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.
I'm laughing at the thought of Randy reaching his peak with just two albums!
Rudy Sarzo
“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.
