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads were the world’s hottest guitar players. He would grow up to become Gibson’s longest-serving master luthier.

But on January 24, 1982, DeCola was just a fresh-faced upstart taking his colleague’s lunch orders when the phone rang. It would prove to be a life-changing call, but initially he thought it was a prank.

“I get the phone call and it’s some guy with a British accent, and I could barely understand what he was saying,” DeCola tells Tone Shop Guitars. It was Ozzy Osbourne, but the luthier had no idea. “I can barely make out Ozzy Osbourne and thought it was just somebody pranking me. And then he said, ‘No, no, Bruce Bolen mentioned I should call you.’

"So then I’m like, 'This is for real.' ”

Bolen was on the marketing team at Chicago Musical Instruments (CMI), which owned Gibson at the time, and his recommendations carried weight. He had good reason to have faith in DeCola. The luthier was three years into the job and had shown his skills fixing tremolo units. Now, Randy Rhoads needed his help.

DeCola traveled to the Rosemont Horizon (now the Allstate Arena) in Illinois, where Ozzy and his band were performing that night. He was promptly presented with the Rhoads' unmistakable polka-dot Sandoval V electric guitar and proceeded to take its tremolo apart.

“What I used to do,” he explains, “was disassemble the tremolo, and I would counter-sink the block and the plate on each side and then de-burr the saddles. Then I would put the screws for the vibrato in a hand drill, and I had a triangle file, and I would file a little notch so it would pivot like a Floyd Rose.”

It's worth noting that, back in ‘82, DeCola had never laid eyes on a Floyd Rose bridge, championed for its ability to pivot both ways, as opposed to the more limited whammy-bar actions of Fender guitars. But he’d come across the two-point tremolo system Leo Fender had created for G&L, similar to the unit employed on contemporary Strats.

Having already tested his methods on Stratocasters, DeCola brought his knowledge and experience to Rhoads’ aid. He would later employ a similar modification to the guitarist's Jackson “Concorde.”

“And then later on, Paul Reed Smith also did that hidden knife edge on his tremolo,” DeCola states.

But at the time he found himself face to face with Rhoads' Sandoval V, he says, "I was just a kid. I didn’t know. But I was possessed — and obsessed.”

DeCola finished his work in time for soundcheck. Rudy Sarzo, who had replaced founding member Bob Daisley the year prior, was on bass, and Tommy Aldridge was on drums. “They did 'Mr. Crowley' without Ozzy for soundcheck,” he recalls. “It was awesome just hearing the band by themselves doing that entire number.”

Rhoads had been impressed by the guitar’s newly solidified tuning, but with the venue's doors open and the support band already announcing themselves onstage, the guitarist had a last-minute request for the teenage luthier.

“We went back to the dressing room and he said, ‘Yeah, it stays in tune great! But if you could make it a little slinkier,’ ” DeCola details.

According to Setlist.fm, the support that night came from Starfighters, a British heavy metal band from Ozzy’s hometown of Birmingham. Their guitarist was Stevie Young, Angus and Malcolm Young’s nephew, who would join his AC/DC in 2014. But DeCola was too busy backstage to watch the opening act.

“I was in the dressing room with Randy and Rudy and Tommy,” he says. “Tommy’s hanging over my shoulder, ‘Hey, what ya doing now? Why you doing that?’ He was really cool.”

While the drummer proved a cool cat, he remembers Rhoads as “a little angel playing for the Prince of Darkness”.

DeCola may have missed Starfighters’ set, but he was able to celebrate a job well done by catching Ozzy's show. More over, he was able to witness the making of an iconic rock photograph in real time.

DeCola was standing immediately behind photographer Paul Natkin as he captured the moment when Ozzy lifted his young prodigy shredder aloft, a grin stretching from ear to ear. The photo would be selected for the cover of the 1987 live album, Tribute.

“I was like five, eight feet behind it,” DeCola beams. “I was right there!”

Bob Daisley, who is currently putting a new band together, has recently recalled how Rhoads got the Ozzy gig, and how a premonition after his audition spoke of the young guitarist's impending greatness.

Meanwhile, Randy’s sister, Kathy, has worked with MXR for the Randy Rhoads Distortion+ pedal. That saw the firm’s pedal boffins open his legendary “chip pan” pedalboard for the first time in decades to extract its tonal magic. The pedal is, fittingly, decked out in a polka-dot finish.

The thorny subject of the greatest guitar solo of all time has long been a fiercely contested debate, probably because every solo is different. How do you compare, say, “Comfortably Numb” with “Crazy Train,” or “Stairway to Heaven” with “Sultans of Swing”? It’s impossible. Still, public opinion ebbs and flows, and we wanted to find out which solos currently rank among our readers as the greatest of them all.

So we ran a poll on GuitarPlayer.com to find out and here we present the results. We’ll take a look at the stories behind the songs and find out just what made those lead guitar breaks so great through conversations with Brian May, Kirk Hammett, Michael Schenker and others.

20. Gary Moore | “Still Got the Blues”

GUITARIST: GARY MOORE (1990)

The definitive blues guitar ballad.

Presented as the title track from his 1990 album, this wistful tune in A minor became Gary Moore’s calling card fairly late in his career, when he reinvented himself as a blues artist. There’s a point in the solo where you can hear the Belfast great switch from the neck humbucker to the bridge on the 1959 Les Paul Standard he nicknamed Stripe and start deviating from its main theme, mainly sticking within the A minor pentatonic scale, with a few notes from the Aeolian and harmonic minor scales.

Moore was plugged into his prototype Marshall JTM-45 reissue head with one of the company’s newly designed Guv’nor distortion pedals out in front. More than 30 years later, this remains one of the most raw and expressive blues tracks, with Moore almost fighting his guitar at points, yet never failing to deliver the goods

19. Metallica | “Fade To Black”

GUITARIST: Kirk Hammett (1984)

Metallica’s first ballad features some of Kirk’s most epic playing.

Recorded at Flemming Rasmussen’s Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen in February and March 1984, Ride the Lightning, Metallica’s sophomore album, was more progressive and stylistically greater in scope than the all-out thrash assault of their debut, Kill ’Em All. That change is evident on “Fade to Black,” which features acoustic guitars and a nonstandard structure more akin to the “Stairway to Heaven” school of songcraft. But it is the song’s timeless melodic solo that most vividly signals a stylistic shift in guitarist Kirk Hammett’s playing. And the signature element he employs for the last solo is arpeggios.

“I have been playing that song for so long now,” Kirk tells our sister publication Total Guitar. “For the very last solo, I know how I want to start it, but then I am in an area where I can improvise for 16, 18 or 24 bars, and then [drummer] Lars [Ulrich] will hit a certain fill, which means that it’s up and it’s time for the arpeggio part. And then I just slide right into those arpeggios.” And they are arpeggios played on two strings, Hammett specifies. “When guitar players first started incorporating arpeggios into their playing, before the whole Yngwie sweep-picking thing, arpeggios were played on two strings – not three or four strings,” he explains. “And that was what the vogue was at the time in the 1980s, so I have been playing those for a long time. I use my middle finger just to anchor my position on the neck.”

That’s a great tip from the man who plays the solos. But how should you tackle them yourself? First, there are two essential scales you’ll need to know: the B natural minor scale and the B Phrygian mode, both shown below. These cover you for the entire opening 30 bars, which, let’s face it, is a lot of music, so this is a good reason to learn a couple of shapes if ever there was one.

To make it simpler, most of your time is spent in the natural minor scale. Not until around bar 20 will you find yourself briefly landing on the C note, which appears in the Phrygian mode. The bottom line is that Hammett improvises this part of the solo live – and these are the shapes he uses.

Up next are those two-string arpeggio shapes, and they’re 16th notes – all of them! At 142 bpm, it’s pretty fast, but Hammett doesn’t pick every note, opting to use pull-offs to make those rapid licks easier. It’s definitely something to experiment with and if you’re still struggling, you could try adding in an occasional hammer‑on, too.

18. Steely Dan | “Kid Charlemagne”

GUITARIST: Larry Carlton (1976)

Messin’ with the “Kid.”

Steely Dan’s catalog is filled with remarkable guitar solos, but Larry Carlton’s brilliant work on The Royal Scam’s “Kid Charlemagne” remains the most celebrated. Carlton strings together a series of tasty phrases that follow the underlying chord changes with a blend of inside and outside playing that is technically mind bending and emotionally satisfying.

“I was pretty familiar with the tune, so I just improvised,” he tells Guitar Player. “People think I’m kidding when I say that, like I had worked the solo out beforehand, but I didn’t. It was straight improv, and it worked.” Very well, in fact. Perhaps more has been written about his solo than of the song itself.

Despite the acclaim, Carlton was, and remains, nonplussed. “When the record came out, there was a wonderful review of the tune in Billboard and they raved about the solo,” he says. “I put the record on and listened to it with my wife, and at the end of it I said, ‘I don’t know. It just sounds like me.’”

17. Cream | “Crossroads”

GUITARIST: Eric Clapton (1968)

The finest rock and roll cover of an acoustic blues song.

It started as a blues tune called “Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson and became one of the finest examples of natural ability, soulfulness and showmanship from a virtuosic 22-year-old guitarist named Eric Clapton. His reimagining of the song as “Crossroads” further cemented a legacy that by then had earned him the nickname God.

Famously recorded at San Francisco’s Fillmore West venue for supergroup Cream’s Wheels of Fire album, Clapton’s arrangement retains the soul and spirit of Johnson’s original but updates it for a contemporary audience raring to cut loose and be entertained by dazzlingly quick, passionate musicianship.

Remarkably, Clapton is no fan of the performance: He complains that the band lost the “one” in the first verse of his second solo break, thereby throwing off his phrasing. That’s perfectionism for you. For everyone else, this four-minute track remains a source of fascination more than 50 years on.

16. Eric Johnson | “Cliffs Of Dover”

GUITARIST: Eric Johnson (1990)

Heavenly tones from the Texan great.

This instrumental won Eric Johnson a Grammy for its exquisitely tasteful guitar playing and jaw-dropping tones. For the recordings, the Texan musician mainly stuck with his early ’60s ES-335, though he chose to use his 1964 “Virginia” Strat for the opening lead and parts of the main solo. The guitars were fed into a 100-watt Marshall Super Lead, with an Echoplex and BK Butler Tube Driver to help achieve those smooth, violin-like tones and warm sustain.

“I first heard him in 1986 on Live at Austin City Limits,” Joe Bonamassa told us in 2015. “It was ‘Cliffs of Dover,’ and it was just terrifyingly good guitar playing. I wasn’t even sure if it was real! Then I saw him live, and his tones were the best I’d ever heard. I wondered how this guy was getting all of these sounds out of his Strat. I’d never seen anybody have such a forward-thinking rig like that.”

15. Prince | “Purple Rain”

GUITARIST: Prince (1984)

The Purple One’s defining guitar moment.

The epic outro to “Purple Rain” – which takes up nearly two thirds of the song itself – stands out as some of Prince’s finest work on the six-string, wailing away in G minor pentatonic and occasionally including some more modal notes, like the minor 6th. There’s also that repeating motif that dances around the 2nd and minor 3rd intervals.

It’s simple and effective, setting things up for the vocal melody that comes in toward the end. It’s not a busy solo by any means. Rather, the Purple One chose to leave a lot of space in between the lines he played and focus on big hooks instead of monster licks.

Prince would extend the solo for up to 15 minutes in live performance. While there are many great live renditions of this track, his half-time performance for 2007’s Super Bowl in Miami is the stuff of legend. Shredding alone onstage in the middle of a storm, Prince seemed to be living the moment for which this song was written.

14. Deep Purple | “Highway Star”

GUITARIST: Ritchie Blackmore (1972)

Race with devil on English highway.

“I wrote that out note for note about a week before we recorded it,” Ritchie Blackmore said of his remarkable and most definitely memorable solo to “Highway Star.” “And that is one of the only times I have ever done that. I wanted it to sound like someone driving in a fast car, for it to be one of those songs you would listen to while speeding. And I wanted a very definite Bach sound, which is why I wrote it out – and why I played those very rigid arpeggios across that very familiar Bach progression – D minor, G minor, C major, A major. I believe that I was the first person to do that so obviously on the guitar, and I believe that that’s why it stood out and why people have enjoyed it so much.

“Over the years, I’ve always played that solo note for note, but it just got faster and faster onstage because we would drink more and more whisky. [Keyboardist] Jon [Lord] would have to play his already difficult part faster and faster, and he would get very annoyed about it.”

13. Guns N’ Roses | “Sweet Child O’ Mine”

GUITARIST: Slash (1988)

A game of two halves.

Slash’s solo on this Guns N’ Roses breakthrough single is rock guitar at its finest. The first half is laid-back and modal, built around the Eb minor scale with a few major 7ths thrown in for a harmonic-minor flavor. The second half is much more aggressive and bluesy, and sticks mainly to position one of the pentatonic scale an octave up the neck in the same key. The bends feel that much wider and the vibrato more pronounced.

Slash plays the first section on the neck pickup for thickness and warmth before switching over to the bridge for more bite, with his Cry Baby engaged. Perhaps most impressive is his off-the-cuff sense of feel and how he strings it all together, which is the mark of any great guitar solo. Remarkably, although Slash’s riff was responsible for the song’s creation, he wasn’t fond of the song originally. “We were a pretty hard driving band, and that was sort of an uptempo ballady type of a thing,” he said. “So it’s grown on me over the years.”

12. Ozzy Osbourne | “Crazy Train”

GUITARIST: Randy Rhoads (1980)

Fretboard fireworks galore on Ozzy’s Blizzard of Ozz comeback.

The Double-O has often cited Randy Rhoads as the man who saved his career – and when you hear the solo on “Crazy Train,” you understand why. Although Rhoads’ classical- and modal-based approach was far from Tony Iommi’s blues leanings, he was, like Ozzy’s old bandmate, a true inventor.

There’s a section toward the end of this solo that actually sounds like a train squealing off the tracks, thanks to the use of a chromatically ascending trill that then descends in key. Rhoads concludes the solo with a fast-picked F# minor pentatonic phrase before a rapid Aeolian legato run ending with a big bend on the 19th fret.

The shredder performed the solo with his customized Jackson guitar through a Marshall and a couple of 4x12s while sitting in the control room. “We’d plug the guitar directly into the console,” recalls Blizzard of Ozz engineer Max Norman. “We’d preamp it in the console and send it down to the amp from there. That way we could control the amount of gain that hit the amp.”

11. Michael Jackson | “Beat It”

GUITARIST: Eddie Van Halen (1982)

Breathtaking results from an unlikely pairing.

Asked to contribute guitar to Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, Pete Townshend declined but offered a suggestion: How about Eddie Van Halen? Jackson and producer Quincy Jones thought that was a great idea, and got Ed onboard to play the solo to “Beat It.” But after hearing the part where he was asked to solo, the guitarist was unhappy with the chord changes and had the engineer edit the tape to create a new pattern that better suited what he had in mind.

Ed knew Jackson might be surprised and possibly unhappy with his executive decision. “So I warned him before he listened,” he told CNN in 2012. “I said, ‘Look, I changed the middle section of your song.’ Now in my mind, he’s either going to have his bodyguards kick me out for butchering his song, or he’s going to like it. And so he gave it a listen, and he turned to me and went, ‘Wow, thank you so much for having the passion to not just come in and blaze a solo but to actually care about the song and make it better.’” And he did it for free.

