Randy Rhoads

Warning: I come not to praise Randy, but to bury him.

 Shortly after Classic Rock magazine featured an article about Randy Rhoads, now Guitar World is doing so as well.  I’ve reached my quota of RR articles for my lifetime.

 Background.  After Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sabbath in 1979, he had to begin a solo career by default.  His now-wife Sharon Osbourne took it upon herself to assemble a band around him:  Randy Rhoads (guitar), Bob Daisley (bass), and Lee Kerslake (drums).  They recorded Blizzard of Ozz, an excellent debut album, followed it up with Diary of Madman (Rudy Sarzo took over on bass, Tommy Aldridge on drums), and on tour for the second album, Randy was killed in a freak accident.  The tour bus driver took him up in his private plane (against Randy’s objections) and crashed the plane into the tour bus.  Night Ranger guitarist Brad Gillis took over for the remainder of the tour, eventually replaced by Jake E. Lee for two albums, then Zakk Wylde.

 I’ve mentioned before my introduction to Ozzy through Speak of the Devil, though shortly afterwards I did tape Blizzard, Diary, and Bark at the Moon, which by that time (1984) had been the most recent Ozzy album.  Listening to these albums always brings me back to memories of high school in France, listening to them on tape (remember the Walkman?) riding the school bus.

 Quiet Riot.  Before Ozzy, Randy was in this band, which only became famous AFTER Randy joined Ozzy’s band.  Their top album is Metal Health.   I never liked Quiet Riot, and I was never a big enough Randy fan to get the original QR albums (Japanese imports) with Randy on them.  From what I understand, the biggest impediment to QR’s fame and fortune was Kevin Dubrow’s unlikeable personality, off the chart even by the lofty standards of prima donna rock singers.   Randy was apparently considering leaving Ozzy after the Diary tour, but whether he would have retreated into obscurity to pursue classical music, or rejoined QR, no one seems to know.  This is part of why I consider him so overrated:  we have no idea what he would have done had he not had his talent “cut short” by his freak airplane death.   

 Blizzard of Ozz.  “Crazy Train”, “Mr. Crowley”, and “Suicide Solution” survive from this album into Ozzy’s live set, but I prefer “Revelation: Mother Earth”.  But from “I Don’t Know” through “Steal Away (The Night)” there isn’t a bad track on the album. 

 Diary of a Madman.  A good follow-up, but I really only like the title track.  “Flying High Again” is the track which survives in the set.  The rest is decent, but seems more like filler than strong songs: the consistent quality of the last album isn’t here.

 Ozzy-Randy Tribute.  Three Sabbath tunes reluctantly played with no great enthusiasm, and the rest is solo material.  This was released in 1987, five years after Randy died.  I’ve listened to it once or twice but it didn’t impress me.

 Impression.  Randy can play guitar.  Better than Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Ritchie Blackmore, Angus Young, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, David Gilmour, Frank Zappa, Robert Fripp, the Iron Maiden & Judas Priest twins, or least of all, Tony Iommi?  Not in a million years.  Randy added in a super-pretentious “acoustic/classical guitar” ingredient (which has been done by…umpteen other guitarists before him, and since), which we add to “died in freak airplane accident” results in “guitar god without equal”.  No, I don’t think so.  What I find especially damning about him was his attitude towards Black Sabbath and Tony Iommi:  “I’m MUCH better than that.”  Who did he think he was? 

 Wylde v. Randy.  This is why I prefer Zakk Wylde.  He doesn’t believe that acknowledging Tony’s genius takes away from his own talent, such as it is.  I don’t think of Wylde as being so much as 5% less than Randy, but since Wylde is still alive, we can’t criticize Randy, so Wylde ends up relatively underrated between the two.  For that matter, Jake E. Lee isn’t any worse than Randy.  Undeniably, Rhoads was certainly the most likeable of Ozzy’s solo guitarists.  He was shy, good-natured, and rarely indulged in the decadent rock excesses of his peers – a polar opposite from someone like Michael Schenker.  For his part, Wylde strikes me as fundamentally down-to-earth and unpretentious, even if he does pile on the Yankneck (CSA from New Jersey) and biker images a bit thick.  Black Label Society is essentially a Motorhead tribute band.  If you’re not going to do anything truly original on your own, why not just stay with Ozzy?  Like I said, however, I’m not convinced Rhoads would have blazed a unique, revolutionary new guitar trail had he survived the Diary tour.    

