The Ozzy Osbourne-Randy Rhoads dynamic duo is the stuff of legends. After Ozzy was ejected from Black Sabbath, his quest to launch a solo career brought together British veterans Bob Daisley, Rainbow’s ex-bassist, and former Uriah Heep drummer, Lee Kerslake.

At the same time, a certain Randy Rhoads, from LA's Quiet Riot, was tired of the internal turmoil within his band, and their seemingly never-ending chase for a US record deal. In October ’79, after he heard that the former Sabbath frontman was auditioning guitar players, he somehow found himself in the Ozzy circus.

“Even though I was fucked up on cocaine and booze, I remember when I first met Randy Rhoads,” Osbourne told Guitar World in 2002.

“I was staying at a hotel called Le Parc on West Knoll off Santa Monica Boulevard [in West Hollywood]. I used to live like an animal then. And Dana Strum from Slaughter says to me, ‘I’ve got this fucking amazing guitar player for you.’

“And I go, ‘Yeah, sure.’ ’Cause at the time, everybody was a fucking Hendrix clone. So it was one in the morning, and I was fucking smashed. Off the wall. And this little guy comes in. He looked like a fucking doll. But even in my stupor, I realized he was great as soon as he started playing the guitar.”

Osbourne fondly recalled working with Rhoads on Goodbye to Romance – the 1980 ballad influenced by the chord progressions of Baroque composer Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

As this song demonstrates, Rhoads drew heavily on his rigorous classical training, favoring European classical modes over pentatonic scales while placing a premium on virtuosity.

“I was a drunken, drugged-out, fucked-up slob,” Ozzy continued. “But Randy was patient with me.”

“Randy said, ‘Maybe if you tried it in this key…’ He worked with me. He had the patience because he was a guitar teacher. And he gave me a lot of confidence. He wouldn’t intimidate me. Because, believe it or not, I’m quite easily intimidated.”

As for the rest of the album, Ozzy confirmed that “it was a writing team,” with Rhoads crafting the riffs, Bob Daisley writing the lyrics, and the Prince of Darkness coming up with vocal melodies. Through their collaboration, the triumvirate created a timeless record that marked a move away from Sabbath’s heavy metal sound.

Another nod to classical music comes by way of Dee, included in the Blizzard album tracklist – an homage to Rhoads’ mother.

“Randy absolutely adored his mother,” Ozzy said. “And one day Randy came to me and said, ‘Do you mind if I do this classical guitar piece for my mum?’ And I said, ‘Fuck, what yer askin’ me for? Go ahead.’”

The band’s hard work paid off, with singles Crazy Train and Mr. Crowley hitting both the US and UK charts. Most importantly, it solidified Ozzy as a bona fide solo act who could stand on his own – with a little help from Rhoads.

Jackson has brought the Rhoads V electric guitar shape home to its California factory with the unveiling of two high-end American Series Rhoads models.

Originally born out of a collaboration between the Ozzy Osbourne guitar icon and Grover Jackson in the early 1980s, the flagship Rhoads not only put a distinct Randy-designed spin on the V template, but helped launch the Jackson brand.

It has since become one of metal’s most enduring and beloved guitars. In recent years the firm’s various Rhoads variants have been exclusively made overseas in Indonesia, China and – for the more premium models – Japan.

Jackson has now added another tier to the Rhoads lineage, drafting in the former Quiet Riot guitar great’s visionary innovation to its American Series – a collection that was purpose-launched for this exact sort of thing.

Indeed, when the collection debuted in 2022, it marked the firm’s first crop of made-in-Corona guitars. Now, the Rhoads – which was once part of the USA Select Series, before that was discontinued – returns to join that elite crop of Jackson electrics.

“The American Series Rhoads was created to bring the legendary shape that metal guitarists have coveted for decades to a new generation,” says Jon Romanowski, VP of Product, Jackson.

“Built in the U.S., this premium guitar is engineered for players who demand uncompromising metal tone and performance.”

It’s a sizable move from Jackson, and the fact that the Rhoads V becomes only the third addition to the prestigious American Series line – which was launched with the Soloist and later expanded with the Virtuoso – is telling of just how the company values this particular metal template.

That much is even more apparent in the launch video: Jackson has tapped metal veterans Jeff Loomis and Brandon Ellis to put the new guitars through their paces.

Owing to its US heritage, the American Series Rhoads – available in RR24 and RR24HT formats – are said to be “built to devastating perfection”, and engineered to deliver “the ultimate shredding performance”.

Specs include USA-made Seymour Duncan JB and ’59 pickups, an offset V alder body, 12”-16” compound radius ebony fingerboard, and 24 jumbo stainless steel frets. The HT model, unsurprisingly, has a hardtail bridge – a Hipshot piece, specifically – while the regular version has a recessed 1500 Series Floyd Rose. Snow White, Matte Army Drab, and Satin Black finishes are available.

Other features include Luminlay side dots, Gotoh MG-T locking tuners, Sharkfin inlays and a through-piece design that comprises a graphite-reinforced three-piece maple neck.

The RR24HT is available now for $2,729, while the RR24 is priced at $2,849.

Head over to Jackson to find out more.

In related news, Jackson recently paid homage to the “golden era of guitar innovations” by launching the Pro Origins 1985 San Dimas range.

Randy Rhoads' Quiet Riot Gibson Les Paul has gone up for auction with an upper sale estimate of $200,000. The 1974 build was played on stage during his pre-Ozzy days, and can also be spotted on the back of Quiet Riot's 1977 self-titled debut album.

The all-black Les Paul, listed on the auction website Gotta Have Rock and Roll, features a maple-topped mahogany body, a mahogany neck, and an Indian rosewood fretboard with trapezoid inlays. It has the serial number 101797 and shows clear signs of where Rhoads weathered the guitar on stages and in the studio.

Intriguingly, however, the guitar didn't actually belong to Rhoads. It was originally bought by Paul Raskin, the brother of Jodi Raskin, Rhoads' then-girlfriend and later fiancée, and was frequently loaned out to the fast-rising virtuoso.

The auctioneer also states it's believed to be the first time that a Rhoads-played guitar has been made available to the public. There was a long-lost Rhoads prototype that surfaced a few years back, but that particular guitar was mistakenly sold to the public at NAMM.

“This instrument bears a clear indication of its historical significance,” says Gotta Have Rock and Roll.

Rhoads had formed Quiet Riot at the age of 16. The group's live shows, with Rhoads' talents at the forefront, established them as one of the most popular acts on the L.A. circuit in the late '70s. But his time in the band was marked with tension, which came to a head in a drunken fight, during which shots were fired.

He was soon snapped up by Ozzy Osbourne, who was looking to launch a solo career following his dismissal from Black Sabbath. Bassist Bob Daisley says he had a premonition about Rhoads' impending greatness after his Ozzy audition, and the rest, as they say, was history.

The Les Paul is expected to sell for around $200,000. The auction is running online until August 8th, 2025.

Head to Gotta Have Rock and Roll for more.

Kelly Garni grew up with Randy Rhoads and formed Quiet Riot with him in 1975. The bassist was fired three years later after a drunken brawl with the guitarist – whose promising career ended in a plane crash seven years later.

“I was inconsolable,” Garni tells Bass Player. “I couldn’t even go to the funeral. I just didn’t want to see that reality.”

He’d already given up playing and begun a new life as a paramedic. It took him years to get back to bass.