10. The Beatles | “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”

GUITARIST: Eric Clapton (1968)

An uncredited Slowhand makes a rare guest appearance with the Fab Four.

By 1968, George Harrison was penning compositions that rivaled those of his bandmates John Lennon and Paul McCartney. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was every bit as good as anything his musical partners wrote, but no one could get up the enthusiasm for it, so Harrison invited his pal Eric Clapton to play on the session, knowing it would put the Beatles on good behavior.

Using Harrison’s 1957 “Lucy” Gibson Les Paul through a Fender Deluxe amp, Clapton doesn’t so much mimic the haunting, aching main melody as he creates a harrowing song within a song. His descending bends and release notes, and that inimitable vibrato, are on full display and are appropriately tear-jerking, weaving a dramatic narrative that builds to a shattering climax.

9. Chicago | “25 OR 6 TO 4”

GUITARIST: Terry Kath (1969)

Wah-drenched ecstasy.

This magazine once described Terry Kath’s “25 or 6 to 4” solo as “Wes Montgomery meets Jimi Hendrix,” and it’s a fair point, as Kath was influenced first by jazz and, later, hard rock. As a founding member of the jazz-rock band Chicago, he held down guitar duties for the group until his tragic death from an accidentally self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1978.

Though his superb playing graced many tracks – notably “Introduction” and “Free Form Guitar,” both from the group’s 1969 debut, The Chicago Transit Authority – there’s no denying the power of his soloing on the group’s early hit “25 or 6 to 4.” Kath uses his wah generously to add emotion to his lines, giving them at times a frenetic despair.

Kath most likely played his Gibson SG Standard, as pictured on Chicago Transit Authority’s inner sleeve, using his favored string set, as revealed to GP: the high E string from a tenor set and a standard set for the rest, moved down one string (i.e. high E for the B string, B for the G string, and so on).

8. Lynyrd Skynyrd | “Free Bird”

GUITARIST: Allen Collins (1974)

The Bird is the word.

As it happens, the four-minute-and-24- second guitar solo that closes “Free Bird” was originally added to give singer Ronnie Van Zant a chance to rest his vocal cords during Lynyrd Skynyrd’s relentless performance schedule. At 143 bars long, the solo is far and away the most epic offering here (in fact, it’s 286 bars of recorded music because the whole thing is doubled).

The tune appeared on the group’s eponymous debut album in 1973, and guitarist Allen Collins delivered the lot on his 1964 Gibson Explorer. As Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Gary Rossington once told Guitar World, “The whole long jam was Allen Collins himself. He was bad. He was super bad! He was bad-to-the-bone bad. When we put the solo together, we liked the sound of the two guitars, and I could’ve gone out and played it with him. But the way he was doin’ it, he was just so hot! He just did it once and did it again, and it was done.”

7. Dire Straits | “Sultans Of Swing”

GUITARIST: Mark Knopfler

An understated guitar hero fingerpicks his way to glory.

Right when the world was crowning Eddie Van Halen the new King of Guitar, along came the rather unassuming Mark Knopfler – schooled in rockabilly, blues and jazz – who demonstrated that you didn’t need walls of distortion to turn heads.

Knopfler composed this pub-rock classic on a National steel guitar but thought it sounded “dull” – that is, until he picked up a Stratocaster, at which point the song “came alive.” Using nary a hint of grit on a Fender Twin, he fingerpicks not one but two standout solos.

The first features a lyrical section of elegant, Chet Atkins-style single-note and chordal bends that sigh and swoon with dreamy romanticism. In itself, that would be enough, but the outro solo is the real attention-grabber, on which Knopfler builds to a dazzling set of spitfire 16th-note arpeggios – cleanly played, precise and rousing every time you hear it.

6. The Jimi Hendrix Experience | “All Along The Watchtower”

GUITARIST: Jimi Hendrix (1968)

The greatest solo in a cover version.

This song tops any list of covers that are better than the original. Guitarists invariably refer to it as a Hendrix cover rather than a Bob Dylan original, proof of how much Hendrix made it his own. Jimi’s rhythm playing is astounding, both in the intro and in the deft chord/ melody work of the verses, and of course, there’s the small matter of four guitar solos to consider. The man many refer to as the best of all time makes the most of his Strat and Marshall rig here, but it’s his offering at the 2:20 mark that we’re interested in. Following an opening run of octaves, he gets into his stride with a typically blues-based minor pentatonic approach in C#.

At 2:32, the main solo explodes into a trademark combination of rhythm and lead, plus funky scratching on muted strings. It’s worth playing along with the scratches, trying to keep a loose wrist and consistent down-up strumming. Those few beats alone will teach you a lot about Jimi’s groove and feel.

To get the sound, select a bridge-position single-coil pickup, dial in delay at around 350ms, add compression for sustain and opt for a Vox wah pedal or something similar. You’ll hear the wind begin to howl.

5. Eagles | “Hotel California”

GUITARISTS: Don Felder & Joe Walsh (1977)

Those iconic twin-guitar harmony lines took the Eagles to new heights.

The title track from the Eagles’ fifth album, and without doubt the song the band will be most remembered for, “Hotel California” frequently tops greatest guitar solo polls. The solo begins at 4:20, forming an extended coda, over which guitarists Don Felder and Joe Walsh trade licks before joining together to play those iconic harmonized licks at 5:39.

As it turns out, those harmony lines work in a relatively simple fashion. Felder and Walsh play an arpeggio of every chord, and the harmony is created by one of the guitars always playing one note lower down in the chord. For example, the notes of the Bm chord are B, D and F#, so, if the higher guitar plays an F#, the lower guitar will play a D, and so on.

This nugget of information can take you a long way to mastering those descending arpeggios. We won’t go as far as to say you could easily work it out by ear, but if you know the chords to the song, it’s possible to jam along. And you can’t say that about many of the solos on this list!

4. Queen | “Bohemian Rhapsody”

GUITARIST: Brian May (1975)

It might just be the biggest rock song of all time.

Following Freddie Mercury’s 1991 death and a cameo moment in 1992’s Wayne’s World, “Bohemian Rhapsody” became a trigger point for a worldwide outpouring of affection and respect for Queen. Their renewed popularity would continue into the new millennium as Ben Elton’s We Will Rock You musical and the band’s discovery of a different way to exist behind frontman Adam Lambert brought their music to a new generation.

And “Bohemian Rhapsody”? Unsurprisingly, it’s Queen’s best-known song, and its brief nine-bar solo is a short and sweet musical interlude, bridging the verses to lead into what’s become known as the song’s “operatic section.” Those two words alone should warn you that this song shouldn’t work. There’s no chorus and, aside from two verses, no repetition. But of course it does work, and Brian May’s solo is the perfect melodic break.

His phrasing is loose and natural, moving across the backbeat rather than sticking to a rigidly timed grid. The fastest licks are expressive bursts, rather than repetitive noodling, and his articulate pre-bend and vibrato technique demonstrates his beautiful touch. Somehow, within the confines of the complex structure of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” this solo is made to order.

3. Led Zeppelin | “Stairway To Heaven”

GUITARIST: Jimmy Page (1971)

Heaven-sent soloing.

From the moment Jimmy Page plays the opening run on his ’59 Fender Telecaster, right through to the flurry of notes and the wailing bend that completes it, this is guitar-solo perfection – a masterpiece of composition. Rather than wander aimlessly, Page creates a song within a song.

The opening phrases set the scene, as he adds notes to the pentatonic scale to follow the song’s final chord progression. A rapid mid-solo repeating lick raises the bar before a game of question-and-answer with a haunting overdubbed guitar leads into that last flurry and bend. As we say, it’s all about the composition: licks that track the chord changes, the contour of the melody and the pacing of the widdly bits all take the listener on a journey.

Three takes were recorded (the other two allegedly still survive, presumably locked in a Led Zeppelin vault somewhere), all of them improvised, although Page has reportedly said that he had worked out the opening line. But while we’re all certainly curious to hear those solos, let’s face it: They’re not going to be any better than the one we’ve come to know and love all these years.

2. Van Halen | “Eruption”

GUITARIST: Eddie Van Halen (1978)

Eddie’s iconic solo that shook the world.

With its mix of fast legato hammer‑ons and pull-offs, pinched harmonics, whammy-bar dives and two-hand tapping, Eddie Van Halen’s mind-blowing instrumental guitar solo inspired a generation of guitar heroes. While the tapping gets the attention, his tone, blistering legato and creative note choices are all equally important. Amid all that virtuosity, Eddie still played with joyous rock and roll abandon.

Remarkably, Ed was never completely happy with the released recording. “I didn’t even play it right,” he told Guitar World. “There’s a mistake at the top end of it. Whenever I hear it, I always think, Man, I could’ve played it better.”

His admission aside, the track is a technical opus. The first eight bars are a bluesy affair, whose virtuoso legato licks perhaps recall the mojo of Jimmy Page’s breakdown solo in Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love.” It’s a theme Eddie develops over the following eight bars, taking notes from the major and minor pentatonic scales to add chromatics.

His tapping finale is probably one of the least understood solo sections in rock history. Eddie’s taps are not always on the beat, which makes for tricky timing changes as he switches from tapping the first and fourth sextuplet notes to the third and sixth notes. From start to end, “Eruption” is a masterpiece that would take most guitarists a lifetime to perfect.

1. Pink Floyd | “Comfortably Numb”

GUITARIST: David Gilmour (1979)

Gilmour’s greatness comes through in waves.

In a 1992 interview with MTV’s Ray Cokes, Gilmour was asked what he thinks of Keith Richards’ theory that songs, lyrics and guitar solos are “just out there in the air and you sort of grab them.” Gilmour agreed. “I think he’s right. They sort of appear as if they are out there in the air. But I don’t know how they get there.” But the best ones he said, just happen. “The best ones do, but often you work very hard and struggle over them.”

Gilmour's two "Comfortably Numb" solos are certainly among his best, and it’s easy to understand why our readers voted his efforts to be the number-one pick in our poll. But the real question is, which of those two solos qualifies for inclusion? Whichever way you go — and granted, most fans prefer the first solo to the second — there's certainly plenty to justify the song's position at the top.

The tone is legendary. Gilmour’s signal chain consisted of his iconic black Strat, then featuring a DiMarzio FS-1 bridge pickup, into a HiWatt DR103, with the essential EHX Ram’s Head Big Muff pedal. The FS-1’s fatness and the Big Muff’s smoothness leave no hint of the harsh treble that can plague Strats. With some extra help from an MXR Dyna Comp, Gilmour had so much sustain that he could hold notes as long as he wanted. As in his live rig, he combined a WEM 4x12 cab with a Yamaha rotary speaker lower in the mix, to add subtle modulation. The epic delay was added in the mix.

The first solo, in D major, uses the Strat’s neck and bridge pickups together, permitted by a custom switching arrangement. His phrasing here is the more unconventional of the two, with arpeggios and sliding passages. Gilmour’s use of the bar for vibrato – aided by its shortened tremolo arm – again distinguishes him from typical bluesers, inspiring many a fusion player in the process. He rakes into the beginning of many of the phrases, similar to Brian May, extracting all the excitement he can from every note.

By comparison, the outro solo’s licks are more standard, with phrases similar to Hendrix’s. The passages at 4:57 and 5:12 could be from “All Along the Watchtower” or “Foxey Lady,” but in this epic track few listeners would make the connection. It sounds both masterful and improvised at the same time. Gilmour has explained he created this impression by recording five or six takes and compiling the finished solo from the best bits of each. The result is stunningly well written, with a combination of repetition and development that keeps the excitement building for two minutes. The Hendrix-style blues lick returns at 5:27, longer and more intricate than before. The aggressive double-stops first appear at 5:15, and by 5:35 he has turned that idea into a motif.

For the climax, Gilmour shoots up an octave just when it seems he’s wrung every inch of expression from his maple neck. He descends back down the neck, incorporating one of his spectacular three-fret bends on the way, and finishes with another take on that double stop motif. It has all the excitement of an improvised performance, and all the structure of a careful composition.

Both solos share brilliant rhythmic awareness. Gilmour uses triplets, sextuplets, 16th and 32nd notes freely, within the same phrase. And check out the effect at 5:10 when he plays a lick in 16th notes and then immediately repeats and expands in sextuplets. A good solo can have great tone, rhythms, melody or expression, but only a work of rare brilliance features them all to this degree.

In 1979, Ozzy Osbourne and bassist Bob Daisley were a pair of out-of-work musicians. Daisley had lost his gig with Rainbow, while Osbourne had been unceremoniously sacked from the very band he'd helped raise to heavy metal's heights: Black Sabbath.

Together, Osbourne and Daisley would find arguably greater success with their next venture, and it was in great part thanks to the talents of one musician: a young hot-shot electric guitar player from across the pond in the U.S. named Randy Rhoads. With Rhoads onboard as Ozzy's guitarist and songwriting partner, the Prince of Darkness got his solo career off to a perfect start.

But as Daisley reveals in a new tell-all interview that tracks his career, Ozzy's label, Jet Records, was initially uncertain about the young player, whom Osbourne had met in Los Angeles in September 1979 during auditions for his band's guitar slot.

By then, Daisley had already joined Osbourne's fledgling band. But they immediately had a setback when Daisley told Ozzy he thought the other musicians, including the guitarist, weren't "world-class." Osbourne agreed and let them go.

“It was just me and Ozzy to start the band,” Daisley says. “Ozzy told me about this young guitar player in L.A. who was a teacher and worked at a music school. I sort of envisioned an older bloke with slippers, a cardigan and glasses, but Ozzy said, ‘No, his name is Randy Rhoads.’ I said, ‘Okay, well, let’s get him over.’"

But their plan soon met with pushback. The head of Jet Records, David Arden — the son of label owner (and Ozzy's eventual father-in-law) Don Arden — was unconvinced a young player like Randy could cut it.

"He didn't want to fly Randy over," Daisley says. "He said, 'He's unknown, he's young, nobody's heard of him.'" But Arden must have recognized the desperate need to get the group off the ground, because he soon had a change of heart and agreed to bring Rhoads to England.

Soon after the guitarist arrived, they all took a train up to Osbourne's home in Stratford to play together for the first time.

Recalls Daisley, “I remember that after we finished — after maybe 20 minutes or half an hour — Randy and I looked at each other at the same time and more or less said the same thing: ‘I like the way you play.' I knew right away that this would work and that this was good."

As for Arden, he needed no further convincing. From that day forward, Rhoads was in.

Daisley says he knew almost immediately that Randy was destined for good things. Speaking on the Johnny Beane YouTube channel in August, the bassist recalls what happened the day after that first session with the guitarist.

“The next day, Randy and I were stood at Stafford train station and I had a premonition of, 'One day, people will ask me what it was like to play with Randy Rhoads,'” he said. “I remember it like it was yesterday.”

Rhoads' life was taken far too early after only two albums, which makes Daisley's premonition all the more poignant.

Osbourne certainly recognized the guitarist's contribution to his career. When he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for the second time, on behalf of his solo career, he said: “If I hadn't met Randy Rhoads, I wouldn't be sat here right now.”

MXR’s Randy Rhoads Distortion+ pedal has finally arrived after a series of delays, delivering a sonic recreation of a key part of the late guitarist’s “chip pan” pedalboard.