 Bottom line:  Randy’s role in Ozzy’s career can be safely appreciated without ignoring Tony, Jake or Zakk.  Let’s keep him in perspective and enjoy his albums, but not elevate him to a (guitar) god or saint he never was.

Ozzy After Sabbath

I suppose this is the appropriate complement to “Sabbath After Ozzy”.  I’ve been listening to Black Rain, the newest Ozzy album, and despite its surprisingly cheap and unimpressive packaging (no jewel case or insert) I was pleasantly surprised with its quality.

 Ozzy’s career after Sabbath – aside from the brief reunions with Sabbath – can be divided into three periods, easily corresponding to the guitarist he picked.  The drummers and bassists have come and gone (including Geezer Butler at one point).  But it’s the guitarists who really make their mark.  Ozzy doesn’t play ANY instrument and relies on real musicians (!) to help him out, though he has developed considerably as a singer and lyricist.

 1.  Randy Rhoads.  This includes his first two albums, Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman.  As we know by now, Randy died in that freak airplane accident – the tour bus driver was an amateur pilot and took Randy and a friend up for a spin...and killed them all in a kamikaze attack on the tour bus itself.  Anyhow.

            Randy was NOT a Black Sabbath fan – he considered himself MUCH better than Tony Iommi (right there he lost me).  He added the pretentious classical music elements.  I do like his albums, particularly the songs  “Mother Earth (Revelation)” and “Diary of a Madman” but I can do without “Flying High Again” for the umpteenth time.  Randy was an excellent guitarist, but I think his talent is overstated these days into legend status simply due to the fact that he died so young in the freak accident.

 2.  Jake E. Lee.  Another good guitarist – whose fame suffered because he simply left the band and wasn’t killed in a freak accident.  The two albums with him, Bark At The Moon and Ultimate Sin, are not bad at all, but largely forgotten.  These are, however, typical 80s metal.   Weeding out the 80s filler would result in one decent album.

 3.  Zakk Wylde.  I do like Zakk.  From No Rest For The Wicked to Black Rain, Wylde undoubtedly rips. His masterpiece is “No More Tears”.  Unlike Randy, Wylde DOES worship at Tony’s altar and does a fairly good job of covering the Sabbath songs, especially since he’s not reluctantly going through the motions.  I suppose he overdoes the “bearded biker redneck” image with Black Label Society, but I’ll take that if he still puts some balls into Ozzy’s albums.  They do tend to repeat each other fairly often in a familiar formula, so it’s difficult not to get tired of them, but all the same, I do like them.

 4. Brad Gillis.  The first Ozzy album I ever heard was Speak of the Devil, which is probably an odd one to begin with: it’s a live album of ALL Black Sabbath songs at a time at which he already had two albums worth of solo material with Randy Rhoads.  My buddy Phil had bought it at the PX and was crazy about it, particularly “War Pigs.”  The story was that Jet Records, run by Sharon Arden>>>Osbourne’s father, insisted on a live album immediately after Randy’s death.  Rather than tastelessly spit out the live Randy material they did have then (which later was released as Ozzy-Randy Tribute) they simply played a one-off show with Brad Gillis playing nothing but Sabbath songs.  On the remaining dates of the “Diary of a Madman” tour, Gillis did play the Rhoads material. 

            Gillis did a respectable job, though he didn’t particularly put much effort into faithfully reproducing Tony’s solos.  The best that can be said is that Gillis had a terrific guitar tone.  Ozzy screams, “this album’s for you people, man!” and I have to wonder who he’s referring to. 