“I started playing again in my early 50s; I’m 68 now,” he says. “I got a call from Todd Kerns, who wanted me to come play with his band.

“I said, ‘I don’t own a bass – I haven’t played in 25 years. I don’t think I can do it.’ Todd convinced me, and I’ve been doing it ever since. I’m getting offers to play in bands, and I could; but I don’t want to.”

He continues: “People still have a lot of respect for Randy. They have high regard for what we did, so I play those old songs. I’m the last man standing; Drew Forsyth [drummer] is still alive, but he wants nothing to do with it. So I’m all you got.”

How did you and Randy meet?

“He was a guy I noticed in high school who seemed very interesting. We were both in a new school, sort of outcasts, so we gravitated together. I went to his house and he told me he played guitar.

“He didn’t know how to play lead, but I thought he was pretty good. He was taking lessons from Scott Shelly at his mother’s music school. From there, it turned into him needing a bass player, so he turned me into a bass player!”

Did Randy teach you how to play bass?

“He began to teach me basslines. As he was learning his leads, he’d practice over my basslines. I’d play for four or five hours straight, and he’d just do the same things over and over until he had them perfected.

“From there we got good enough to where we could establish little bands that played at backyard keggers. When I was about 15 we formed Quiet Riot. We found Kevin DuBrow and Drew Forsyth, who we’d used in previous bands.”

What was your and Randy’s vision for Quiet Riot?

“We just kind of made it up as we went along. We tried to stick with trends that were popular. This was 1976, so Randy and I were heavily influenced by Alice Cooper, David Bowie and Black Oak Arkansas – the first concert we went to together.

“Kevin was heavily influenced by British music, like Slade and flashier bands. That clashed a bit with what me and Randy wanted, but we made it work. That’s the reason our first two albums have sort of a poppy sound: there was a lot of Kevin's involvement there.”

Is it true that management steered you in a lighter direction?

“The management wanted us to be the next Bay City Rollers, and we didn’t. When the time came to write songs, they were telling us, ‘It needs to be more pop.’ Randy and I thought it was horrible – but Kevin was all in.

“At that point he’d kind of taken over the band. I didn’t feel that Randy and I were playing in a style we wanted, but Kevin insisted that if we wanted to make it, it’s what we had to do. So we went along with it.”

When did Randy’s beloved cream-colored Les Paul come into the picture?

“He got that guitar from our first manager, who we both adored. He didn’t have any experience and only a little bit of money, but he put a lot into the band. To me and Randy, he was a great friend.

“Randy had talked about the guitar, and the manager had an extra cabinet lying around, so he traded it and got that guitar. Many people think Randy paid him back, but we didn’t have that kind of money. I never saw Randy give him any money, and I would have, because we were always around each other.”

Were you able to afford decent amps?

“Randy had a Peavey Standard head, which I thought sounded great for bass. But he made it sound great for guitar, and he had an Ampeg 4x12 cabinet that was oversized. I was using two Acoustic 370s.

“Most people looked at Randy’s equipment and said, ‘How did he get that sound out of that?’ But it didn’t come out of the amps – it literally came out of his fingers. It’s a strange thing; the tone was in his fingertips.”

Even though it was early on, could you tell that Randy was a great player?

“There was no doubt about it. He wasn’t a guy who got better every six months, or every month, or every week; he got better every 60 seconds. Literally, he’d play one thing, and 60 seconds later he would play it amazingly. And 60 seconds after that, he’d play it like only he could.”

You and Kevin weren’t getting along by the time the second record came, leading to a drunken fistfight between you and Randy involving a gun.

“Yeah. I was unhappy for quite a while. The band as we were had stalled; we weren’t going anywhere and weren’t doing anything. It seemed like rinse and repeat; there was no progress. We weren’t making any money and management gave us an allowance, which in my case was $40 a week to live on.

“It was frustrating. I was getting older – I was 20, and we still hadn’t gotten anywhere. We seemed to have some success in Japan, and the management kept saying we’d go there, but we never did. This all came to a very drunken conclusion. The night before it happened I’d gone to a club called the Cabaret, and it caught on fire.

“Everyone ran out of the building, leaving me sitting there with these two girls. It was starting to look like, ‘Well, maybe we should leave, too,” but I was having a beer and a cigarette and I didn’t want to leave yet. I thought, ‘So what if there’s a fire?’ That’s the stupidity of youth; the invincibility of youth!

“On the way out the door we saw the bar had been abandoned, so I hopped over and started handing these girls bottles of booze. I grabbed a whole bunch of bottles, and the girls were stuffing bottles into their bras, down their pants and into their purses!

“As we walked out there was a big crowd, and a fire truck pulled up and blocked the view of us. So we went to my car, opened the trunk and put it all in there. I had about 25 bottles of liquor. The next day I called up Randy and said, ‘Hey, the Cabaret caught fire and I robbed the bar. I got all this booze over here. Come over and party!’

“After four or five hours of drinking, we started discussing the Kevin problem. It got out of hand. I told Randy to leave; he refused. And I lived in the Barrio in Van Nuys, a pretty dangerous place, so I kept a gun hidden in the couch.

“I pulled the gun and fired it into the ceiling, thinking that would make Randy leave. But he was fearless – he didn’t leave, he charged right at me. The gun was automatic, so it reloaded and cocked itself. I chucked it aside to get it out of the mix, and the fight was on.”

Had you and Randy gotten into fights before?

“It certainly wasn’t the first time we’d been in a fist fight. We grew just like brothers, had squabbles and rolled on the ground; and that’s basically what this amounted to, though it was a bit more serious. It was also terrible how drunk we were, particularly me, and I wasn’t done.”

Is that when you hatched the plan to find, and possibly kill, Kevin?

“I was going to finish this job; I thought I’d kill Kevin. I don’t think I actually would have – that’s just not in me. But I certainly would have scared him, and I probably would’ve gotten the cops called on me.

“When I got in my car and tried to drive, I could not. I had to go around the block to re-park the car, and I blew a turn right in front of an LAPD cop. They pulled me over in front of my house; I had a gun in a shoulder holster under my jacket, and off to jail I went.

“Once Kevin and management heard about the episode, they said, ‘Okay, that’s it. He’s got to go – he’s too big of a problem.’ That was it.”

How did Randy feel about that?

“I spoke to Randy the next day, after I got out of jail. We were laughing about the whole thing. Any fights we had, we always quickly made up and they became funny. Most people don’t think this sounds funny, but we did, because nobody really got hurt.

“Well, there was some blood – Randy raked his famous long fingernail across my forehead and opened it up pretty good. But nobody was hospitalized or anything.”

Was Randy okay with you being ousted?

“He volunteered to go with me. I said, ‘No, you stay. I’ll go. I’ll be fine; I’ll do something else. You believe it, so you continue.’ We were still friends. But he was in the band and I was not. I did a total 180, cut off all my hair, enrolled in paramedic school, and had a job waiting for me when I graduated. I worked and ran calls in the back of an ambulance for the next 10 years in LA.”

Do you have any regrets about how things ended?

“I don’t. I thought about this a while back; I was always trying to think of the perfect way to say what I meant, and I finally came up with the feelings that seemed to justify everything that happened. I don’t have any regrets because Randy needed to be with better musicians than me and the other guys in Quiet Riot.”

Like the guys he ended up with in Ozzy’s band.