An initial 2023 release date had been slated, with Randy's sister, Kathy Rhoads D’Argenzio, saying the subsequent delay would be “worth the wait” in January.

That announcement followed a year of silence, with the pedal first teased back in 2022, when D’Argenzio had revealed that, for the first time in 40 years, pedal boffins at MXR had opened up the Ozzy Osbourne and Quiet Riot guitarist’s pedalboard to extract its saturated distortion secrets.

Posting on Instagram earlier this month to proclaim that the wait was, at long last, nearly over, D’argenzio had called the project “a long journey and a labor of love” for a team that also included ex-Machine Head guitarist Phil Demmel.

The inspection of Rhoads’ pedalboard took place at the family’s Musonia School of Music in 2022, where MXR “painstakingly spec'd Randy’s vintage Distortion+” to create a replica of a pedal that was a vital part of the guitarist’s sound.

Unsurprisingly, the final result has a black and white polka dot housing, a pattern synonymous with Rhoads. Its controls are simple and few: There are dials for Output and Distortion and a true bypass footswitch.

Its innards, though, are a little more complex, which is why the wait for this pedal to land has been so exhausting.

MXR says that Rhoads “revolutionized the art of the rock ‘n’ roll guitar player” during his tragically short-lived career, with his MXR Distortion+ pedal crucial to his success.

He “harnessed its raw energy to slam his high-gain amplifier with a torrent of harmonics,” MXR says. Its recreation vies for the same impact.

Speaking of the first time he heard Rhoads’ playing, Demmel, in the video accompanying the release says: “It was like nothing I'd ever heard; it was sparkling like glass and abrasive but still so smooth and you could understand all that was going on but it had all the high gain.”

Zakk Wylde, who would later stand in his shoes as part of Ozzy’s band, hailed both Rhoads' “technical playing” and songwriting skills, and says people still talk about him today “because of what he wrote.”

Metallica’s Kirk Hammet is equally praising of his legacy, which opens a new chapter with the MXR Randy Rhoads Distortion+.

“I was really blown away by how Randy Rhoads' guitar sounded, how great of a guitar player was,” he says.

“He had had this classically-influenced style that wasn't overtly classical. He was using all the latest guitar techniques, and he was able to incorporate all this into his sound and really just make it his own.”

“To me, Randy is the perfect mix of modal, pentatonic, and dynamic playing and he doesn't overdo any of it. It's all very tastefully done and it's super melodic. He doesn't try to outshine the song at all, his solos are perfect compositions within the bigger composition.”

Rhoads’ “chip pan” pedalboard lives in a flight case and comprises a minimum of eight switches and nine control knobs. While it remains a secret what those controls did – or perhaps more accurately, an enigma, seeing as this is the first time any part of it has been dissected – the magic of his MXR Distortion+ has been extracted for this release, 42 years after his passing at just 25 years old.

The pedalboard was returned to an undisclosed “secure location” after MXR’s research. That location, we do know, is not Musonia, which was broken into in 2019. Several of Rhoads’ instruments are pieces of memorabilia were stolen, prompting D’argenzio to relocate the ‘board.

Thankfully, the stolen items were recovered two years later.

The MXR Randy Rhoads Distortion+ is now available for $169.

Head to Dunlop to learn more.

The following interview with Rudy Sarzo was originally published in the December 2009 issue of Guitar Player.

Although he’s played with lots of great guitarists, bassist Rudy Sarzo still gets the most questions about what it was like to play with the late Randy Rhoads.

“That’s why I wrote the book,” says Sarzo, referring to Off the Rails, a fascinating glimpse into his time with Rhoads. He spoke to GP about that time, now nearly 30 years ago.

You wrote that when you auditioned for Ozzy, Randy’s tone and his playing had changed a lot since your Quiet Riot days.

“His tone had totally changed. With Quiet Riot, he had a Peavey amp – it was some late-’70s solid-state model – and he had a cabinet with six JBLs. He ran his MXR distortion box in the front. With Ozzy he was using Marshalls, but to me one of the most important parts of his sound was the wah. 

“He would keep the wah-wah on during his rhythm lines. I think he started using the wah with his Marshalls because they were giving him a wider tone than the Peavey. He wanted to cut down those lower frequencies. His tone was more shelved than the average guitar player’s. He specifically chose the right frequencies to make his rhythms sound articulate.”

His style was obviously totally different with Ozzy.

“Well, you’re only as good or as eclectic as the songs on your list. When he was composing for Ozzy, Randy could go from Revelation Mother Earth to Flying High Again to No Bone Movies.

“Remember, when Randy got together with Ozzy, the ’80s hadn’t been invented yet as we know them. Record companies and MTV hadn’t started dictating what you could and could not play. I called producers ‘reducers’ because they were going with these very narrow ideas of what a rock song could be. 

“When a band had some success, they replicated that sound for the rest of their career and that became the formula for ’80s bands. Randy wrote his best stuff before all that and so he had a lot of freedom.”

What else can you say about his playing?

“The first thing I noticed about him was he listened. A lot of guitarists don’t consider themselves part of the rhythm section. With Randy, I could always count on him to come up with great rhythm guitar parts. He always listened to the drums and locked in. That really came together when he started playing with Tommy Aldridge. 

“Tommy had played a lot of arenas with Pat Travers and Black Oak Arkansas, and he’s got a tendency to lean forward, which doesn’t mean that you’re rushing, but you’re on top of the beat in a real driving way.

“Randy naturally leaned forward in his timing too. That was one of the things that gave Quiet Riot an arena sound even when we were playing in clubs. He played big. He projected.”

Randy mentioned some players that he admired, like Michael Schenker, Gary Moore, and Leslie West. Who else did he talk about?

“Mick Ronson. If you listen to the end of You Can’t Kill Rock and Roll, it’s basically an homage to Mick Ronson’s playing on the Bowie tune Moonage Daydream.”

Footage of Randy shortly before he passed makes it seem like he had already gotten a lot better than even what was on the recordings.

“Yeah, I can totally vouch for that. He never stopped studying and trying to get better. That’s what he lived for.”

Back in 2022, Kathy Rhoads D’Argenzio – the sister of late electric guitar hero Randy Rhoads – announced that the Rhoads family was working with MXR to create a Rhoads signature Distortion+ pedal.

At the time, the Rhoads family indicated that the pedal would be released in 2023. Though 2023 has now come and gone, Rhoads D’Argenzio has now offered an update, giving fans a first look at the still-in-development pedal.

“Here for the very first time, you can see the Randy Rhoads Distortion+,” Rhoads D’Argenzio wrote on Instagram last Sunday (January 7). “I personally got to design and choose every detail alongside Jimi Dunlop. I can't honestly say how proud I am of the finished results!”

Outfitted in a black-and-white polka dot finish – based on that found on Rhoads' iconic Karl Sandoval Flying V – the pedal was molded in part by MXR's extensive dissection of the guitarist's famous “chip pan” pedalboard, the first time in four decades that the 'board had been examined in detail.

Though the Rhoads Distortion+ didn't see the light of day in 2023, and won't – MXR and the Rhoads family confirmed – be revealed at the 2024 NAMM show later this month, players can expect to see it in a few months' time. 

“For those that have been patiently waiting and asking when its release will be, I have a personal statement from Jimi Dunlop himself,” Rhoads D’Argenzio wrote. “'Due to unforeseen circumstances the MXR Distortion+ is delayed until mid-spring. We know a lot of you are excited about this release and wanted to keep you updated. We want to dial it in just right, and we appreciate your patience for just a bit longer.”

Though disappointed that the pedal wasn't ready for this year's NAMM, Rhoads D’Argenzio promises that it will be “epic“ and “worth the wait.”

Rhoads Distortion+ delays aside, MXR wasted no time kicking off its 2024 line of products, releasing the vintage-style rack unit-inspired Joshua Ambient Echo delay pedal last week. 

Zakk Wylde knew he had big shoes to fill when he joined Ozzy Osbourne’s band in 1987. Tony Iommi, Randy Rhoads and Jake E. Lee had preceded him as Ozzy’s guitarists, and each had proven influential to his own playing. Wylde quickly found his footing, both as Osbourne’s guitarist and songwriting foil, co-creating the nine cuts on the singer’s 1988 album, No Rest for the Wicked. But perhaps no song in their shared canon stands as tall as No More Tears, the title track from Ozzy’s 1991 album, the second studio effort to feature Wylde. 

A large part of the record’s success was Wylde’s distinctive guitar work, a mix of grinding riffs and his signature pinch harmonics. But as the guitarist points out, it was all done in service of the song. “The song always comes first for Ozzy,” he says. “That was an important reminder for me when it came to making No More Tears.”

As Wylde recalls, No More Tears virtually wrote itself in rehearsals for the album sessions with bassist Mike Inez, drummer Randy Castillo and keyboardist John Sinclair. “Mike was actually the instigator of the whole song,” Wylde explains. “He came up with the bass line. Then Randy came in on the drums, exactly like it was on the record. They were just jamming on that groove, and then, again just like the record, John Sinclair came in with the keyboard line, so it was already sounding really great from the moment it was created.

“I had a slide with me, and I was thinking about all those bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet that I liked, which was what inspired the slide lines that I started playing — almost like a Freebird feel. What’s funny is that the way we jammed it is almost exactly how it came out on the record.”

Osbourne was quick to see the potential in what they had created. “Ozzy started singing some words as we were working through it, and then I came up with the riffs that answered his lines,” Wylde explains. The crescendo leading into the solo took a little more work. “We took some time to figure out how to go into that big change in the middle for the buildup and then break down before my solo. It was all routined before we got into the studio.

“I’d started to come up with some ideas on the piano, and John was playing around with different inversions on the synth. I think it’s really arresting the way that everything just drops out and then comes back with the piano. It takes the song somewhere else for a moment.”

Despite Inez’s role in the song’s creation, the bass part was recorded by Ozzy’s longtime collaborator, Bob Daisley. As for Wylde, he knew that he had to pull something special out of the bag.

“I was wondering where I was going to go with the solo,” he says. “It’s a blues-based syncopated solo, but I really sat and worked on the crescendo parts to get something that totally clicked.”

Wylde is a big fan of the written guitar solo, where the nuances are pre-planned and carefully constructed. “That’s the Randy Rhoads school of soloing, where you sit and compose the solo. Things like Hotel California or You Shook Me All Night Long — you can’t play the song without playing the solo exactly as it was recorded. I usually get a homework CD of a track so I can work on it until I get something I’m happy with.”

The gear that Wylde used for the song was his standard rig at that time. “It was just my Les Paul through a Marshall JCM800 2203 amp and cabinets fitted with 75-watt Celestions. The solo was just the one guitar. I didn’t double-track or anything. I didn’t use anything too fancy for the Ozzy records.”

Considering that No More Tears tracks in at more than seven minutes, Wylde was as surprised as anyone when it was chosen to be a single. He was even more shocked when the nearly six-minute edited version became a hit.

“I couldn’t believe something even that long could be a single,” he says. “But hell, what do I know? I didn’t think it was an exceptional track when we finished it. [The No More Tears cut] Mama, I’m Coming Home stood out as an obvious single. I sure as hell didn’t realize this would be the one song that people would always ask me about.”

In August 1982, just a few months after electric guitar hero Randy Rhoads – who rapidly rose to fame in 1980 and 1981 via his high-flying work with Ozzy Osbourne – was tragically killed in a plane crash, GP's then-Senior Editor, Jas Obrecht, began putting together a Randy Rhoads cover story for the magazine. 

After speaking to Randy’s mother, brother, and Osbourne bassist Rudy Sarzo, Obrecht was contacted by Osbourne's wife, Sharon Arden.

Arden – at the time a publicist for Jet Records – asked if her husband could say a few brief words about his late guitarist. 

This interview originally appeared in the November 1982 issue of Guitar Player.

I am happy to hear from you! Tell me about Randy Rhoads.

“I’m sad by the fact that the guy’s died. The guy was so unique. I don’t think people have ever fully realized what a talent that guy was – not only in rock and roll, but in every other field, you know. He was not only a great rock and roll player, but in the classics, and in every other field, he was phenomenal.“

Among all of the guitarists you auditioned, what made you choose Randy?

“I loved him in an instant. I fell in love with him as a player, and I fell in love with him as a person.“

Did he learn quickly?

“I didn’t have to teach him anything. I mean, all he was lacking was guidance.“

Was he easy to work with?

“The best guy in the world! Compare him to [Black Sabbath’s] Tony Iommi, and there’s no comparison. And I can only compare the two because [those are] the only two people I ever worked with as a guitar player.“

What attracted you to Randy in the first place?

“His angelic attitude to the whole business.“

Could you describe how you put together the music with him?

“I’d give him a melody, and he’d work a riff around the melody.“

Do you have any favorite hooks that he came up with?

“Every one he ever did. Every hook he ever came up with, I loved. He was original.“

Did he enjoy being on the road?

“Yeah.“

What was the difference between his live and his studio playing?

“Nothing at all. It sounds kind of boring to you, obviously, but the guy was such a great guy to work with. I mean, the guy was just a fucking born star, you know.“

Did he change parts around onstage?

“Oh, yeah. He changed. Every night. What we both worked out, we discovered that every heavy metal band sticks to one key. I don’t know about keys because I don’t read music and I don’t really understand it – I just get up there and scream around and jump around, you know? So I don’t understand about keys or notes or whatever. And he said to me that most guitar players in modern bands play over A or G or whatever, and they fluctuate between that. 

“So, we made a rule that every number that we recorded on an album was never played in the same key. It’s a different key in every number. We had a great rapport together. We loved each other very dearly. I swear to God, the tragedy of my life is the day he died.“

Rudy Sarzo mentioned that there might be enough material for a live album.

“We’ve been inundated with letters from fans saying if there’s anything possible of me and Randy playing together, they would love to have it. Because, you know, it got him acclaim. The sick thing about it all is that people never acclaim people in their lives – they always wait until some tragedy happens, and then they think, 'Oh, I’ll give this guy a listen-to.' 

“That guy was just a born natural star. I’ve been doing this for, like, a long, long time now in my life – it seems to me, anyway – and if ever I could honestly say in my life I’ve met a natural-born star, it was a guy called Randy Rhoads. God bless him.“

Was he comfortable with the recognition he was getting?

“Loved it! He loved it! He didn’t take drugs, he didn’t drink too much. He was a studier when we went working on the road. For instance, three weeks before he got killed, he came to me. His heart was in the classics, to be honest – in his heart, he wanted to be a classical guitar player. In fact, with the first record royalty he received, he went out and bought himself a very, very expensive classical guitar. And he sat there for days and nights, working on his theory things. 

“You know, he’d get all his theories down on music paper. And he was working on that for weeks and weeks. And in fact, the night before he died, he’d been up for four days and four nights – plus gigging – working on his theory, because he wanted to get into a university and get a degree in music.“

I heard that he’d find guitar teachers in the different towns the band played in.

“Every town he went to, he made sure. When the guys were hunkered in the bar, he wouldn’t. He’d practice all day every day. Every day of his life, since he was with me, he was practicing all the time. And he was a dedicated musician. If I could only put that into one word, and people, honestly, believe me – as crazy of a reputation as I have – he was the most dedicated musician I ever met in my life. He was a master of his art.“

Do you have any favorite memories of him?

