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.