“No matter how you slice it, at some point, me and Randy – still as best friends – were going to have to part ways. If I’d stayed in music it would have been a lot harder. It was never, ever gonna be pretty. But at least we laughed about it, though nobody else did!”

You’ve taken a lot of heat from people who have a different perspective.

“I get fingers pointed at me. I get my story convoluted. I get told, ‘You’re the guy who tried to kill Randy Rhoads.’ I laugh it off and say, ‘You weren’t there; you don’t know.’ Randy needed to be with better people. After nine years of playing together, how could it ever be a friendly thing?”

Did you ever make amends with Kevin DuBrow?

“That did happen. A mutual friend of ours came to me and said, ‘You and Kevin have too much history together. It’s a shame you aren’t friends. You need to get in a room together and work it out.’ And that’s basically what we did.

“It took about three seconds for me and him to start hugging each other and crying. Not long after that, he moved to Las Vegas, and we were great friends. He was always there for me and I was always there for him. And, of course, we talked about Randy a lot.”

Growing up – and standing side by side on stage – with Randy Rhoads taught bass guitar player Kelly Garni a thing or two about the guitar player, who would later help define the sound of Ozzy Osbourne’s solo era and become a legend in his own right.

“He was a guy I noticed in high school. I thought he was very interesting, and I wanted to get to know him, ” Garni tells Guitar World in a new interview. “We were in a new school, and we were sort of outcasts, so we gravitated together. And I went to his house, he told me he played guitar, and I had a slight interest in that.

“He didn’t know how to play lead, but I thought he was pretty good. He was taking lessons from Scott Shelly at his mother’s music school. From there, it turned into him needing a bass player, so he turned me into a bass player.”

The pair would eventually found Quiet Riot in 1973 – hiring Drew Forsyth as their drummer and Kevin DuBrow, originally a photographer, as their lead vocalist – and hustled their way through L.A.’s bustling music scene. Rhoads would continue improving his craft despite the more typically bass-leaning equipment available to him at the time: a Peavey Standard head and an Ampeg 4x12 cabinet.

“Most people looked at Randy’s equipment back then and said, ‘How in the world did that guy get that sound out of that?’” Garni recalls. “But it didn’t come out of the amps; it literally came out of his fingers. It’s a strange thing… I have seen other guitar players do that to the extent that Randy did. The tone really was in his fingertips.”

As the bassist aptly puts it, “This wasn’t a guy who got better every six months, or every month, or every week; this was a guy who got better every 60 seconds.”

Disillusioned with Quiet Riot’s inability to land a record deal in the States, Rhoads ended up answering the call to audition for Ozzy in September 1979 – coincidentally, right before his final show with the band he started with Garni. Despite his obvious talent, Jet Records’ founder, David Arden, thought he was too young to join the Ozzy circus. He eventually relented – and the rest, as they say, is history.

Guitar World's full interview with Kelly Garni will be published in the coming weeks.

Growing up with an absolute electric guitar icon like Randy Rhoads inevitably results in an anecdote or two, especially if you also happened to be in a band with him – and Kelly Garni, the bassist who formed Quiet Riot with Rhoads, has his fair share of spicy stories.

The pair's longstanding collaboration, coupled with the drama associated with band life, as well as the infamous tension between Garni and vocalist Kevin DuBrow, ultimately spelled the end of the bassist's music career – at least for a couple of decades or so.

“I was unhappy for quite a while,” Garni ponders in a new interview with Guitar World as he looks back on that period of his life. “We [referring to the band] were stalled... we weren’t going anywhere, and weren’t doing anything. It just seemed like rinse and repeat. There was no progress. We weren’t making any money, and management gave us an allowance every week, which, in my case, was forty bucks a week to live on.

“This all finally came to a very drunken conclusion, where the night before it happened, I’d gone to a club called the Cabaret, and while I was there, it caught on fire.”

Long story short, as flames engulfed the L.A. club, Garni decided to make the most of the chaos and rob “about 25 bottles of liquor”.

“The next day, I called up Randy and said, ‘Hey, the Cabaret caught fire, and I robbed the bar. I got all this booze over here. Come over and party.’ And he did.”

However, what started as a friendly meet-up soon turned into “a good four or five hours of drinking”, during which all of Garni's problems with the band came to a head.

“We started discussing the Kevin problem. It got out of hand,” he admits. “I told Randy to leave. He refused. And I lived in the Barrio in Van Nuys, a pretty dangerous place, and kept a gun hidden in the couch cushion.

“So, to scare Randy, I pulled the gun and fired it into the ceiling, thinking that would make him leave. But Randy was fearless. He didn’t leave. He charged right at me. The gun was automatic, so it reloaded and cocked itself. So, I chucked that aside to get it out of the mix, and the fight was on.”

Garni's drunken reverie had a target: DuBrow.

“I was going to finish this job. I was going to go, well, I thought I’d kill Kevin. I don’t think I actually would have; that’s just not in me. But I certainly would have scared him, and I probably would’ve gotten the cops called on me there.

“They pulled me over in front of my house, I had a gun in a shoulder holster under my jacket, and off to jail I went. Once Kevin and management heard about the whole episode, they said, ‘Okay, that’s it. He’s got to go. He’s too big of a problem.’ That was it.”

Leaving Quiet Riot would open up a very different chapter in Garni's life. While Rhoads ended up joining Ozzy's crew, the bassist did a “total 180”, cutting off his hair, enrolling in paramedic school, and working in the back of an ambulance for the next decade or so.

“I get my story convoluted. I get told, ‘You’re the guy who tried to kill Randy Rhoads.’ I get all kinds of stuff. I laugh it off and say, ‘You weren’t there. You don’t know.’ So, Randy needed to be with better people. It was never going to be pretty, but after nine years of playing together, how could it ever be a friendly thing?” he concludes.

Guitar World's full interview with Quiet Riot's Kelly Garni will be published in the coming weeks.

As one of the early comers to the buzzing hair metal scene, Carlos Cavazo assumed the role of lead guitarist for a reformed Quiet Riot, setting off a chain reaction of glammed-out excess.

Stepping out of the shadow of Randy Rhoads and into the spotlight, Cavazo – like many of his contemporaries would do later – infused classical and flamenco touches to Quiet Riot’s mix. The result was a torrent of madness on the backside of Quiet Riot’s 1983 smash success, Metal Health, skyrocketing the unassuming six-stringer.

“A lot of people ask me if I had any idea that Metal Health would be as big as it was,” Cavazo says. “People assume I knew we had this winner on our hands, but honestly, I didn’t. I’m still somewhat shocked that people love it.”

Quiet Riot laid the blueprint for ’80s glam excess, and Cavazo agrees. “I’ve heard people say that we kicked it off, and yeah, we probably did. We were there initially and played a huge role.

“But there were some other bands before us, like Van Halen and Def Leppard. Still, I think Quiet Riot pushed it over the edge,” Cavazo says. “I didn’t think of it back then; we were just doing what we normally would, but looking back, I would agree.”

Quiet Riot’s post-Rhoads era got off to a hot start, but dysfunction undermined them. By the time the ’90s rolled around, Cavazo had departed for a spot alongside Warren DeMartini in Ratt.

“I loved sharing space with Warren,” Cavazo says. “Our styles worked well together, and our songwriting and influences were similar. I’m probably more of a speedy player, while Warren is a more methodical, thought-out kind of guy. Those differing styles gave us fresh textures.”