“Just the fact that he had the best smile in the world.“

Anything you’d care to add?

“Yeah. Long live Randy Rhoads!“

It’s virtually impossible to pare decades of rock and roll down to a top-ten list. There are, however, some guitar solos every player needs to know about.

Here are some of the greatest ever committed to record...

10. "Statesboro Blues" by The Allman Brothers Band from 'At Fillmore East' (1971)

Guitarist: Duane Allman

Although the end of "Layla" may be more memorable to most folks, Allman’s Statesboro slide show verifies his title as the undisputed king of bottleneck guitar. 

Slick as oil but with the ability to stop on a dime, Allman not only redefined how slide guitar was played but also created a recycling market for empty Coricidin bottles.

9. "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses from 'Appetite for Destruction' (1987)

Guitarist: Slash

While Axl swayed and sashayed like Steve Wonder around his mic stand, Slash laid back with his Les Paul, patiently waiting for his turn in the spotlight. 

Then, with his blistering ascent up the E harmonic minor scale – which kicks the second solo of this tune into high gear – the top-hatted genius single-handedly breathed new life into wah-pedal sales.

8. "Crossroads" by Cream from 'Wheels of Fire' (1968)

Guitarist: Eric Clapton

Slowhand? Not on this track. Clapton pulls out every blues-rock move in his lick-tionary for this roadhouse romper. 

The true voodoo of this solo lies at the crossroads where major and minor pentatonic tonalities meet, mingle and blast off from E.C.’s fretboard. 

Ol’ Scratch surely smiled when he heard this one.

7. "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne from 'Blizzard of Ozz' (1980)

Guitarist: Randy Rhoads

You almost wonder if Ozzy named this tune after hearing Rhoads’ white-knuckled rock and roll ride up and down the F# minor scale. 

What more could you want in a metal guitar solo? Tapping, rakes, bends, trills ascending legato runs... 

Rhoads set Eighties guitarists on the rails of neoclassical rock with this one. All aboard!

6. "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin from 'Led Zeppelin IV' (1971)

Guitarist: Jimmy Page

Jimmy Page's "Stairway” solo is nothing short of divine. 

His resolution to the natural F note in the opening minor pentatonic lick of the solo couldn’t have been more perfect if the Almighty himself had chosen the note.

5. "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits from 'Dire Straits' (1978)

Guitarist: Mark Knopfler

Sultan says, “Spend less time making your harem moan and more time making your guitar cry and sing!” 

For those of you who’ve learned the outro solo the lazy way – playing eighth-note triplets for the daunting Dm, Bb and C arpeggios – get your fingers back to the wood shed. 

Those are 16th notes that the “Sultan of Strat” rips off.

4. "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd from 'Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd' (1973) 

Guitarist: Gary Rossington and Allen Collins

To paraphrase Adrian Belew in King Crimson’s "Indiscipline," "I repeat my licks, I repeat my licks, I repeat my licks…” 

This could go on forever – kinda like the outro solo to "Free Bird," in which guitarists Rossington and Collins double each other for most of this pull-off parade. 

It’s impressive not because of the degree of difficulty of the licks but because of the sheer volume they need to recall – 27, including variations!

3. "Eruption" by Van Halen from 'Van Halen' (1978) 

The Holy Grail for all aspiring rock guitarists. Learn Eddie Van Halen's "Eruption" and you’ve earned some serious bragging rights. 

But if you really want props, you’ve got to tame the whole volcano, not just the tremolo picking and tapping sections.

2. "All Along the Watchtower" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience from 'Electric Ladyland' (1968)

Jimi Hendrix offers plenty of reason to get excited in his "Watchtower" solo. 

Besides his masterful manipulation of the C# minor pentatonic scale, Hendrix’s wah-drenched octave climb and the double-stops in the latter half bear out his gift for melodic embellishment. 

It’s enough to make any cat growl.

1. "Little Wing" by Stevie Ray Vaughan from 'The Sky Is Crying' (1991)

With little bits of Jimi, Wes and Mayfield, and a whole lotta soul, SRV exhibits exceptional dynamic prowess throughout, making this reverent Hendrix cover his own. 

A seemingly lost art among modern-day guitarists, Vaughan’s R&B-style chord melody is like priceless art. It should be both admired and studied.

At the beginning of every guitarist’s musical journey, you learn a set of open “cowboy” chords and barre chords – a few major, minor and 7th shapes that set you on your way to playing every song in an “easy guitar” songbook.

But where do you go after you’ve exhausted all the possibilities of these stock shapes, and how do you expand on the textures of common progressions to make them sound more interesting?

One sure-fire way to do this is to incorporate voice leading into your playing. Voice leading is a musical concept that dates back to the Baroque era of classical music. It involves treating chords not as block shapes that move indifferently from one to another but as groups of individual, single-note “voices” that weave melodically through a progression.

This usually means moving each voice as little as possible from chord to chord through the use of inversions – chord shapes that employ a note other than the root as the lowest note – and chord extensions – nonchord tones added atop a triad or 7th chord.

Traditionally, the rules of voice leading, established by Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries, were strict and uncompromising. For example, parallel 4ths, 5ths and octaves were not allowed, a prohibition that would make so much great modern music “illegal,” and voices – which were likened to the bass, tenor, alto and soprano parts in a choir – could not be crossed (i.e. moved outside of their register; for example, making a lower voice at a higher pitch than a higher voice).

But today, the only hard and fast rule in voice leading is that it must be melodically interesting without disrupting the flow of the chord progression.

This lesson will explore different methods of achieving this kind of harmonic bliss through voice leading. Since our focus will be on music theory rather than technique, pay attention to the picking and fingering notation in the examples, as we won’t be discussing it.

TYPES OF MOTION

Let’s start by looking at the two different types of melodic motion, the most common of which is stepwise motion, or moving up or down by only one scale degree, either a half step or a whole step.

Stepwise motion is common because the primary objective in voice leading is to have the individual voices move as little as possible, in order to produce smooth chord changes or transitions.

That said, in some situations it may be more melodically interesting to move an interval, or distance, greater than a half step or whole step. It all depends on how the other voices are moving. 

The other type of melodic motion is what’s known as skip-wise, or disjunct motion, for which a melody note moves either up or down by an interval greater than a whole step, such as a minor or major 3rd or a perfect 4th.

Let’s see how these two types of melodic motion work together to form harmonic motion, the way two or more notes move together through a chord progression.

To demonstrate the types of harmonic motion, each part of our first group of examples will use the same stepwise ascending or descending melody in the top voice, while the bottom voice will differ each time.

Ex. 1a utilizes parallel motion, for which two or more voices move in the same direction, up or down, by the same general interval from one chord to the next.

We start with the notes E and C above it, which form the interval of a minor 6th. Then, each voice ascends through the C major scale (C D E F G A B ) from its respective starting point, maintaining the relationship of either a minor or major 6th between it and the other voice, until peaking at the note pair A and F and descending back down to E and C. 

Ex. 1b illustrates similar motion, whereby two voices move in the same direction but by different intervals.

Here, the top voice is following the same melody line as before, and the bottom voice is moving in the same direction, but now by different, wider intervals (skip-wise motion).

Ex. 1c demonstrates contrary motion, in which the two voices move in opposing directions.

Here, the voices are working in direct counterpoint, with the bottom voice moving in the opposite direction from the top voice note to note, which creates an especially interesting sound.

Ex. 1d demonstrates our fourth and final kind of harmonic motion, oblique motion, where one voice remains stationary, or static (stays on the same note), while the other moves up or down.

Here, both voices start on C, and as the top voice proceeds to move, the bottom voice stays planted on C throughout the entire line.

This kind of stationary note, whether reiterated or held, is often referred to as a pedal point, or pedal tone, particularly when the note is in the bottom voice, as it is here.

Effective voice leading incorporates all four of these types of motion, which can be used to craft a sense of melody weaving through a chord progression, rather than just moving the same block chords around.

So how does one break out of the block-chord box? By incorporating...

CHORD INVERSIONS

Chord inversions are essential to good voice leading, as they allow the voices of each chord to move as little as possible to the next chord’s closest available notes.

Let’s compare Examples 2a and 2b.

In Ex. 2a, we have a root-position (root on the bottom) C major triad (C E G) moving to a root-position F major triad (F A C).

Here, all of the voices are jumping, or skipping, up three steps, or scale degrees, resulting in a rather abrupt-sounding transition.

In Ex. 2b, we start on the same root-position C chord, but instead of going to the root-position F, we move minimally to a 2nd-inversion F chord, which puts the 5th of the chord, C, on the bottom (voiced, low to high, C F A).

This results in the root of the C chord staying put as a common tone when we change to the F chord, while the E and G notes move up by only a half step and a whole step, to F and A, respectively.

This is a smoother-sounding transition than in the previous example because the movement is restricted to stepwise motion, with no skips.

Now let’s look at a pair of examples inspired by the rhythm work of two of rock’s greatest guitarists, Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads, who have often used these types of simple triad inversions and voice-leading approaches to create iconic riffs in songs like “Runnin’ With the Devil” and “Crazy Train.”

Ex. 3a shows a progression in the key of A major (A major scale: A B C# D E F# G# ), for which we will navigate a series of descending triad inversions on the D, G and B strings over an open A-string note, which will serve as a pedal tone throughout.

The first triad is A major in 1st inversion, with the 3rd on the bottom (voiced, low to high, C# E A).

Then we drop both the lowest and highest voices down one scale step, to B and G#, respectively, while the middle note, E, remains stationary, as a common tone, thus shifting to an E major chord in 2nd inversion (voiced B E G#).

After that, we have the same motion a whole step and two frets lower, moving from a 1st-inversion G chord (B D G) to a 2nd-inversion D (A D F#).

We then move to a root-position A chord (A C# E), followed by a 1st-inversion D (F# A D) and finally a 2nd-inversion A (E A C#). 

Another common and musically effective approach to employ with voice leading in a progression is to arpeggiate the inversions, picking out the notes individually, which adds rhythmic and melodic interest to chord changes.

Ex. 3b takes the first five chords from the previous progression and breaks up each triad into ringing eighth-note arpeggios, which creates an appealing sound. (Try switching from a thick, distorted tone for Ex. 3a to a clean tone for Ex. 3b, to create a “chorus-to-verse” textural/ timbral contrast, as you would typically find in a rock guitar arrangement.)

In both examples, the descending triads move using a combination of similar and oblique motion. These triad shapes lend themselves well to these particular forms of motion because the notes are packed close together, making it more efficient and convenient to move some voices stepwise while others stay planted. 

Now what if we want to apply contrary motion? We can do this by first introducing some wide intervals and open, or “spread,” voicings into the mix.

Ex. 4 uses both close-position triad voicings, wherein the root, 3rd and 5th of each chord are packed and stacked as closely together as possible, as in all of the previous examples; and open-position voicings, wherein one of the voices is moved up or down an octave, creating a gap and more space within the voicing, specifically an open 5th interval or larger, to build a greater sense of individuality, motion and interaction among the voices without having to move the entire triad up or down in an abrupt manner, as we had done in Ex. 2a. 

We’ll start by playing a root-position F triad (F A C), voiced in close position. From there, we’ll move the F root note down a half step to E, then the A and C notes move up to C and G, respectively. This creates an open-position C triad in 1st inversion (voiced, low to high, E C G).

While the top two voices move up in similar motion together, they both move in contrary motion to the bottom voice, which descends.

The rest of the example proceeds in this manner, alternating between close-and open-position voicings to create good counterpoint (independent voices), while also adding and subtracting voices to build additional melodic tension.

You can also apply these voice-leading concepts to those big, open block chords that we’ve been shunning thus far.

Ex. 5 uses common open chord shapes – specifically C, Am and Dm – in conjunction with inversions to liven up what would be a mundane-sounding progression if played with open block chords throughout.

Start by playing a standard open C shape on the middle four strings (voiced, low to high, C E G C), then transition to E7/B (voiced B D G# D E), with the bottom note descending while the two higher voices ascend, creating contrary motion.

The next bar moves to an open Am shape (A E A C), then to Am7 (A E G C). From there we transition to Dm (D A D F), then invert that chord by dropping the root down to the minor, of “flatted,” 7th, C, to create a 3rd-inversion (7th in the bass) Dm7/C (C A D F).

From there, we arpeggiate an open 1st-inversion G triad voicing (B G D), followed by a G7 chord (D B F), with the flatted 7th chord tone, F, sliding up to the G root.

Within this example, you can see how all of the moving parts kind of “ebb and flow” together to create interesting musical textures and a feeling of tension and release with minimal movement.

Now let’s take things to the next level.

CHORD EXTENSIONS

Chord extensions, also known as tensions, can be used to not only make chords sound more harmonically dense and interesting but also to create additional voice-leading opportunities.

This approach has most famously applied by jazz guitarists such as Joe Pass, Jim Hall and Kenny Burrell who blend melody and accompaniment, “chord-melody style,” but chord extensions can be applied in any stylistic setting.

The most well-known example of this idea in rock can be found in the intro to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” in which Jimmy Page transitions from a root-position Am chord (voiced, low to high, A C E A) to Am-maj9/G# (G# C E B), then a 2nd-inversion C/G (G C E C).

While the middle voices, on the G and B strings, stay on C and E through all three chords, the top voice ascends the first three degrees of the A natural minor scale (A B C) while the bottom voice descends chromatically, from A to G# to G.

Ex. 6 presents a jazz-style take on this “Stairway” idea. Here we’re playing in the key of G minor (G natural minor scale: G A Bb C D Eb F) while incorporating a descending chromatic bassline (G F# F E Eb D) to contrast the scale tones used in the accompaniment and melody.

The first three chords mimic the contrary-motion of the “Stairway” intro, but after the 2nd-inversion Bb/F chord, we slide up to a root-position Em7b5 (voiced, low to high, E Bb D G D), with the melody incorporating the b13 tension, C.

In bar 3, we play Eb9 (voiced Eb G Db F Bb) with a 13 tension in the melody (the high C note again).

In the final bar, we move from D7# 9b13 (D F# C F Bb) to F# dim7 (F# C Eb A). Going back to the first two measures, notice that the bassline descends as the melody ascends, but the middle two voices remain in place on the notes Bb and D.

This trend, of course, changes in the final two bars, where we not only start to move these notes in a descending manner through the remainder of the progression – with the Bb moving down to G and ultimately F#, and D descending chromatically to Db then C – but we also add a fifth voice to increase the harmonic density. 

And yet, for all of the harmonic complexity of this example, the voices never move more than a third. All the motion is kept primarily to either stepwise or static movement.

This is a worthwhile approach to keep in mind when crafting your own voice-leading progressions: Treat each voice as part of an interwoven melodic tapestry.

As one voice remains static, another can move more freely, and/or another voice provides counterpoint, and what have you.

Balance is key when creating your own voice-leading chord progressions. If all of the voices are moving around constantly and without taking melodic consideration into account, it not only defeats the purpose of voice leading – it also makes for a less interesting progression. 

Try using all of the different types of motion presented in this lesson when venturing into voice leading, and be judicious, thoughtful and tasteful when moving your voices.

But above all, be creative and have fun!

***The following originally appeared in the June 2011 issue of Guitar Player***

Certain guitar solos are infused with magic. They may or may or may not be technically challenging, flashy, or otherwise virtuoso, but they have that special something that sets them apart from what came before, and they typically alert guitarists everywhere that their world has forever changed. 