            But at the time I didn’t connect Ozzy with Black Sabbath.  On the school bus I’d listen to the album on my Walkman (remember those?) and the older kids would ask what I was listening to.  “Hey, these are BLACK SABBATH songs!”  Now this dopey, clueless 13 year old finally had a clue.  Sure enough, I went to FNAC (the huge record store in Paris) and flipped through the Black Sabbath vinyl (remember vinyl?) and sure enough saw.. OZZY OSBOURNE listed on the albums!  And hey, look!  It’s those songs!  D’OH!

            So we asked for Black Sabbath albums for Christmas, and guess what we got?  Born Again and The Mob Rules!  (Sigh).  I ended up getting the Ozzy albums after school, passing through FNAC and spending my leftover lunch money on pairs: Black Sabbath/Paranoid, Master of Reality/Vol 4, Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath/Sabotage, and Technical Ecstasy/Never Say Die.  But as crazy and stupid as it sounds, I have BRAD GILLIS (and my buddy Phil) to thank for getting me into Black Sabbath.

 Ozzy vs. Sabbath.  As I noted earlier, Sabbath since Ozzy has had its ups and downs.  Heaven and Hell, The Mob Rules vs. TYR and Forbidden.  Ozzy’s material has never been as dark as Sabbath’s: at one point Rick Rubin – producer of Slayer and Danzig – was brought in as a producer, and Zakk Wylde remarked that it was “as if the sheet music was being faxed to us directly from Satan.” Ozzy concurred, saying, “if I wanted to do that kind of music, I’d do it with Sabbath.”  Ozzy’s material is more lighthearted, the overall philosophy being, “it’s a crazy, fucked-up world out there, but there is still some hope.” 

            Relative to such bands as Slayer and Megadeth, or any of these death metal bands with “cookie monster” vocals, Ozzy is certainly much more polished and accessible.  You can understand the lyrics!  But it’s still METAL.  The 16 year old girl who says “like, you know” every other word and listens to Beyonce and 50 Cent, the skinny VW-driving REM fan, the 30-something soccer mom, are never going to bang their head to any of Ozzy’s material.  It’s not nearly pop-oriented enough to appeal to people who wouldn’t otherwise listen to “heavy metal”, and the crowd at an Ozzy or Ozzfest concert is the same 90% male demographic you’d find at a Slayer or Anthrax show.

 Sharon Osbourne & “The Osbournes”.  I never really watched the show that much.  To me Ozzy is a singer – and most importantly the singer for Black Sabbath.  Watching him at home without Tony, Geezer & Bill is not particularly worthwhile (why weren’t THEY ever on the show??).  He was likeable and adorable, bewildered by his own wealth (I suppose his mind is still in the slums of Birmingham even if his body is in L.A.) and forever baffled by such things as remote controls and poo-ing pets.  It got old rather quickly.  I won’t comment on Jack or Kelly, as they have no real connection with Ozzy’s solo career.

            I don’t have a problem with Sharon Osbourne.  She saved Ozzy’s ass from alcoholic suicide, salvaged his career, and believed in him when he didn’t even believe in himself (a heavy metal June Carter to the heavy metal Johnny Cash).  She deserves every penny of his wealth - seeing to it that HE gets what he needs and doesn’t get screwed.  If she throws her weight around, amen.  I wasn’t keen on the slew of crappy bands opening for Sabbath/Ozzy on the Ozzfests, but at least we got Sabbath and Ozzy – and a few good bands like Iron Maiden – compared to the Lollapalooza tours.  (Where’s the stoner rock festival, man?  Come on!).  Metal fans seem to see her with the same hatred and loathing Rush Limbaugh has for Hillary Clinton, but I don’t think Sharon Osbourne deserves it anymore than Hillary does. 

 There we go.  Ozzy has aquitted himself well since Sabbath, thanks to Sharon.  Just when I thought he might be getting into a rut, Black Rain has restored my faith in his ability to entertain me.