Things with Ratt fell apart, too. But Cavazo is at peace, having left the dysfunction behind. After laying low for years, Cavazo joined King Kobra and recorded an album in 2023’s We Are Warriors. Things are calmer now, the expectations are lower and the pressures of personality disorders are in the past. But considering his hired-gun status, one wonders if Cavazo will stick around.

“I think so,” he says. “I’d keep working with King Kobra. The biggest thing is their egos aren’t out of control. They’re not ‘problem’ people, and they don’t make life harder. That goes a long way. But it depends on how well accepted we are. King Kobra have been around for a long time, but this is a new lineup. You never know how people will react.”

What sparked your interest in the guitar?

“Two words: the Beatles. When they came out with [1964’s] A Hard Day’s Night, my dad got me and my brother that record. I was only eight. We were really knocked out by it. I just loved the music they were playing, what they did and all the adventures they seemed to have. I knew I wanted to do that, somehow, some way. The Beatles are what led me to where I am now.”

How did Snow, your pre-Quiet Riot band, get together?

“Snow formed around 1976. It went through a bunch of lineups, and several members filtered out before we ended up with Doug Ellison on vocals and Stephen Quadros on drums, along with my brother Tony and me.

“By 1977, we had that lineup set, and that’s when we started playing around the Hollywood scene and making a name for ourselves. Then, around 1978, we started playing original music, which was the first time I was involved in something like that. Before that, we mostly played covers, so writing my own music was an education.

“We achieved some pretty good success in the L.A. area and were happy with that when it ended. We didn’t get a record deal, but we did manage to do a self-titled EP, which we were proud of.”

What were your main takeaways from that experience?

“Honestly, with the EP, I probably evolved more as a writer. The original version of Metal Health was on that Snow EP, but it was called No More Booze. Me and my brother originally wrote the song, and later on, when I was in Quiet Riot, Kevin [DuBrow] loved it when he heard it, leading to us redoing it on Metal Health.

“The music, lyrics and melodies were changed, but the roots of it came from the Snow EP. So, if anything, I became a better songwriter through being part of Snow. I learned a lot about the business side of things, how things worked and what it took to make it on the L.A. club scene.”

What led you to join a reformed Quiet Riot?

“Snow had just broken up, and we were moving all our shit out of our house, trying to figure out what to do. As that was happening, out of nowhere, I got a call from Kevin, and he said, 'Hey, man, we’re looking for a new guitar player for Quiet Riot. Would you be interested?' I thought about it for a second and said, 'Sure. I can come down and see about it.'

“I went down, met the guys and rehearsed six or seven songs, eventually morphing into tracks appearing on Metal Health. The chemistry was cool immediately, and things between us were great early on. Things changed, but in those early days, everything was great.”

Did you feel pressure to match what Randy Rhoads had done?

“I was definitely comfortable doing what I did best. People have to remember that at the time, Randy’s work with Quiet Riot was pretty unknown. As far as I was concerned, I only knew Randy as the guitar player for Ozzy [Osbourne]. So I never felt any pressure to be or play like Randy; I felt comfortable doing what I had been doing on the club scene with Snow. 

“It seemed to work, and I think my not being influenced by Randy was good for the band and the record. But you know, in a way, Randy indirectly got me the gig; apparently, Randy was the one who told Kevin, 'Hey, you should check out this guy Carlos. A lot of my students are talking about him and saying he’s really good. Give him a call for Quiet Riot.' Kevin got a hold of me through that grapevine. Thanks, Randy!”

What are your memories of putting Metal Health together?

“I remember working on a lot of different stuff early on. We had a lot of material; it took time to get it all together and make it what it is now. Before the album came out in ’83, we recorded a lot of stuff. We had a lot of battles with Spencer Proffer, the producer, about the album’s direction. He’s the one who wanted us to record [Slade’s] Cum on Feel the Noize because he thought Kevin had a similar voice to Noddy Holder. 

“That song became a big hit, but we were very against it early on. We didn’t want any cover tunes on Metal Health, so that was a huge battle. But Spencer’s idea was obviously a good one, considering it became such a big hit. Who knows what the record would have done without that song in the charts?”

How about the solo for Metal Health?

“After we reworked the Snow song No More Booze and the lyrics and melodies worked out, I tackled the solo. I used Marshall amps and a combination of Jackson, Charvel and Gibson guitars. I think I used my Flying V for most of it. I probably wasn’t the greatest guitar player back then. I was comfortable playing live, but being good in the studio is a whole different game than being good live. 

“Now I had to try and do what I was used to doing on stage in a studio, which was hard because there was no crowd to inspire me. It took a lot of takes, but I did the best I could with it. As a guitar player, I feel you need a good producer to help get the best out of you, which Spencer did with me. It wasn’t one inspired moment but a lot of hard work and collaboration with Spencer.”

Why did Quiet Riot falter after Metal Health?

“That was the high point, and it was a lot of pressure to keep up with Metal Health. But I don’t think it was the band’s fault; our producers and record label always tried to push us in certain directions that didn’t make sense. For instance, the QR III record [1986] had many songs that weren’t metal at all. We should have stuck to our guns and stayed true to what we were about. 

“If we had, we could have come up with way better songs than what ended up on that album. And it wasn’t for lack of trying; we’d submit songs, and they’d say, 'No, we don’t like those. Go back to the drawing board and write some more.' They were always trying to push us into a more radio-friendly space, and that was never the type of band Quiet Riot was.”

Was it challenging to stay relevant?

“Oh, it definitely was. There was such a groundswell of incredible players, and you had to always stay on top of things. The good thing was that I read music, so I was constantly learning licks from books. I liked to read music and always wanted to improve my playing. I play classical, flamenco, Spanish guitar and stuff like that, adding a new flavor. It was a time when you had to constantly try to improve yourself. 

“At the same time, you had to keep your songwriting good, too, because a lot of it is songwriting. The truth is you can be a poor guitar player but a great songwriter, make great money and have a great career. You could also be a great guitar player without a career because you can’t write songs. I found that the important thing was to find a balance between both. I worked to be a great guitar player and songwriter, which is very hard.”

Did interjecting classical and flamenco touches help?

“I hoped it would set me apart from a lot of people. But I think a lot of the guys from that era, like Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen and even Eddie Van Halen, were classically trained to some degree. That style of music started to wash over the entire era in the ’80s; it was everywhere.

”Still, I always tried to interject classical and Spanish-flavored things into my playing whenever possible. I’d go with it if I felt it fit well with the song. It had to fit the mood, but some songs lend themselves to that, which is good because I was so influenced by them.”

Did being labeled a “shredder” bother you?

“No, because I feel any label can be a good thing. The way I look at it is if they’re acknowledging you, you must be doing something noteworthy. But I couldn’t control any of that; I just tried to focus on improving.

”I had good and bad points and worked to highlight the good ones and fix the bad ones. Plus, if you were a good shredder, it was a good idea to go for it and shred; it could be what got you a career.

”As a guitar player, you must focus on doing what you’re good at and highlighting that. So if someone wanted to give the label of 'shredder' or 'melodic guitar player', that’s not something that ever bothered me. I’d happily accept it.”

Do you have any regrets from your time with Quiet Riot?