What’s more, those magic solos tend to inspire legions of guitarists to attempt to unlock their technical and tonal mysteries, and permeate the six-string community’s collective unconscious, re-emerging later as direct and indirect influences on individual players’ styles. Somewhat paradoxically, however, there is no consensus on which solos have achieved this iconic status.

When we began working on this story, we came up with a lengthy list of solos to include. Our first task was to set up some guidelines. We decided to limit the list to electric rock solos, along with blues and jazz-rock fusion solos that influenced rock. We also set a limit of one solo per artist.

At that point, there were still many more than 40 solos on the list, so we had to make some hard choices. To start, guitarists who were hugely influential overall, but couldn’t be tied to an ultra-influential solo – such as Tony Iommi and George Harrison – were cut. 

We then had to narrow down our selections to just one for each artist, which was difficult for someone like Eric Clapton, whose entries at that point included “Crossroads,” his cover of Freddie King’s “Hideaway” on the Blues Breakers album, and his historic wah workout on “White Room.” Once the smoke cleared, however, we had reached consensus. 

The solos are organized chronologically – including those that fall within the same year – because we thought it would be instructive to see how they relate to each other historically. 

We hope that you like we came up with and perhaps even discover an overlooked gem or two for yourself...

1. Elmore James “Dust My Broom” (1951)

Jimi Hendrix originally called himself Jimmy James and Maurice James in homage to Elmore, and every bluesman since the ‘50s – particularly slide players – owes something to the King of the Slide Guitar. 

Played in an open-D tuning (D, A, D, F#, A, D, low to high), probably on a Kay flattop or Harmony Sovereign with a D’Armond pickup, the slide hook on this tune, and the solo based on it, reappear countless times throughout blues and rock music.

2. Les Paul “How High the Moon” (1951)

The super-syncopated, slap-back soaked runs, chukka-chukka doublestops with bluesy bends, plucky cascading figures, and idiosyncratic ornamentations in Paul’s two solos helped propel this standard up the charts, and further established Paul as the most creative electric guitar player of his generation. 

It was recorded with his “old Epiphone” – a.k.a. “the Clunker” and “the Breadwinner” – with custom-wound hot pickups and other major modifications.

3. Scotty Moore “That’s Alright, Mama” (1954)

Armed with his Gibson ES-295 through a ‘52 Fender Deluxe, Scotty Moore, bassist Bill Black, and their bud Elvis, had no idea what a firestorm they were about to create with this early single. 

Moore’s simple, to the- point style covered the drummer-less bases quite easily with a fat tone and swinging musicality, giving this rather hillbilly ensemble some dangerous sonic heft.

His break on “That’s Alright, Mama” inspired everyone from George Harrison to Keith Richards to Jimmy Page, as well as Danny Gatton, who never missed an opportunity to throw a Moore homage in the middle of one of his famed rockabilly rave ups. 

Moore’s barking double-stops and approximation of a tic-tac bass line on “Mama” are as hooky as it gets, making this solo one of the most important ever.

4. Eddie Cochran “Sittin’ in the Balcony” (1957)

Slinging a 1955 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins Hollow Body 'G'-branded guitar with a Gibson P-90 in the neck slot, Cochran, with his iconic presence and echo-drenched tones, hugely impacted early rockers – such as Lennon and McCartney, who bonded over Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” upon meeting in 1957 – and innumerable players thereafter, particularly Brian Setzer. 

The twangy solo on Cochran’s first hit, “Sittin’ In the Balcony,” crackles with the influence of his heroes Chet Atkins, Joe Maphis, and Johnny Smith.

5. Chuck Berry “Johnny B. Goode” (1958)

While some people might not consider this song’s intro a “solo,” it might be the most important rock guitar part ever recorded. 

The doublestops essentially usher in the post-Elvis rock era, and the tone and balls of this iconic part would echo in the playing of George Harrison, Keith Richards, Eddie Van Halen, and Angus Young... and that's just one tenth of one percent of the players who have copped these licks. 

Listen to it again. You’ll see.

6. Hank Marvin “Apache” (1960)

A primary influence on nearly every British guitarist of a certain age, Marvin created a dreamy, echo-y sound on this #1 U.K. hit that was achieved by playing his Stratocaster – the first in England – through a Meazzi Echomatic tape delay and a Vox AC30 tube amp. 

Marvin mostly used the bridge pickup, but picked near the neck, and palmed the vibrato arm to impart his trademark twang.

7. Freddie King “Hideaway” (1960)

Freddie (a.k.a. Freddy) King cobbled “Hideaway” out of parts lifted from tunes by Hound Dog Taylor, Jimmy McCracklin, Robert Lockwood Jr., and even Henry Mancini. 

Between the breaks where he recycled bits of “The Walk” and “Peter Gunn,” King played stinging solos that he plucked on a P-90 equipped Les Paul using a plastic thumbpick and metal fingerpick. 

Eric Clapton did his own version of the tune on John Mayall’s 1966 album, Blues Breakers, and the success of “Hideaway” made it a launch pad for a number of other King instrumentals that would further his notoriety as one of the top blues guitarists of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

8. James Burton “Hello Mary Lou” (1961)

Having turned pro as a teenager on the Louisiana Hayride, Burton was a seasoned vet by the time he became the lead player in Ricky Nelson’s band, which was featured regularly on the TV show The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. 

Burton was a great rock and roll player, as evidenced by his Chuck Berry-style solo on “Believe What I Say,” but he also inspired legions of pickers with his explosively twangy lead break on “Hello Mary Lou.” 

Burton’s playing on Merle Haggard’s early ‘60s hits like “Mama Tried” and “Swingin’ Doors,” inspired the late, great Roy Nichols, who said, “I learned a lot from Burton, and I copied some of his licks, but I couldn’t copy him to a ‘T’.”

9. Jeff Beck “Over Under Sideways Down” (1966)

Along with the Rolling Stones, no band inspired more hard-edged guitar-wielding maniacs than the Yardbirds. Beck’s playing on their classic garage rock anthem is, like much of his playing at this time, inspired by the groovy sounds of the sitar. 

Equal parts spacey modal madness and meth-infused pentatonic fury, it still ranks as some of Beck’s most inspired playing, and that says a lot. 

And not only was Beck’s otherworldly playing inspirational to a generation of guitarists, but his punky stage demeanor and nasty sonic streak (a ‘54 Fender Esquire into a Tone Bender fuzz and AC30), served notice to everyone that a new sheriff was in town, and he was kicking ass.

10. Albert King “Born Under a Bad Sign” (1967)

If Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix lift your licks lock, stock, and barrel, your influence has been spread very far and very wide. In fact, one can make the case that Albert King was the most influential King, just by virtue of the not-so-subtle tributes by his admirers. 

King Albert’s authoritative bends and economical phrasing are required study for anyone who wants to play blues-rock guitar. On this cut, the Velvet Bulldozer lives up to his nickname, making his Gibson Flying V moan, scream, and move mountains with sweeping bends and a stinging tone that delivers all of the nuances in his playing. 

It also proves that, even though SRV and Clapton could “do” Albert, they were never really even close. 

11. Eric Clapton “Crossroads” (1968)

This one is a giant among giants. Little did Slowhand know, after he walked off the Winterland stage in San Francisco, he had created a template setting the standard for expressive, lyrical, howling blues-rock guitar. 

Armed with a ‘64 Gibson ES-335 and a couple of non-master volume 100-watt Marshall stacks, Clapton’s first break is a textbook example of how to build a solo’s intensity, while the second manages to kick it up one more notch for maximum climax. 

Not a duff note in the bunch, impeccably phrased, and with a vibrato that’s as classy as they come, Clapton could have never played another note and he’d still be one of the most influential players ever. 

12. Jimi Hendrix “All Along the Watchtower” (1968)

One can only guess what sort of “light bulb” moment Jimi experienced when he first heard this tune from Bob Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding. Maybe it was the biblical references in the lyrics, or the great melody – or perhaps just the wide-open space for improvising afforded by the four-chord progression. 

Whatever it was, the version that appeared on Hendrix’ Electric Ladyland album gave rise to one of Jimi’s most memorable solo outings. Playing soulfully and inventively using a wah and fuzz, Hendrix reinvented “All Along the Watchtower” to such a degree that it’s sometimes easy to forget who actually wrote the tune!

13. Peter Green “Black Magic Woman” (1968)

B.B. King once said of Green, “He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats.” After establishing himself as a masterful blues stylist in John Mayall’s band, Green quickly evolved both as a player and a songwriter with Fleetwood Mac. 

On his D minor tour-de-force “Black Magic Woman,” Green pulls off an incredibly captivating melody, and his beautiful phrasing and soulful bending on a Les Paul with “magnetically out of phase” pickups was pure gold. 

Carlos Santana made the song a huge hit on Abraxas, and Green was also influential on Irish blues rocker Gary Moore, who would own – and eventually sell – Green’s famous Gibson. 

14. Robert Fripp “21st Century Schizoid Man” (1969)

Fripp’s serpentine solo on this alarmingly virtuosic track combines a supersaturated sustained tone with atypical intervallic movement, non-bluesy bends and trills, and note choices and phrasing that had more in common with Coltrane than Clapton. 

Playing a three-pickup ‘59 Les Paul Custom through a Marshall stack and probably either a Burns Buzzaround or a Colorsound Tone Bender, he recorded the seminal progressive rock solo.

15. Jimmy Page “Heartbreaker” (1969)

Selecting the most influential Page solo led to a heated debate. 

But the squawking tone of a ‘58 Les Paul into a Marshall SLP 1969 Super Lead, maniacal cluster picking, wicked hammer-ons and pull-offs, and behind-the-nut G-string bending in the first solo on “Heartbreaker” – not to mention the smoking second solo – explain why everyone from Brian May to Steve Vai to Steve Morse have hailed it as a definitive guitar solo.

16. B.B. King “The Thrill is Gone” (1969)

With a tone sweeter and thicker than molasses, B.B. King graced this song with one of his most emotive blues solos of all time. King knew what the tune called for in context of the highly produced album Completely Well (his first with strings), and it wasn’t about showboating. 

Far from it, judging by the way he grooves so succulently behind the beat. Besides being a big hit for B.B., “The Thrill is Gone” showed guitarists the power of playing slow and cool. 

In an era when Johnny Winter was introducing blues-rock shredding, B.B. King’s huge vibrato and deep soul defined what “playing from the heart” was all about. 

17. Leslie West “Mississippi Queen” (1970)

Leslie West’s massive and massively influential tone on Climbing! – which included “Mississippi Queen” – was created by playing through a Sunn Coliseum P.A. head and four 4x12 speaker cabinets. 

“The head had four microphone inputs and a master volume control, huge transformers and gigantic KT88 tubes, and the cabinets were loaded with Eminence speakers, which never hurt your ears, even with the treble all the way up,” West told GP in 2010. 

He was playing Gibson Les Paul Juniors at the time, and used a single-cutaway 1956 Jr. with a single P-90, strung with La Bella Electric Guitar strings (with a .010 banjo string for the high E and the other strings moved down one to create a light-gauge set) on the track. 

The song reached #21 on the Billboard charts, assuring that West’s signature sound was heard across the country and around the world.

18. Duane Allman “Statesboro Blues” (1971)

By 1970 Duane Allman and Dickey Betts had forged one of the most iconic guitar sounds of all time with their harmonized melodies on songs like “Revival” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” 

But as far as slide players went, few at the time got more acclaim than Duane himself, after the 1971 release of The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East. Duane’s slick phrasing and fat, singing tone on the opening track of the double live album was inspired by hearing Taj Mahal’s rendition of the song with Jesse Ed Davis on slide. 

Sonny Landreth, who remembers seeing the Allman Brothers at the time, recalls: “That huge tone that Duane got when he played slide on a Les Paul through a Marshall was a real game changer. I don’t remember anyone else who had a sound like that back then.”

19. John McLaughlin “Meeting of the Spirits” (1971)

Although he had already done revolutionary work with Tony Williams’ Lifetime, Miles Davis, and as a solo artist, McLaughlin’s combination of molten Gibson-through-cranked-Marshall distortion, impossibly fast and complex yet ultra-precise picking, and unique phrasing on The Inner Mounting Flame shattered all existing concepts of “electric guitarist” and lit the fuse of fusion.

20. Ritchie Blackmore “Highway Star” (1972)

Actually a harmonized pair of solos, the tasty bends, rapid-fire triplets, and whammy manipulations on this Strat-into-a-Marshall-amp (via a reel-to-reel tape recorder preamp) solo make it one of Blackmore’s most memorable.

The Deep Purple guitarist’s influence on legions of rock and metal shedders from Morse to Malmsteen to Mustaine is undisputable.

21. Billy Gibbons “La Grange” (1973) 

Gibbons made his mark on this classic shuffle with two solos. 

The first, done on a ‘55 Strat, enters screaming with that classic rear pickup Fender bite, before Gibbons flips to the front pickup for a swinging double-stop workout and some liquid pentatonic runs delivered with his impeccable sense of time and swing. 

But it’s the track’s second solo that the guitarist is most famous for, and the one that every hard rock player would study, due to Gibbons’ insane pinch harmonics. With his “Pearly Gates” ‘59 Les Paul, the Reverend squawks, grunts, and chokes out so many pinch harmonics that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so damm bad ass. 

22. Brian May “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975) 

Brian May’s touch, tone, and orchestral instincts have proven impossible to imitate, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. 

His majestic lines on this classic are quintessential May, with precise picking, impeccable phrasing, and a bold, loud sound. 

The solo’s placement in the mix was influential, informing how bands such as Boston and Styx featured their solos. You’ve got to assume Dr. May’s harmonized lines at the end of the song got Tom Scholz’s attention as well.

23. Larry Carlton “Kid Charlemagne” (1976)

Carlton was already a session legend known for his smooth-as-silk lines that were reminiscent of Wes, Pass, and Trane when he cut this Steely track. 

But when Mr. 335 combined a rock dude’s tone with a jazzer’s harmonic sensibilities, he created the standard by which every jazz rocker would be judged. 

Ask Steve Lukather, Robben Ford, or Mike Stern what impact this solo had on them. 

Alright then.

24. Carlos Santana “Europa (Earth’s Cry, Heaven’s Smile)” (1976)

Santana masterfully caresses the tune’s main melody with his trademark singing sustain and thick tone, never quite giving up the goods until the outro solo where he lets it all hang out in an outpouring of soulful yet wicked playing. 

He displays a fluid, tactile control at all times, and his tone is more open-sounding and less compressed than in recent years. 

And when he kicks the wah on, look out – he ratchets up the intensity tenfold, just when you think it can’t go any higher. Simply put, “Europa” is a study in pace, melodicism, and space – as well as good, old fashion burning!

25. Al Di Meola “Race with Devil on Spanish Highway” (1977)

Sure, there were people who could play fast before Di Meola, but nobody had made it such a central part of their deal before Big Al came along. 

Di Meola’s picking ability coupled with his sick, self-described “mutola” technique raised the bar for audacious shred and players interested in pushing the limits of picking. 

Far from being a pattern-minded monotone shredder, Di Meola’s Latin influences and his compositional sense have always made his displays of virtuosity supremely musical. 