“Just the way the band basically fell apart. We were up there with Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe and Bon Jovi, but we dropped off the face of the Earth because of certain behaviors by certain members of the band, leading to our demise. I wish there was 'celebrity control' back then to help people with bad behavior problems. I don’t want to mention any names or specific people; I think everyone knows who I’m talking about.”

Was Quiet Riot a case of missed opportunity?

“That band was definitely a missed opportunity. We could have done much more, like, way more, and it’s unfortunate. I was one of the primary songwriters in Quiet Riot, and it got to the point where I didn’t want to bring my best ideas to the table anymore because any idea I brought into the band would be ripped apart and end up being something I never intended it to be. I started holding back my best songs and saving them.

“What ended up happening was, when I joined Ratt, a lot of the songs I held back from Quiet Riot ended up being on Ratt’s Infestation [2010]. I brought them to the guys in Ratt, and they didn’t rip it apart at all; they loved my songs. It was great, like a whole different thing. At least, that’s how it was at first. There are some personality problems in Ratt, but the ones in Quiet Riot were worse and screwed things up badly.”

How did you end up in Ratt?

“I got a call from Warren [DeMartini]; he left a message. I missed the call, and when I saw it was Warren, I was like, 'Oh, what does he want? There must be some big party he wants to invite me to.' But when I called him back, he told me Ratt was looking for another guitar player and was wondering if I’d want to come down and hang out with them. I went down, rehearsed and checked it out. 

“Things felt good between us, and it ended up working out. I brought some songs, they had some songs, and we recorded Infestation. I liked working with those guys, and honestly, it was more fun playing with Ratt than playing with Quiet Riot. I know the guys in Ratt have their set of problems, but they have a whole different set of problems from Quiet Riot.”

So why join Ratt if they also were dysfunctional? 

“Yes, they were and are dysfunctional, and I’m sure Ratt will never happen again because of everything that has gone on. There’s too much water under that bridge, and I guess too many bad things happened. But you know, Ratt’s dysfunction isn’t so much about ego; it’s more business-related. Whereas Quiet Riot is all ego-driven stuff. There was a lot of one-upmanship, betrayal and dark stuff that happened within that bad. 

“So in that way, Ratt is very different. They had their own differences with each other because they’ve been together longer, but I got along with each of the guys in Ratt. But without going into too much detail, things within Ratt were definitely weird.”

What would you say was the final nail in the coffin?

“When they decided to fire Warren for whatever reason. I’m sure it was about business, but that was not a great business move. Once Warren was fired, I didn’t see myself being in Ratt anymore.

”I already went through situations in Quiet Riot where they were dumping people left and right, and I didn’t want to deal with that again. I don’t want to be in a band where the lineup is a revolving door. I wanted to be the way we were, but it got to the point where that was no longer possible. So, I didn’t want to do it anymore, and I told them I was done.”

How did you end up with King Kobra?

“Carmine [Appice] called and asked me to record a song or two on the new record. I said, 'Sure. Why not?' I guess they liked what I did because they asked me, 'Can you just do the whole record?' Once again, I said, 'Yeah, why not?' It’s refreshing, and I like working with those guys. I’ve worked with Carmine before on past projects and with Paul [Shortino] many times over the years, too.”

What guitars are you using these days? 

“I’ve been using Gibson a lot. I still use Jackson and Charvel but mainly Gibson Flying Vs. I love them, and I’ve been recording with them for a long time. I still have the V that I got in the very early ’80s, and that’s mainly what I used on the new King Kobra record. I love the sound of them and the way they play. I don’t overthink it beyond that. They fit what I’m doing, and I like how they feel. They’re great guitars.”

Do you keep your pickups stock, or do you upgrade?

“With the Gibson guitars, I leave the stock pickups in there. I think they’re humbuckers in there these days. But with the Flying V that I got in the early ’80s, I put DiMarzio pickups in there. But their new ones sound so good that I don’t feel I need to change them. So the Gibson pickups are great, but as far as the Jackson and Charvel guitars, I still put DiMarzios in those guitars.”

And what combination of amps are you plugging into now? 

“I am all about traditional tube amps. I’ve been using Soldano amps for the last 10 or 15 years, and they’re great. Aside from that, I like Marshalls because it’s hard to get rental Soldano amps when you’re on the road. I’d like to take them out or rent them, but they’re pretty rare custom amps, so I don’t always have that option. I usually go with Marshall JCM900s because they’re the most readily available; they sound good and are super-consistent in terms of what you’ll get.”

Does being lumped in with hair metal bother you?

“No, I don’t think it’s derogatory. Back then, everybody went crazy with their hairstyles. It really is true that it was a competition to see who could have the biggest hairstyle. [Laughs] We really were hair metal bands, so no, it doesn’t bother me. If anything, it’s a funny term that maybe makes you giggle.

”If anything, I’m proud of my hair metal heritage. I’m glad I still have my hair! [Laughs] It’s a memory of a certain time, and I guess that decade will never go away. People seem to love it, which is not bad for those of us who were there.”

If Quiet Riot were to call out of the blue, do you think you would ever consider rejoining?

“Oh, I don’t know. I try not to think too much about it. I guess if they want to continue, then that’s fine. One way to look at it is that the current lineup continuing only helps the brand and helps the name. But I don’t see myself doing that anymore… I can’t imagine doing it. I closed that chapter in my life and moved on.

”It was so long ago, and so much has happened. Going back seems out of the question for the most part. I jumped off that crazy train, and I don’t know if I can get back on it.”

Where do you go from here?

“Truthfully, sometimes I don’t even care about being in a band and touring anymore. At this point in my life, I’m sure I will probably be doing something with music, but exactly what that might be isn’t clear. I don’t mind recording records with people at this stage, but as far as heavy touring, I don’t know if I could do that anymore. I guess it depends on who it’s with. 

“Beyond that, I’m sure I’ll make more music, play more Spanish and classical guitar, focus on making some interesting Latin music, and keep teaching guitar to my few students. It’s a lot of work to go out there and fly around these days. I’m still passionate about guitar, but interested in winding down rather than ratcheting up.”

In 1982, only a couple of years after they first disbanded, Quiet Riot reformed with a reshuffled lineup.

Headed up by original vocalist Kevin DuBrow, the new-look Quiet Riot featured drummer Frankie Banali, bassist Chuck Wright, and former Snow electric guitar player Carlos Cavazo, who was recruited to replace Randy Rhoads.

With Rhoads’ blessing, the group got to work recording new material under the Quiet Riot banner, and Cavazo set about filling the six-string shoes recently vacated by one of the fastest rising guitar stars of the ‘70s.

While many would find the prospect intimidating, Cavazo, it turns out, was surprisingly nonplussed: the pressure didn’t get to him one bit.

Speaking in the current issue of Guitar World, Cavazo retraced his Quiet Riot ride, and explained both how he managed to face up to the pressure that came with the role, and ended up replacing Randy Rhoads with the help of Rhoads himself.

“Snow had just broken up, and we were moving all our shit out of our house, trying to figure out what to do,” Cavazo begins. “As that was happening, out of nowhere, I got a call from Kevin, and he said, ‘Hey, man, we’re looking for a new guitar player for Quiet Riot. Would you be interested?’”

Cavazo was keen. Soon after the call, he was rehearsing with his future bandmates, already forming songs that would feature on their Metal Health album. According to the guitarist, “The chemistry was cool immediately, and things between us were great early on.”

But what put DuBrow on the path to Cavazo in the first place? Well, that was apparently down to Rhoads, who apparently name dropped the outgoing Snow guitarist as his potential replacement.

“In a way, Randy indirectly got me the gig,” Cavazo continues. “Apparently, Randy was the one who told Kevin, ‘Hey, you should check out this guy Carlos. A lot of my students are talking about him and saying he’s really good. Give him a call for Quiet Riot.’ Kevin got a hold of me through that grapevine.”

Once he joined the band, Cavazo quickly felt comfortable. The thought of replacing Rhoads didn't phase him.

Rhoads may have been a rapidly rising guitar star who'd go on to become one the most influential trailblazers of his time, but Cavazo concedes he wasn't too familiar with his playing in the early '80s – something that ultimately worked in his favor.

“I was definitely comfortable doing what I did best. People have to remember that at the time, Randy’s work with Quiet Riot was pretty unknown,” he concludes. “As far as I was concerned, I only knew Randy as the guitar player for Ozzy [Osbourne]. 

“So I never felt any pressure to be or play like Randy; I felt comfortable doing what I had been doing on the club scene with Snow. It seemed to work, and I think my not being influenced by Randy was good for the band and the record.”

Head over to Magazines Direct to pick up the latest issue of Guitar World, which features the full interview with Cavazo and an exclusive cover feature on Steve Vai and Joe Satriani.

Some 40 years after its initial release, Quiet Riot's Metal Health is still raging through the hallowed halls of heavy metal's sacred history.

As a precursor of Sunset Strip excess, Metal Health set the template for glam metal just a few short years – if not months – after its 1983 release. But the lead-up to the recording wasn't easy and involved significant levels of tragedy and personal exploration through music to reach the finish line.

Quiet Riot's then, and once again current bass player, Rudy Sarzo, reflects on reentering the fold: 'I came back to Quiet Riot not long after Randy [Rhoads] had passed away. My first show with Quiet Riot after I returned was at the Roxy, maybe a year after Randy had passed. He passed in '82, so this would have been in '83.

"I returned because I had recorded some tracks on the record, and it felt right. I wanted to honor the legacy of Randy and see it through; in my heart, it felt like the right thing to do, and I loved the music, too. We did four shows in two nights at the Roxy that weekend and sold them all out. From there, things began to blow up."

Indeed, Sarzo was left reeling after the passing of his close friend Randy Rhoads. As brothers bonded through music, Sarzo and Rhoads shared the stage in Quiet Riot's earliest incarnation before coming together once more in Ozzy Osbourne's solo group.

Like many who shared space in Rhoads' inner circle, Sarzo was devastated. Moreover, his passion for music had waned. But reclaiming his spot as a member of Quiet Riot reinvigorated him, and the recording of Metal Health – one of the era's seminal records – paved the way towards healing.

"Of course, Metal Health opened the door for us," Sarzo recalls. "It helped put a huge focus on the Sunset Strip and gave other bands playing the same type of music as we were an opportunity to go out there and be on MTV. But at the core of it, making Randy proud and preserving the legacy was the motivation.

"The reason why I first went in there to record Thunderbird and Slick Black Cadillac in the first place was for Randy. I did that as a tribute to him. That was it. That was the first step. Everything after that was just a natural progression."

These days, Sarzo is once again back 'home', and his energy is effervescent. With more and more tracks being lifted from their mothballs and Quiet Riot's current incarnation – which remains polarizing – continuing to tour, it appears that for now at least, Quiet Riot has not yet met the end of its ever-winding road. And for Sarzo, that's just fine.

"People can say what they like," Sarzo scoffs. "We're out there playing this music because it's what we love to do. I enjoy getting on stage with these guys. This isn't a cover band. This is Quiet Riot. I've been in and out of this band for a long time, and I always seem to come back. I feel it's my duty to help preserve the legacy. I do this for Frankie, Kevin, and Randy. They're always in my heart; this music means a lot to me. We'll keep going for as long as people will have us."

Nostalgic as he recounts years spent with fallen friends, Rudy Sarzo dialed in with Guitar World to discuss the 40th anniversary of Metal Health, as well as the enduring legacy of his old friend, and bandmate, Randy Rhoads.

What are your memories of Quiet Riot's early days?

"My history with this band goes way back. I've said this before, but Quiet Riot is like home for me. I first joined the band in 1978, which was the Randy Rhoads version of Quiet Riot. Prior to that, I had begun to make money playing music, but there were a lot of dead ends.

"So, Frankie Banali, who I had known since '72, and I decided to leave Florida – where we were – and head up to Chicago. We played that circuit and eventually made our way to L.A. This kept growing from there, and before we knew it, we were getting bigger and making a name for ourselves."

A lot of focus tends to center around the Metal Health era of the band, but how do you measure the importance of the Randy Rhoads era?

"It's just as important. Going back to '78, when I first joined Quiet Riot, all of our energy and focus went into getting a record deal. We wanted to record that album so that we could get out on tour and play shows as professional musicians. Before Quiet Riot, the bands I had been in were focused on the top-40, so this was the first time everyone in a band I was in focused on the same concept and goals. But, of course, having Randy in the band was a huge part of that."

What was it about Randy that moved the needle?

"The reason why, in my opinion, is that Randy had the highest musical integrity of any musician I've ever met or played with. When it comes to Randy, there are many facets to it, but one is that he was born into a musical family and academia. His parents were both professors, and his mom opened a music school in North Hollywood, California. So, Randy started reading music, studying harmonies and composition, and playing classical acoustic guitar before he picked up an electric guitar.

"Most kids were into rock 'n' roll, going to parties, and picking up girls, which was great. But the impression I got when I met Randy Rhoads was that he was slightly different. That was the first time that I truly experienced musical integrity.

"With Randy, it was all about the music, nothing else. There was no focus on what party we were going to or what girl we were seeing; the music was front and center. So, I met him and immediately knew, 'Okay, I want to be a part of this.' I've taken those basic things I learned from Randy early on into every band I've been in since."

How had Randy evolved by the time you joined him in Ozzy Osbourne's band?

"Oh, man. He was incredible, man. By that point, he had even more musical dexterity. Being able to play with Randy in both bands was incredible. I'm the only musician that was blessed to be able to do that. I played with him in Quiet Riot, so being able to join him in Ozzy's band was a whole new animal.

"In many ways, Randy was a totally different musician by that point. So, now, there was musical integrity, but with Ozzy, he was carrying a different sort of load. With Quiet Riot, the band was his baby, and we were fighting for a record deal. But with Ozzy, there was a deal, and now he was being asked to help someone who had established write music after he had left Black Sabbath."

Did Randy seem to feel any pressure when tasked with writing for Ozzy?

"That's hard to say. I do know that Randy asked Ozzy, 'How and what do you want me to write?' And Ozzy basically told him, 'Just be yourself. That's why you're here.' And that's where that classical musical influence we saw from the beginning came out; it was so natural for him. Not only was it natural, but he began to pursue it harder after that. That's where he saw himself as he began to lean into classical music, leading him to a new level of musicianship.

"But with Ozzy, I have to go back to the integrity thing again. Randy refused to record the Speak of the Devil record, which we eventually did with Brad Gillis. When this happened, Ozzy went off the rails and fired the band, which he later took back. He gave Randy a tough time, but Randy wanted to go back to school and get his master's. That's all he cared about. Ultimately, he agreed to do it and do one more tour, but it never happened because he passed away.