And for all of the shred haters, Di Meola proved that the emotional impact of many notes is just as valid as a few well-placed ones. 

26. Eddie Van Halen “Eruption” (1978)

What can you say about this cadenza from hell? Cut in 1978, this has to be one of the most influential pieces of guitar playing ever. 

EVH took a Strat with a humbucker, an MXR Phase 90, and a plexi Marshall, and then played some supercharged Clapton licks that boggled just about every 6-stringer’s mind in the world. 

It was Van Halen’s two-handed tapping that truly grabbed everyone’s attention, however, and made this the most recognizable solo of the next two decades. “Eruption” made an impact on millions of rock dudes and seemingly every kid who set foot inside a Guitar Center.

27. Allan Holdsworth “In the Dead of Night” (1978)

As Bill Bruford put it, this solo was, “94 seconds of liquid passion married to a blinding technical facility that was to go down in the annals of rock guitar history. 

"All the hallmarks of his brilliant playing were there in this solo: poise, pace, melody, the Slonimsky interval jumps, the whammy bar, and all over a killer groove.”

28. Mark Knopfler “Sultans of Swing” (1978) 

When Mark Knopfler released this fingerpicked two-pickup masterpiece, he showed guitarists that you don’t need distortion or a plectrum to rock. 

With a Strat on the bridge and middle pickups, a Fender Twin Reverb and a Roland JC-120, Knopfler played two deft, bouncy solos that referenced Chet Atkins with snappy popped notes, crying bends, and clever arpeggios. 

Along the way he influenced just about every clean tone for the next 20 years. When people talk about an “out of phase” Strat tone, they’re talking about this tune.

29. Michael Schenker “Rock Bottom” (1979)

The 1970s was a great time for live records, with classics from Frampton, Lizzy, and Ted Nugent, but one of the sweetest solos to grace a double LP came from UFO’s Michael Schenker. 

The extended break on this tune has everything great about Schenker: melody, dynamics, tone for days, and burning. 

This lead would fascinate rockers all over the world, including George Lynch, Vinnie Moore, Akira Takahashi, and Kirk Hammett.

30. David Gilmour “Comfortably Numb” (1979)

Few solos can match the vibe of Gilmour’s work on this iconic piece. 

Playing a ‘79 black Stratocaster with a ‘62 neck and DiMarzios through Hiwatts and Yamaha RA-200 rotating speaker cabinets, Gilmour transformed what are essentially blues licks into a signature statement that affected the molecules in myriad musical minds. 

This is arguably his crowning achievement as a soloist.

31. Angus Young “You Shook Me All Night Long” (1980)

It serves to reason that a song that is all about getting it on should have a solo that is sexy, right? 

Damn straight. 

Young’s turn on this global hit finds him harnessing his kinetic blues tendencies into a steamy, attitude-laden solo that is actually kind of funky. 

His tasteful major pentatonic flavorings as well as his gorgeous tone – thanks to a wound up old Marshall and a Gibson SG – are the icing on the cake of his impeccable groove, intonation, and phrasing.

32. Randy Rhoads “Crazy Train” (1980)

After Van Halen, it wasn’t easy for an L.A. rocker to make a mark, but Randall Rhoads did so in a big way on his debut with Ozzy. 

Rhoads took what he had gleaned from Mick Ronson, Gary Moore, and Bach, and synthesized it into this metal tour de force. 

He wasn’t the first guy to blend classical music and rock, but he was absolutely the gateway drug for players like Zakk Wylde and Tom Morello.

33. Stevie Ray Vaughan “Pride and Joy” (1983)

The second cut on SRV’s debut album, Texas Flood, “Pride and Joy” blasted onto the airwaves courtesy of a great melody, catchy lyrics, and a gamechanging solo in which Vaughan threw down a barrage of killer licks with a gargantuan tone from his Fender/Dumble rig. 

SRV’s deft songwriting and his Albert King/Hendrix-influenced style succeeded in making what was fundamentally a classic “tay-hass” shuffle into a huge AOR hit that every classic rocker is expected to cover in perpetuity. 

Bottom line is, after SRV came along, anyone who thought they could play blues with fire and passion got a schoolin’ the size of Texas.

34. Yngwie Malmsteen “Black Star” (1984)

Mike Varney’s rep as a finder of great guitarists was already solid when he wrote about a kid from Sweden with a funny name in 1983. 

Many players’ first exposure to Malmsteen was on this shred fest. With his blinding speed, dazzling classical arpeggios, gorgeous Strat-into-Marshall tone, and larger than life vibrato, he didn’t raise the bar for rock technique – he obliterated it. 

Yngwie changed the game forever with this one, just ask any rocker who has swept an arpeggio since then.

35. George Lynch “The Hunter” (1985)

Dokken's George Lynch has inspired countless rock and metal players for nearly 30 years with his perfect blend of structured melodicism and off-the-rails fury – all in the space of a 16-bar solo. 

This solo is a perfect example, as he eases into it with memorable, understated melodic motifs that are helped along with some thick-ass tone and sick vibrato. 

Halfway through, however, Lynch begins to turn up the jets. Alternate picking, sweep picking, and legato playing become one within a single winding phrase, giving him a sound and style that are difficult to ape. 

However, Lynch did show the way for shred-obsessed guitarists on how to structure a meaningful statement in the middle of a tune and leave an everlasting mark. In fact, his solos are the only thing that don’t sound dated about Dokken.

36. Kirk Hammett “Master of Puppets” (1986)

Kirk Hammett’s influences include his teacher Joe Satriani, Michael Schenker, and Thin Lizzy. And nowhere are those influences more prominent than on this tune. 

Hammett’s whammy bar work and speed picking would inspire countless kids to notch their mids, cram their theory, and play blazing solos over chugging grooves.

37. Joe Satriani “Always with Me, Always with You” (1987)

Satriani is obviously known as a master technician, but it’s his melodic side that has left the biggest imprint on guitardom. 

This sweet ballad showcases Satch’s singing tone, skillful ornamentation, and ability to blend the tasty with the jaw dropping. 

The reach of this solo is apparent in hundreds of instrumental guitar records, country ballads, movie soundtracks, and car commercials.

38. Kurt Cobain “Come As You Are” (1991)

Although he took about as many solos and Johnny Ramone, the late Nirvana guitar anti-hero played a memorable one in this song from 1991. 

Presumably using a Boss DS-1 for dirt and an Electro-Harmonix Small Clone chorus for the warbly modulation, Cobain simply quoted the vocal melody in a snotty, vibey way, and the kids went crazy. 

Suddenly, young players – many with a sanctimonious disdain for ‘80s-style wanking – were taking a break from strumming through songs and trying their hands at playing single-note lines.

39. Zakk Wylde “No More Tears” (1991)

Logic dictates that Zakk Wylde was doomed to failure when he got the gig with Ozzy. 

A blond kid with a Les Paul? Really? 

But then people got a taste of his huge tone, squealing harmonics, and rapid-fire pentatonics and a new star was born. 

On this tune Zakk channeled Rhoads, Billy Gibbons, and Frank Marino into a solo that was emblematic of the new generation of metalheads.

40. Dimebag Darrell “The Great Southern Trendkill” (1996)

The post-Van Halen, post-Randy Rhoads world was in dire need of a champion when Darrell Abbott came on the scene. 

He took the styles of those guys, mixed in some Ace Frehley, some Lynyrd Skynyrd, and a heapin’ helpin’ of moonshine and created the ass-kicking solo here. 

Dime made it cool to love Holdsworth, EVH, and Billy Gibbons all in the same song.

Seventeen songs. For most artists, that would hardly amount to a substantial career. For Randy Rhoads, however, the 17 songs he tracked during his brief tenure as Ozzy Osbourne’s lead guitarist and co-writer on the albums Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman were more than enough to establish him as one of the truly outstanding rock guitarists of his generation. 

Rhoads came from a musical family and, while in his late teens, taught guitar in his mom’s music store, Musonia, by day, then rocked the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles by night with local heroes Quiet Riot.

The group recorded two commercially stylized albums that were released in Japan in the late ’70s, but the band had trouble landing a record deal stateside. When Rhoads was offered the Osbourne gig in September 1979 (he allegedly blew the former Black Sabbath singer’s mind with some warm-up scales), he jumped.

What followed has become the stuff of legend. With Rhoads as his six-stringed gunslinger, Ozzy began one of the most successful solo runs in rock history, reigniting his career and helping to bring heavy metal into the mainstream.

Cuts like “Crazy Train,” “Mr. Crowley,” “Over the Mountain” and “Flying High Again” quickly became staples of rock radio, owing to their perfect combination of memorable riffs, anthemic choruses, mystic imagery and Rhoads’ classically influenced guitar virtuosity. 

Onstage, Rhoads excited crowds with his unparalleled skill and theatrical stage presence, looking like a Spiders from Mars-era Mick Ronson while wielding a 1974 Alpine White Gibson Les Paul Custom, a custom-made Karl Sandoval black-with-white-polka dots Flying-V or a white prototype Jackson Concorde.

Guitar Player readers voted him “Best New Talent” in a 1981 year-end poll, and his unaccompanied live solos (one of which would be posthumously released on the 1990 live album Tribute) were a highlight of Osbourne’s concerts. 

Still, by 1982 Rhoads had allegedly become tired of the rock and roll lifestyle and was planning to attend college to study classical guitar full time.

Sadly, on March 19, 1982, he was killed during a tour stop in Leesburg, Florida, when the small commuter airplane he was riding in crashed into Osbourne’s tour bus. He was only 25. 

Rhoads’ legend and influence grew exponentially after his death. He is regularly included in “greatest guitarists” lists, has had several signature model guitars released posthumously in his honor by Jackson and Gibson, and is regularly cited as a favorite by new generations of prominent players.

In 2021, Rhoads was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello has called him “the Robert Johnson of heavy metal,” a reference to the influence of his too-brief catalog and life.

Let’s commemorate the 40th anniversary of his untimely passing with a deep dive into his genre-defining style. 

Rhoads was a master of creating memorable riffs, and Ex. 1 is loosely based on his most recognizable one: the driving F# Aeolian motif to “Crazy Train.”

Play it with a lot of gain (Rhoads was partial to Marshall 100-watt Super Leads and an MXR Distortion pedal) and a light palm mute on the single notes.

To kick it up a notch, try articulating the downstrokes on the 5th string with a pinch harmonic, as indicated by the abbreviation P.H., and play the E5 and A5 power chords with a 1st-finger barre, to keep your hand in 2nd position. 

Ex. 2 draws its inspiration from the clever opening guitar salvo of “Steal Away (The Night),” which is also built around double-stops on the D and G strings that alternate against single notes on the low E.

To help dial in the original lick, try sequencing the fingering down from 7th to 3rd position and end on an F# instead of F. 

Demonstrating another clever use of double-stops, Ex. 3 harkens back to the opening riff of “I Don’t Know” and the verses to “Crazy Train,” where Rhoads juxtaposes syncopated chord stabs against a palm-muted 16th-note “chug” on the open A string.

To avoid the monotony of repetition, he would often end his phrases with varying fills or turnarounds, much as I’ve shown here in the first and second endings. 

Pay attention to the instrumental sections of “Over the Mountain” and notice how Rhoads seamlessly works a double-tracked baroque-like 16th-note melody and funky R&B double-stops into the same song, then play Ex. 4, which garners its mojo from the original track.

The example is in the key of D minor, but on the recording Rhoads tunes down a half step and plays similar phrases in C# minor and G# minor positions. 

Years of gigging with Quiet Riot in Los Angeles rock clubs like the Starwood and the KROQ Cabaret helped Rhoads develop exceptional stage presence, and his pyrotechnically inclined lead playing excited and inspired fans.

The following examples detail some cool Randy-isms that he would throw into both songs and his unaccompanied solo spot.

Ex. 5 takes a pedestrian pull-off move on the 1st string of an A minor pentatonic scale to the next level.

While using your fretting hand to perform the C-to-A trill (rapid-fire alternating hammer-ons and pull-offs), reach over to the guitar’s headstock with your pick hand and push down on the 1st string behind the nut, raising the pitch of both notes a half-step.

Not only does this fretboard flex sound cool, it’s visually striking as well.  

Engaging another cool pull-off ploy, variations of the rapid-fire sextuplets shown in Ex. 6 can be heard in “Crazy Train,” “Over the Mountain” and Rhoads’ extended solo cadenza on the live version of “Suicide Solution.”

When soloing, Randy often liked to rely on melodically sequenced motifs, several of which are featured throughout Ex. 7.

It starts with a repeating “fives-over-fours” blues lick on a D minor pentatonic shape, descends down a four-note sequence with an added b5 (Ab) and 6 (B), ascends back up a sextuplet pentatonic pattern then chromatically sequences a three-note double pull-off maneuver down the 1st string.

Listen to any Rhoads solo and you’re likely to hear at least one of these devices in action.

Randy’s mom, Delores, had a degree in music from UCLA and taught her son the basics of music theory on piano, encouraging his lifelong fascination with classical music.

While on tour, he would often seek out a classical guitar structor from the local college for a private lesson. As a result, many of Rhoads’ solos are thoughtfully structured and composed in a manner that drew inspiration from baroque music in general and J.S. Bach in particular.

Ex. 8 is templated on Rhoads’ extended lead break in the song “Mr. Crowley,” which follows a cycle-of-4ths/5ths progression in a minor key – D minor for the original, E minor for the example shown here.

Ours starts with repetitive sextuplet hammer-ons arpeggiating a root-position E minor chord in the first bar and a second-inversion A minor chord in the next.

Bar 3 sequences down a D major scale (D, E, F#, G, A, B, C# ) and is followed in bar 4 by an ascending G7 arpeggio (G, B, D, F).

A similar pattern happens in bars 5 and 6, this time with a C Lydian scale (C, D, E, F#, G, A, B) leading into an F#m7b5 arpeggio (F#, A, C, E).

Bars 7 and 8 create strong musical tension via a trilled ascending B major arpeggio (B, D#, F#) followed by a descending diminished-seven sequence that collectively outline a B7b9 chord (B, D#, F#, A, C) that resolves firmly to the Em tonic in bar 9.  

Rhoads’ burgeoning interest in solo classical guitar can also be heard on the intro to “Diary of a Madman” and the solo instrumental piece composed for his mother, “Dee,” both of which inspired our final tribute, Ex. 9.

Although it is based on an A major key center overall, there’s a momentary mutation to the parallel A minor tonality in bars 2 and 3.

Bar 4 returns to A major, which is then followed by the V7/ii - ii - V7 progression in bars 5-8 (F#7 - Bm - E7).

The ii - iii - IV climb in bar 9 (Bm - C#m - D) is a deceptive move that ultimately resolves to a I - iv - I minor plagal cadence (A - Dm - A) in bars 10–12.

Play this passage fingerstyle with a free-flowing expressive tempo to tune into Randy’s unique approach to integrating hard rock and classical styles.

Randy Rhoads’ collaboration with Ozzy Osbourne was brief, but it forever changed the face of rock guitar and heavy metal music.

Perhaps their impact is best summed up by Delores Rhoads, who said, “[Randy] felt he changed a great deal with Ozzy. They worked so well together because Ozzy knew what he wanted but he didn’t know the music theory basics that Randy did.

“They encouraged and helped each other.”