"Randy was a rock star, and he became the biggest guitarist in the world. But he didn't care; he was the only person I ever saw who would turn their back on stardom just to go back to school to pursue what they felt would bring their musicianship to the highest level."

Do you feel the trajectory of guitar-driven music would have been significantly altered had Randy survived?

"I think Randy would have taken metal to a new dimension because it was natural for him to do things like that. He was such a passionate musician, and if you see images of him playing with Quiet Riot and then Ozzy, the passion was always the same. That passion would have been there no matter where he played or how many people he played in front of.

"His personality never changed, even as his skills and stardom rose. People became aware of what he was doing, followed it, and believed in it. That alone would have altered the way guitar music went because I don't think that would have changed. To this day, even though he left us so young, his music still influences everything. It's still everywhere. If he had the chance to do more, forget about it."

Invariably, people compare Randy to Eddie Van Halen. Who do you feel had the edge?

"People need to remember that Randy did not live long enough to be the best Randy Rhoads. There was so much more inside of him that we never got to see. So, to me, it's apples and oranges. If you're asking who my favorite is, again, I like to drink apple and orange juice [Laughs]. But I played with Randy, and I know how great he was because I saw it firsthand on stage.

"As for Eddie, I jammed with him at a NAMM show one time in the '80s. But that's not the same as getting up on stage and playing live on the road. It's not the same as collaborating and creating; it's completely different. They're entirely different musicians and both utterly unique and transcendent. They both changed music forever and have changed the lives of many guitarists. To me, there is no debate. I enjoy them both."

Circling back to the Metal Health era, what was it about that lineup that bred such unique chemistry?

"That is a really good question. Of course, this is my perception of being there. In the years after Randy had left Quiet Riot, Kevin DuBrow had worked very hard to get better and better as a songwriter. When Randy was in the band, the focus was on him – as it should have been. But after he left, and once Kevin got Quiet Riot going again, he became the ringmaster. So I can give you some references. But the old Quiet Riot ceased when Randy left to join Ozzy in 1979. After that, Kevin Dubrow put his own band together called Dubrow. With Randy gone, the main attraction was now Kevin, and he gained a lot of charisma, which came out on the record.

"A lot of that material, like Thunderbird, was written after Randy left when Kevin was calling his band DuBrow instead of Quiet Riot, and Slick Black Cadillac was written with Randy still in the band. But once we all got back together, you had Frankie Banali, a great arranger. He could take parts, put them together, and make them make sense. And I had learned a lot playing with Ozzy, and my musicianship had elevated. And then, of course, Carlos Cavazo was a great guitar player with his own style; he's all over that record. We had grown as musicians, and once we all came together, it was the perfect storm."

What are your most poignant memories of Metal Health's recording?

"When it first happened, I was still a member of Ozzy's band and was getting ready to leave town to record the Speak of the Devil album live at the Ritz. So, a few days before I left, I got a phone call from Kevin, and he said, 'Hey, do you want to come down to the studio we're working at? I've got a possible record deal, and we want to lay down some demos.' Well, the song he wanted to do was Thunderbird, which is a song that I used to play with Kevin when I was a member of DuBrow before I joined Ozzy's band, so I said, 'Sure. I know the song; that's easy.'

"Once I got down there, the guys asked me, 'Hey, do you remember Slick Black Cadillac?' I said, 'Yeah, I used to do that with Quiet Riot with Randy, too. I can do it.' It kept going like that, and by the time I had left the session, I had done maybe four or five songs, all of which ended up on the record. So, what ended up happening was that I played on the whole Metal Health record, except for Metal Health and Don't Wanna Let You Go, which Chuck Wright played on."

What led to you officially rejoining Quiet Riot?

"Like I said, I was still a member of Ozzy when I did the demos and then the actual recording of Metal Health. I don't know… I loved the idea of playing with Frankie and Kevin again, especially Frankie, who I'd known since '72. And Kevin was my good friend, too. I would hang out with him whenever I got off the road with Ozzy.

"I guess I hoped that rejoining Quiet Riot would get me out of the funk that I was in. When Randy passed, I lost the joy associated with playing music. It became a job and was never the same for me. It was never the same going on stage and playing those Ozzy songs without Randy. Sure, we had the same clothes, and it was the same songs, but there was no Randy. The show would begin, and I'd think, 'God, what is this? It's all wrong.' It became about surviving the grief, and the pain, you know."

So, going back to Quiet Riot was more about healing, then?

"In a way, I think it was. Randy's death still felt fresh. But going back to Quiet Riot, I think it brought me back to what I had lost in some ways. When Randy passed away, one of the many things that I lost was my brotherhood with him. But being back in the band, there I was with Frankie and Kevin. Frankie and I had a brotherhood even before Quiet Riot, and playing with Kevin, meant so much. I left Ozzy's band – one of the biggest in the world – for Quiet Riot, which was essentially a complete unknown. I did that because I needed the joy of playing music again."

40 years on, how do you measure the importance of Metal Health?

"Well, its importance on my journey is probably even more meaningful than the overarching impact on metal. Because you're talking about something that I recorded on how it affects me versus something that I recorded and how it affects the rest of the world, which is hard for me to measure, it will have a way bigger impact on me than overall, I think.

"If you look at the back of Metal Health's cover, you'll see it's dedicated to Randy Rhoads. When we talk about Metal Health, we're talking about a record that, in many ways, symbolizes me, Frankie, and Kevin's connection with Randy. Randy taught by example; he knew the importance of being clear and pure with his actions. You'd have to be in a coma not to understand that dedication and purity of actions were ingrained in us, and it's all over that record.

"So, we made Metal Health, and we had this wonderful piece of music that truly celebrates his legacy. And 40 years later, we can celebrate that and the band's legacy. To me, Randy will always be a member of Quiet Riot, and that never goes away. So, how do we celebrate that legacy? What we did was go out and make a record worth remembering. That's what Metal Health means to me."

And when you look back on Randy Rhoads, how do you measure his importance?

"Well, it's different from the average person listening to his music, because I got to know him as a person. I got to live with him on a tour bus. I got to be with him on stage. I got to watch him compose with Quiet Riot. So, my answer is going to come from that reference point. But I think what's really a shame is that if he had survived and were still with us today, everything would have been different. Randy's level of importance is measured by what he did, but it would be different if he had had the chance to live on.

"From the time he left Quiet Riot to those two Ozzy records, the growth musically and the diversity of the music just exploded. I think that, in a way, his importance is to inspire others. Randy inspires me daily in many ways, and I know he still inspires guitar players and musicians. That would not have changed if he were alive today. 

"What I'm trying to say is he already did that, with just two albums and two tours. He didn't have much time to go out there and present himself to the masses, and there's very little video footage of him doing so, but he still did that. The simple fact that kids today can hear something that he recorded 40 years ago and still be influenced by it shows that through his music, he will never be gone. He's timeless."

Rudy Sarzo’s bass-playing resume is as remarkable as it is impressive. Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake, Dio, Whitesnake, the Guess Who and more; it might actually be easier to list the people this extraordinary rock bassist hasn’t played with over the past nearly five decades.

Not only did Sarzo play with Randy Rhoads in Quiet Riot and Ozzy Osbourne’s band, he also was one of Randy’s closest friends. In fact, his book, Off the Rails: Aboard the Crazy Train in the Blizzard of Ozz, is a must-read for any serious Rhoads fan.