On his sixth studio album, 2020 Visions, maverick guitarist Stephen Dale Petit has created a blues record unlike any other.

For one thing, it’s a concept record. For another, it presents a dystopian view of society, America in particular, with themes of factionalism, tribalism and alienation, all through the lens of someone gazing into the not-too-distant future.

In this case, that someone is an expat (Petit moved to England from California in the mid ’80s) who penned much of the material back in 2017 but is only now seeing his album – and a good many of his prescient predictions – become a reality.

 “I guess it’s pre-dystopian, to make up my own term,” Petit says in a distinct British accent.

“Having not lived in America for so long, I’m kind of imagining what it must be like for a parent who arrives home after a trip. You walk into the house and the kids are going crazy, the rooms are all torn apart, and you go, ‘What have you done to the place?’ The son says, ‘She did it,’ and the daughter says, ‘He did it.’

“That’s my feeling about the polarization in America and how savage and how indoctrinated ideologically everything seems to be.”

Petit traveled to Nashville and cut 2020 Visions with producer Vance Powell back in 2017, and if various, unforeseen circumstances had not upended his plans, he would have released the album the following year.

A cancer diagnosis – Stage 4, as it turned out – threw his world into a tailspin, and for much of 2018 he had to curtail most professional activities while dealing with treatment.

“It was a chemo and radiation regime every day for two months,” he says. “Brutal stuff. I’m all clear now, thank goodness, but it takes a while for you to get back up to speed.

“I did a couple of shows during that time, and it was strange, because I experienced this sort of artificial energy while performing, almost like a weird caffeine kick or something. But that drops off and your body’s completely reeling. Basically, it put me out of action for a good year.”

Once his doctors gave him the go-ahead to proceed with his normal life and career, Petit was set to release the album in late March of 2020 when the COVID pandemic threw a wrench into that idea.

A tour to support the album was nixed, and while he waited for lockdown to be lifted, he decided to release the record digitally.

“We finally got physical copies out in the fall of 2020, once brick-and-mortar stores began to open up again,” he explains.

“The whole thing was this crazy double-whammy. First I had my own health issues to sort out, and then this global pandemic knocked out the rest of the world. In a way, the second thing wasn’t so hard on me because of what I’d just gone through, but it was a really insane time.”

He laughs. “Is this where I say, ‘All’s well that ends well?’”

Another thing that distinguishes 2020 Visions from most other blues albums is its sound, a unique and revolutionary sonic approach that owes as much to art rock, emo, punk, metal and even jam bands as it does to traditional blues.

On the nine-minute space-age epic “The Fall of America,” Petit exorcises demons as he explores every possible shattering cry and wail his guitar can emit.

In an equally virtuoso performance on another extended track, “Zombie Train,” he goes for broke, firing off supersonic, freak-out solos and shards of psychedelic lines while leading his ace band – bassist Sophie Lord and drummer Jack Greenwood – on a slinky, cosmic and soul-drenched jam journey.

“Sputnik Days,” co-written with his legendary friend (and quasi-mentor) Mick Taylor, is a sublime yet exhilarating dream that offers Petit a showcase for celebrating the lyrical power of bent notes and harmonics.

And those are just some of the highlights. There’s also incendiary re-workings of classics like “Steppin’ Out” and “Long Tall Shorty,” on which the guitarist goes full throttle, summoning the spirits of blues greats while fearlessly claiming the songs as his own.

“Blues is the essence of what I do, but I don’t let it dictate where I can go,” Petit notes. “I just let my instinct guide me. Otherwise, I’m just re-creating what’s been done before, and what’s the point of that?

“It’s like people doing ‘Caldonia,’ which is a great song that’s been a blues standard for 50 years. On any given day, there’s a hundred bands playing it, and I think, Why would they do that, especially if they’re not going to do something new with it?

“I try to take various essences, flavors, colors and styles, but I want to bring them into the present. I want to sound like today. There’s enough people stuck in yesterday, and that’s just not for me.”

As a teenager in California, you hung out with some early metal stars of the day, including Randy Rhoads and George Lynch. Were you much of a shredder?

Not really, no. I more or less decided that I would never develop those kinds of chops. For a good while, I sat on my parents’ sofa, playing my guitar and pondering.

I’d just seen B.B. King – I even got a chance to meet him. There was something about the blues that had touched me deeply, because it’s a cry of the soul. It felt so authentic, especially when compared to the phoniness that was around at the time.

I considered all that stuff out of L.A. contaminated by the ethos of Hollywood, and I didn’t want to be a part of it. On top of that, George Lynch tried to steal my girlfriend.

Oh, well, that would sure turn you off metal.

[laughs] It didn’t help. But yeah, prior to that, I was playing lots of rock covers like everybody else – “Rocky Mountain Way” and stuff like that.

After the revelation of seeing B.B. King, how did you do your homework and absorb the blues?

It actually started with Chuck Berry. My parents listened to the Beatles and the Stones, who both name-checked Chuck. They covered him and talked about the debt they owed him. They celebrated him.

I went out and bought Chuck Berry Is on Top, which was on Chess Records, and from there I started checking out other people on the label: Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter. It happened really quickly.

I imagine you felt like an outlier in L.A. Everybody was getting into the Sunset Strip shred-metal scene while you’re digging into older stuff.

I was very much out of anybody else’s orbit. I just didn’t participate in their scene. But it was a conscious decision. At first I felt a bit awkward, but the magnetic pull of the blues was too strong.

Now, you did a bit of reverse engineering. You went to the U.K. because you were inspired by their blues players, but those were the same people who revered American blues artists.

You’re absolutely right. I was getting the echo of the echo, so to speak. But the way that it was marketed, whether it was Cream or Hendrix or even the Beatles, it was all about appealing to youth. I was young – a generation out, perhaps, but I was still a youth.

How do I put this? I just thought of England and Europe as angular, whereas America was square. There was something coming out of England that felt like a way in. To me, a player like Mick Taylor was a revelation in the beginning, more than even somebody like Peter Green. Hendrix was immediate.

I was hearing all this stuff long after it was released by listening to friends’ older brothers’ records. It all just started to percolate and simmer.

But yeah, I decided to go to England because I just wasn’t thrilled with what I was getting in America.

You became friends with Mick Taylor. How did you two meet?

I went to a show of his, and then it turned out that I knew his manager. Also, I had spoken to somebody in a restaurant adjoining the club who turned out to be his best friend. She had a dog named Roxie, and my dog was named Roxie.

The stars aligned, basically. It was fate. Mick and I met up and hit it off. He was such an important player to me in terms of understanding overbends. We all started doing two-and two-and-a-half-step overbends from hearing Crusade [by John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, 1967], specifically the song “Oh, Pretty Woman.”

Mick was 17 at the time, and I started listening to it when I was 17. I was like, Oh this guy did this at my age. Incredible!

Did Mick take you under his wing?

He did. I think he was expecting a Stones freak initially, so he was pleasantly surprised that my interest was more in the blues stuff and the John Mayall records. He toured with me as a special guest, and I think he’s on three of my albums.

The way “The Fall of America” came about is interesting: Mick was living with me. I’d just come back from a trip to L.A., where I’d seen the Kills. The band’s guitar player, Jamie Hince, is fond of hooking the thumb over the neck to make chords – an old bluesman’s trick. I thought, Wow, yeah, I should try some more of that.

I started to noodle around, and Mick came into the room; actually, he was sort of lingering in the doorway while going to make some tea or whatever. He would listen to me sometimes, but he wouldn’t say anything.

So this one time he was listening, and I knew he was there. I was playing around with this riff, and finally he said, “That’s so powerful. It’s really intense and hypnotic.” Then he left to go into another room but not before saying, “It needs to go to E.” And that’s why it goes to an E at the end.

I was inspired by seeing the Kills, but Mick, to his credit, knew not to interrupt me till the right time. He could sense something was being born.

You also became friends with Eric Clapton. That must be pretty remarkable.

Oh yeah. We met through mutual friends. In the beginning, it was like a dream coming true, and you can’t quite believe it – you’re hanging with one of your heroes.

Then it changes and you’re dealing with a human being, and through that process, when you’re actually becoming friends, it goes through phases and you get closer and closer. All of that stuff happened.

Any preconceived notions I had of what he was like went out the window pretty early. He was nothing like what I expected.

Do you two sit down and play together?

Oh, no. No, no, that’s not happened, at least not yet.

He’s commented on your playing and has been quite complimentary.

Yeah, that’s brilliant, isn’t it? It’s mind-blowing, really. You hope for it, but you tell yourself not to expect it.

What kind of impact did Eric have on your playing?

Oh, a lot. [laughs] In my journey, I got my head around overbends, so I went back to the people who started it. Albert King did overbends left, right and center. I would listen to him, but I couldn’t figure him out. This was all before YouTube. I had to do it by ear.

Now, if you overbend by two steps, the note has a different tone than if you just fret honestly on the neck. It’s not dishonest – it’s just got a whole different thing. The tone is different; the timbre of the way the string vibrates is different.

With Eric, I heard the solo he did on Cream’s “I’m So Glad,” and he’s doing different things. I was knocked out.

That and the “Steppin’ Out” solo – I was literally speechless. I know that’s an overused figure of speech, but that’s how I felt. My whole foundation was rocked. Just when I thought I might be getting somewhere with the guitar, I heard this and thought, Holy shit!

You’ve put out some terrific albums, but 2020 Visions feels like a breakthrough. The electric guitar sound is wild, trippy and dramatic, and it’s not typical of how most blues guitarists sound. And you have more than one sound.

I’ve spent years thinking and working on this. To me, tone and textures are every bit as important as what you’re playing. I don’t want to sound like anybody else, and I don’t understand why other people would want to.

What I’m seeking is some sort of a sonic texture that’s unique. It’s not quirky or weird, like it’s a novelty or gimmick; rather, it’s related to what the music is addressing. It’s a style. It’s a sonic style as opposed to a musical style.

It’s easy to say, “I want to sound unique.” It’s quite another thing to pull it off.

It is. One big thing that’s helped me was getting an original Marshall JTM45. It’s part of the toolbox that enables me to do this. I hate to say that, because the amp was stupidly expensive.

I didn’t want it to be true, but the way those amps were designed with the negative-feedback loop, it stacks harmony when you’re sustaining a note. It’s more of a musical instrument than just an amp.

Let’s talk about some of the songs on the album. The title track is blues, but it’s got a very pronounced punk rock side to it.

Sure, sure. I mean, I’m playing blues licks, no doubt, but it’s got another thing. You know, I never really used to like Iggy Pop until I read that he went to Chicago and tried to be a blues guy for, like, six months. Then I kind of understood.

The guitars on the song are trashy and reckless. It’s like they collide off each other.

As well they should. The guitars on the chorus are just driving and out of control, but there’s the call-and-answer guitar to the vocal. It’s got a bluesier, warmer sound. But I’m purposely trying to smear notes, bitter to sweet.

You’re very rough with your guitar on “The Fall of America.” Every riff, power chord and solo is brutal. It’s not festival-tent blues.

It’s designed not to be that at all. There are people who can do that beautifully and brilliantly, and my hat is off to them. It’s just something that doesn’t interest me. I guess I take my sensibilities from the British musicians of the ’60s and ’70s. They were making new art.

That sounds pretentious, but they weren’t just making an archive of what was happening in the room. They were using all the tools of technology to create something unique in that moment, and it was as far from field recordings as you could get.

At nine minutes long, the song is epic. For much of it, it seems like you’re having fun exploring tones.

Oh, I am, I am! Yeah, we went on for a bit, but hey, America’s a big country. [laughs] The subject of what’s going on is a big subject. I’d never written a nine-minute song before, but it went where it wanted.

“Roxie’s Song” is altogether different. It’s a tight, beautifully constructed instrumental.

Yes, Roxie was my miniature schnauzer, and she died. With this record, there was a musical concept. I wanted it to be an honorific homage to the bent note on the guitar.

“Roxie’s Song” has a really long bend, which is the sad part. Obviously, I was gutted that my dog was dead, and I was missing her like nothing else.

But what about the happy times? So there are middle bits where it’s sort of like in summer grass and how she had to hop around to be seen. There are fun bits and moments of exhilaration, like how you play chase with your dog, or how they go crazy when you walk in the door.

How did you and Mick Taylor collaborate on writing “Sputnik Days”?

That was another one of those times when he heard me working on something, but rather than lingering in the doorway, he felt compelled to pick up a guitar.

He co-wrote it with me. It sums up what I aspire to: It’s rooted properly in deep blues while living in the present and being aware that we have tomorrow to look forward to.

One song that is very reverential to the blues is the very short instrumental “On Top.”

Yeah. That’s Sophie Lord playing bass and doing some serious chording – lovely tone clusters as the bedrock. I don’t mind going there – you know, the reverential thing – but it’s why it’s short as well.

“Zombie Train” has a bit of funky soul to it. It’s got a bit of a ’70s feel, but again, it sounds very current. And it’s a great showcase for everybody in the band.

Oh, yes, for sure. That’s another one on which Sophie is front and center. It was sort of showcased for the bass. Both Sophie and Jack Greenwood play brilliantly throughout the record.

“Zombie Train” is this spoken-song verse, and I really loved being able to stretch out on the guitar solos. It’s another long one, and it’s closer to us being a jam band or something.

You have all these Beatles connections. Ringo Starr does a spoken intro on the song “The Ending of the End,” the album’s artwork was done by Klaus Voormann, and you’re photographed by Pattie Boyd.

Yeah, it’s something. Actually, Pattie photographed me for two album covers. You know, my parents played the Beatles; they were part of my musical journey.

When I met Jimmy Page the first time, we talked through it and he agreed. He said, “Well, yeah, they’re rooted in the blues.”

The Beatles are like blues songs with pop choruses. “Can’t Buy Me Love” is a blues progression, and so is “She’s a Woman,” “Lady Madonna,” “I Feel Fine” and on and on.

“Yer Blues,” obviously.

Sure. That was a great one.

You recently started playing the Gibson Custom Modern Flying V.

I did. That’s a whole different experience because it’s so lightweight, and it kind of folds into you. You’re almost wearing it. It’s an insane guitar, and I love it.

On 2020 Visions, I mostly played a cherry-red [ES-]355 reissue. It’s the star of the record. It’s like the Cadillac of guitars. It’s semi-hollow, and it just feels like a proper guitar. I grew up hating 355s. I thought solid-body guitars were the only real guitars. Lately, I’ve done a complete turnaround.

Is there anybody in the current crop of blues guitar players who stands out to you?

There’s some great players. Connor Selby, Toby Lee – those are two off the top of my head.

It’s hard for me to criticize anybody, because I think anybody doing it should be applauded. If they’re out there and playing, they’ve already accomplished so much.

At the same time, so much current blues has become formulaic – the sounds and just the concept of what a blues record in the modern age should be.

A lot of that has to do with people being concerned about airplay. I’m unsure how it all happens. Is it the artist? The producer? These people can be great players, but it’s hard for me to listen to another blues song that’s produced the same way or with the same approach.

Sometimes I can’t get past it, but that’s a personal problem. It’s got nothing to do with anybody else.

Order Stephen Dale Petit’s 2020 Visions here.

Given Ozzy Osbourne's stature, – even after his departure from the pioneering heavy metal band Black Sabbath – and the fact that it was the early '80s, high-quality videos of Ozzy performing with his first electric guitar sideman, the legendary Randy Rhoads, are surprisingly hard to come by.  

That's part of what makes this footage of Osbourne and his band – featuring at that time Rhoads, Rudy Sarzo on bass, Tommy Aldridge on drums, and Lindsay Bridgewater on keys – tearing through "Mr. Crowley" for American TV audiences in April 1981 so special. You can check it out below.

Written about the prominent English occultist Aleister Crowley, "Mr. Crowley" was the second single from Osbourne's 1980 debut solo album, Blizzard of Ozz. 

Though not as perhaps instantly identifiable as the single that proceeded it, "Crazy Train," "Mr. Crowley" remains decades later one of Osbourne's most beloved solo tunes, and a fixture of his live shows.

Containing what many regard to be the greatest guitar solo that Rhoads recorded before he was tragically killed in a plane crash at the age of 25 on March 19, 1982, "Mr. Crowley" is a shining example of the Osbourne/Rhoads partnership at its finest – the former's charismatic vocals over the latter's stinging combination of attitude-filled, hard-rock riffing and classically-influenced, virtuosic leads.

"Randy Rhoads was quite possibly the best composer and musician that I have ever met in my life," reads a comment on the above video from Osbourne's official account. 

"He came into my life like a bolt of lightning and as such he was gone again. I consider myself one of the luckiest men alive to have not only met him but also I had the great honor of being able to work with him. 

"I will cherish the time I spent with him 'till the day I die. Long live Randy Rhoads. Long live rock 'n' roll. I love you all." 

Zakk Wylde first came to prominence when he joined Ozzy Osbourne’s band as a replacement for Jake E. Lee, making his recorded debut with Ozzy in 1988 on No Rest for the Wicked. The gig was a dream job for Wylde, who’d always loved Black Sabbath and cited Randy Rhoads as one of his favorite guitarists.

Ozzy initially wrote off Wylde as a Rhoads clone, but once the guitarist got the chance to show what he could do, it was a no-brainer for the Prince of Darkness. Wylde has featured on Ozzy’s records and in his live band on-and-off ever since. He embarked on a solo career while with Ozzy, recording Pride and Glory in 1994 and Book of Shadows in 1996.

Wylde formed his own band, Black Label Society, in 1999 and has released 15 albums under that banner.

Though Wylde has long been known for his berserker Viking image and uniquely pulverizing electric guitar tone and riffs, there is far more to his playing than down-tuned grooves and screaming pinched harmonics, as heard on the new BLS album, Doom Crew Inc. (eOne). The record showcases three ballads that amply illustrate Wylde’s range of moods, styles and songwriting talents.

How did the pandemic affect the making of this new record?

When we came off the road, we figured we’d be back home for a month. Before we knew what was going on, it was over a year. We just thought we might as well make another record because we sure weren’t going to be doing any shows. I arranged for the guys to come out to my studio here, the Black Vatican. 

I spent a month working on riffs and ideas. The way that I work is to complete a whole song, rather than stockpile an idea for a chorus or a bridge or something. I tracked all the guitars, with no drums or bass, and the rest of the guys laid down their parts in a couple of days.

You’re someone who seems to be constantly touring. How did you handle the enforced layoff from live work?

Usually there’s a cycle – you’re getting ready for something, and there’s a reason why you’re practicing or rehearsing or whatever. Having the album and working on artwork, or whatever, gave me a real focus. I get an explosion of creativity once I get into the mindset and start working on new songs.

Your approach this time was a little different in that you traded solos on a few songs with Dario Lorina, who also plays guitar with BLS.

On certain songs, such as “Set You Free” and “You Made Me Want to Live,” I’d already written the solo ideas, and I got Dario to play some of those parts, a little like the Allman Brothers or something. But on others, he just came up with his own parts. He’s an amazing guitarist, plus he can play piano and sing.

You’re not afraid to explore a more sensitive side in your music, with three strong ballads on the album. Where does that influence come from?

My first mind-blowing experience with music was when I saw Elton John singing “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,” on Cher [hosted by singer-actress Cher] in the ’70s. That was when I first got chills at the power of music. Elton is a master of the emotional ballad. The thing is, as much as I love Zeppelin doing “Black Dog,” I love “Going to California,” you know? Same with Sabbath. I loved it when they did “Changes.”

What Wylde Audio gear did you use?

I use all my Wylde Audio guitars. I use the Nomad for the rhythms and the Heathens for some of the solos. I’ve been using Wylde Audio amps for the last three albums. There’s some new designs coming out soon as well: the Thorax, the Raider, the Vulture and the Condor.

You were always a huge Sabbath fan, and you even have your own tribute band, Zakk Sabbath. I guess it must have been a dream come true for you to hook up with Ozzy, whereas, ironically, Randy Rhoads never actually liked playing the Sabbath songs.

Yeah, totally. It’s kind of crazy that Randy didn’t like Black Sabbath, I thought everybody liked Black Sabbath. [laughs] But then again, I think that’s the reason that Randy worked so well, because he came from a completely different direction and a completely different set of influences.

I was always a Sabbath freak, and I still am. What is hilarious is that when I was 15, I was playing Sabbath songs at keg parties, and now I’m 54 years old and I’m still playing Sabbath songs at keg parties. Though I guess the crowds are a little bigger. [laughs]

You’re pretty loud live. Have you suffered any hearing issues after all these years?

Well, I do have tinnitus, but then again nearly everyone I know who’s been on the road a long time has issues to some degree. The funny thing is that when the alarm goes off on my freezer because the door was left open, my wife will ask me if I can hear it, and I can’t because it’s at exactly the same pitch as my tinnitus. [laughs]

You’ve seen big budgets with Ozzy, but things have changed so much now that I guess you have to tour to survive in the music business.

It’s a different thing. When I first started with Ozzy, if you didn’t get a record deal by the time that you were 30, the dream was over, right? I can’t tell you how many musicians I knew who’d been struggling for years and didn’t get that deal and finally thought it was time to try to get a job.

Today, you can be your own boss if you don’t get a record deal. Any band starting out now, they’ll be on social media, recording at home, booking tours over the internet and building the empire. There’s no sense that if you don’t get that deal you’re a failure, because you can build your own career. In that regard the business today is awesome, because whoever can put the work in and grind it out can survive. As long as you bring enough in to pay your bills, you can keep plugging away.

You communicate so much through your solos, and of course there is so much more range that the guitar can explore compared to the voice. Have you ever been tempted to record an instrumental album?

When Eddie Van Halen was asked why he didn’t do a solo record, he said that every Van Halen record was a chance for him to express everything that he needed to say. It’s that way for me, whether I’m playing with Black Label or Ozzy. I’ve always really loved songs. I love McLaughlin, Paco De Lucia, Jan Hammer. There’s a lot to love in instrumental albums, but when I hear “Stairway to Heaven,” that solo is perfect – but it’s in a song. I love to have the solo in a great song. That’s what works best for me.

Buy Doom Crew Inc. by Black Label Society here.

Randy Rhoads – whose playing on Ozzy Osbourne's Blizzard of Ozz, Diary of a Madman, and Tribute made him one of hard rock and heavy metal's most influential electric guitar players – was recognized by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during its 2021 induction ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio on Saturday (October 30).

Posthumously given the Musical Excellence Award, the late guitarist – who was killed in a plane crash in 1982 – was inducted by Rage Against the Machine guitar icon Tom Morello, who called him "a peerless talent.”

“He revived Ozzy Osbourne's career as his gunslinger sideman," Morello said in a video message. "And it was Randy Rhoads' poster that I had on my wall. You could study Randy's songs in a university-level musicology class and bang your heads to them in a 7-Eleven parking lot.

“When it comes to musical excellence, there is no one more deserving of the highest echelon of recognition and praise. Now the incomparable Randy Rhoads stands where he belongs.”

In the same video, Metallica's Kirk Hammett acknowledged Rhoads' significant influence on his playing, saying: "Randy's licks are all over Metallica albums."

"It wasn't that he just had great technique," added fellow Osbourne guitar-slinger Zakk Wylde. "It's what he wrote, and what he composed."

Following the announcement of Rhoads' induction earlier this year, Osbourne himself said – in an interview with Premiere Radio Networks’ Sal Cirrincione – that he was “so happy [his] genius [was] finally being recognized."

“I only wish he was here in person to get this award and that we could all celebrate together,” Osbourne added. “It's really great that Randy's family, friends, and fans get to see him honored this way.”

The 2021 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will be broadcast on HBO on Saturday, November 20 at 8:00 p.m. ET.

In the world of heavy metal, hot guitarists are a dime a dozen. Yet only a precious few stand the test of time and become enduring guitar gods. 

Randy Rhoads was one such player. Joining forces with singer Ozzy Osbourne in 1979, Rhoads burst onto the metal scene like a bolt from the blue. He was blessed with dazzling chops and an innate comprehension of music theory, and his style had a perfect blend of flash and melodic structure. 

Flowing legato sections segued to impossibly fast, palm-muted picking passages; incendiary trills and daring chromatic maneuvers coexisted with classically influenced melodies - all of which were derived from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of scales and arpeggios and laid out across an ever-shifting rhythmic landscape. 

What’s more, Rhoads was so precise that he could seamlessly double-track anything for maximum sonic density.

Sadly, only three recordings - Blizzard of Ozz, Diary of a Madman and Tribute - captured Rhoads’ genius. His life was cut short in an airplane crash in 1982, but the musicianship that lies within those tracks is as stunning and inspirational today as it was then.

In this lesson, we’ll explore the main techniques behind his outstanding guitar playing. 

Sequences and Scales

Rhoads would often sprinkle a solo with a furry of pentatonic pull-offs, such as those in FIGURE 1.

Built from the A minor pentatonic scale (A C D E G), this lick is inspired both by the opening moments of the first solo in “Mr. Crowley” and by the fill just before the last verse of “I Don’t Know.” It’s interesting to note that while Rhoads possessed the facility to rip through lines such as these using alternate picking, he often chose a legato approach for a smoother, more flowing outcome.

FIGURE 2 features a three-notes-per-string legato scale run inspired by the solos in “Crazy Train,” “Suicide Solution” and “Mr. Crowley.” This line zips up the A natural minor scale (A B C D E F G) in a blinding lash of hammer-ons. Make sure you hammer firmly onto every second and third note, striving for equal volume of the pick attacks.

Blues Licks and Mixed Scales

Rhoads was fond of the blues scale (1 b3 4 b5 5 b7) and often milked its flatted 5th for all it was worth. For example, notice the emphasis on the Bb in FIGURE 3A, an E blues (E G A Bb B D) lick inspired by the opening phrases of the “I Don’t Know” solo.

Rhoads often mixed blues-scale licks with diatonic scales, and modes such as Aeolian (natural minor), Phrygian (1-b2-b3-4 -5-b6-b7) and harmonic minor (1-2-b3-4-5-b6-7). Reminiscent of the “Crazy Train” solo, FIGURE 3B offers a composite of F# Aeolian (F# G# A B C# D E) and F# blues (F# A B C C# E).

Chromaticism

Chromaticism is another hallmark of Rhoads’ soloing style. His chromatic techniques ran the gamut from the simple use of tension tones (notes that lie outside of pentatonic and diatonic scales) all the way to full-blown chromatically modulating passages, such as the ones found in FIGURES 4A–B. 

FIGURE 4A is similar to a move Rhoads used in “S.A.T.O,” where a minor-3rd hammer-on is moved down in half steps. Notice that the lick starts on two solid chord tones (G and E, the b3rd and root), then chromatically targets two resolving tones (D and B, the b7th and 5th). 

FIGURE 4B features one of Rhoads’ pet motifs: a descending four-note slice of a scale pattern - in this case, F E D C of the D minor scale (D E F G A Bb C). Ascending chromatically, the palm-muted quadruplets hit sonic fruition with an Ab-G-F sequence over the Fm chord.

FIGURE 5 features another of the guitarist’s favorite chromatic ploys, this one involving major and minor triads, along with partial 7th-chord arpeggios, moving along the top two strings. In this example, an A minor triad (A-C-E) moves up in half steps, then segues to the upper portion of an Am7 arpeggio (A C E G), which also ascends chromatically. 

FIGURE 6 breaks the bounds of chromaticism with a pick-tapped trill that ascends in pitch via a gradual bend executed with the fret hand’s 4th finger. Notice that, again, the example begins and ends on solid chord tones (G# and B [3rd and 5th], and B and D [5th and b7th]).

Tapping and Trills

Unlike many of his peers in the early Eighties, Rhoads avoided jumping on Eddie Van Halen’s tapping bandwagon. When he did choose to tap, though, the results were stunning, as the sequence in FIGURE 7 reveals. 

In the style of the breathtaking climax of the “Flying High Again” solo, the example follows a double-tap/pull-off/hammer-on sequence constructed from triads that outline the changes.

Some of the most dazzling Randy Rhoads moments are often mistaken for tapped excursions. One such passage is the open-string pull-off extravaganza that occurs midway through his solo in the live version of “Suicide Solution,” where he dispatches a sizzling array of triads and partials along with 1st (FIGURE 8) and 2nd strings.

Rhoads also had a penchant for classically influenced trills (two notes played in rapid alternation). He would use them to outline the chord tones of specific changes, as seen in FIGURE 9, where the notes of an F7 arpeggio (F Ab Cb D) are alternated with notes a half step below. 

Stolen guitar gear belonging to late Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Randy Rhoads has recently been recovered.

The items in question – Rhoads' first-ever guitar, a 1963 Harmony Rocket, and a rare prototype of his signature Marshall amp head – were taken in 2019 from North Hollywood's Musonia School of Music, a music school founded by Randy's mother Delores Rhoads in 1948.

Various other pieces of gear and memorabilia were also stolen, including a Peavey amp used by Rhoads during his tenure with Quiet Riot, but these were recovered shortly after in a dumpster in North Hollywood

The find coincided with a statement released by Ozzy Osbourne at the time, which offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the party responsible for the theft.

A new Instagram post by Randy's sister Kathy Rhoads D'Argenzio shows the recovered Harmony Rocket and Marshall head, alongside a caption thanking fans.

“Yes! It's official!” the caption reads. “It's back! I am so thankful for this... [There are] no words. I cannot answer any questions, as this is an ongoing investigation. But trust me, I will follow up when I can! Thanks everyone for all your concerns and love.”

Randy Rhoads was himself a student of the Musonia School of Music. The school is now run by Delores Rhoads' son Kelle Rhoads, and continues to teach local students of all ages how to play guitar, drums and piano.

After Randy's untimely passing in 1982, the school was partially converted into a museum honoring his life and legacy.

This footage of Quiet Riot performing at L.A.’s Whisky A Go Go on September 22, 1979 is notable as one of guitarist Randy Rhoads’ last appearances with the group before he went on to join Ozzy Osbourne’s band.

In addition, as Forgotten Guitar notes, the show marked the first time Rhoads ever used the custom black-and-white polka-dot Flying V that would become one of his signature axes. The guitar was built by luthier Karl Sandoval at a cost of $738. Rhoads picked up the guitar the day of this show.

Quiet Riot at this point featured Rhoads with singer Kevin DuBrow, bassist Rudy Sarzo (who took over for founding bassist Kelly Garni), and drummer Drew Forsyth.

For a real treat, check out Rhoads’ solo that begins around the 37-minute mark.