Rudy kindly took the time to recall some key moments during his precious time with Randy. 

“The first time I saw Quiet Riot was in August 1977 at the Starwood in West Hollywood,” Sarzo says. “I’d just moved to L.A. and was networking. I saw the band perform and went, ‘Wow, these guys are doing an arena performance in a club. They’ve really got it together.’ 

“I was also super impressed by Randy. There were a bunch of guys in front of him checking out his playing, and also a lot of girls wearing the same polka-dotted bow tie he was [wearing]! He had the perfect balance, the perfect appeal: guys wanted to be like Randy, and girls wanted to be with Randy. 

“I thought to myself, ‘That’s a rock star in the making right there.’ I ran into Kevin [DuBrow, Quiet Riot’s vocalist] afterwards, introduced myself and said, ‘Keep doing what you’re doing — you’re going to make it.’ And that was it.”

A year later, Kevin called Rudy to audition, and the rest is now multi-platinum, Quiet Riot history.

Speaking of rock history, as you know, Randy left Quiet Riot in late 1979 to join forces with Osbourne after his somewhat unceremonious parting of the ways with Black Sabbath. 

“Randy was destined for greatness, and his mother, Delores, was instrumental in him taking the Ozzy Osbourne gig,” Sarzo says. “She realized it was a huge opportunity for him, even though it meant him leaving both his families – Quiet Riot and also his job at her music school, Musonia. Delores was definitely a big deciding factor ’cause Randy was pretty comfortable teaching eight hours a day.”

After turning down an earlier offer, Rudy reunited with Randy when he joined Osbourne’s touring band in March 1981. The musical difference he saw in his friend was palpable.

“By the time I played with him in Ozzy, he’d already been honing that ‘Randy-ness,’” Sarzo says with a laugh. 

“I wasn’t playing with the guy in Quiet Riot anymore — I was playing with Randy Rhoads, the Hall of Fame guitar player! He was great in Quiet Riot, of course, but we were just a local band in L.A. trying to please the local record labels and get a deal. 

“He obviously didn’t need to do that with Ozzy because he was playing with a recording artist. He asked Ozzy, ‘What do you want me to write?’ And Ozzy’s reply was, ‘Just be yourself.’ Ozzy gave Randy his freedom, and that’s what came out.

“There was a major metamorphosis that happened in England, and it would have never happened in L.A. because of the musical atmosphere there at that time – or lack thereof, as far as rock ’n’ roll and metal goes,” Sarzo says. 

“It’s funny; Hendrix had to leave the States to go to England to become Jimi Hendrix, and so did Randy – he had to leave Los Angeles, go to England and free himself musically and truly become Randy Rhoads. And just like Hendrix, Randy became a leader. 

“He helped lead the metal invasion that came from England after he joined Ozzy. And you were a part of that [writer/guitarist Nick Bowcott was a founding member of Grim Reaper], so you know exactly what I’m talking about! He led the pack. There were a lot of great bands but only one Randy Rhoads.”

The other major change Rudy witnessed occurred when Randy won a prestigious award.

“It happened on December 30, 1981,” Sarzo says. “It was the opening night of the U.S. Diary of a Madman tour and Randy received the “Best New Talent” award backstage from the editor of Guitar Player. That was a major pivot point for him because it put into perspective just how much people were paying attention to him.

“Remember, back then there was no social media – no posts, no videos, no nothing. There was no ‘instant gratification.’ After getting that award, I saw a whole new commitment – he went on this intense quest to become the best Randy that Randy could be. After getting that award, every time we hit a new town, Randy would immediately go for the yellow pages to try and find the best local music store or school that gave lessons. I actually have a photo of him doing that! 

“Randy’s theory was, ‘I can tell how good the school is by what they offer in their ad.’ Sometimes the teacher he chose didn’t have the same level of musical knowledge that he had, so Randy wound up giving them a lesson and paying for it!” [Laughs]

“Randy is a life-changing experience,” Sarzo adds. “He’s changed a lot of lives and will continue to do so for many decades. As great as those Ozzy albums are, to witness Randy’s live interpretation of what he recorded was mind blowing. If you were lucky enough to see him do that at multiple shows, as I was, you’d be really able to understand just how much Randy forever changed my life.”

It’s been confirmed that a feature-length documentary celebrating the life and legacy of late electric guitar legend Randy Rhoads will be arriving later this year.

Due May 6, the film will be narrated by LA Guns axeman Tracii Guns, and will contain a wealth of interviewees, including Ozzy Osbourne, George Lynch, Dweezil Zappa and Joel Hoekstra, as well as Bruce Kulick, Doug Aldrich and Jon Donais.

Randy Rhoads: Reflections of a Guitar Icon will also feature archive clips of both Gary Moore and Eddie Van Halen – the latter of whom will no doubt provide insight into the pair’s perceived blockbuster rivalry.

Never-before-seen footage and close-up clips of Rhoads wrestling with his beloved guitars, most notably his white Gibson Les Paul Custom and Sandoval Polka Dot V, will also be found throughout the documentary’s runtime.

You can watch the first trailer for the upcoming documentary – which features the voices of Osbourne and Van Halen – in the video below.

Marketed as “the untold true story” of Rhoads’ life, the film will trace the guitarist’s beginnings with Quiet Riot, his audition and subsequent time playing with Ozzy Osbourne, and the transcendent impact Rhoads’ playing had on the entire electric guitar landscape.

The documentary will also explore the legacy Rhoads left behind, after the guitarist tragically died in a plane crash at the age of just 25 in Leesburg, Florida, 40 years ago.

Speaking to ScreenRant, director Andre Relis said, “I’m beyond excited to be sharing Randy Rhoads: Reflections of a Guitar Icon with the world. I grew up listening to Randy in Quiet Riot and Ozzy Osbourne, and was inspired by his unmatchable talent. 

“So much,” he added, “that I actually joined a band in the 90’s – a punk, metal infusion called Rubberneck – and became a touring artist. I’m thankful to my team of producers, and thankful to Tracii for helping to narrate the film and showcase the life of such a legendary guitarist.”

The 85-minute documentary – which was directed by Relis, and written and edited by Michael Bruining – will be available to stream across VOD platforms, such as iTunes and Amazon, from May 6.

Three months after it was announced that Rudy Sarzo would be rejoining Quiet Riot, the bass guitar player has made his first live appearance with the band in almost 20 years.

New fan-shot footage shows the bassist joining the veteran rock group – which currently consists of Sarzo, guitarist Alex Grossi, vocalist Jizzy Pearl and drummer Johnny Kelly – at The Groove Music Hall in Woodford, Virginia on Saturday (November 6). Check it out below.

Sarzo announced his return to Quiet Riot – the band formed by Randy Rhoads in 1975 – earlier this year. The move meant the departure of longtime bassist Chuck Wright, who subsequently stepped aside to focus on his solo career.

But Sarzo's return comes slightly earlier than he had originally promised. When he announced the news during an appearance on SiriusXM's Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk back in August, he said that he would be “returning home to Quiet Riot in the beginning of 2022, next year.”

He continued: “Next year marks 50 years of my journey with Quiet Riot, because that's when I met and I started playing with Frankie Banali, another founding member of the Metal Health version of Quiet Riot. That was a turning point [for me] as a musician,” he says.

Metal Health was the name of Quiet Riot's third studio album, released in 1983. It featured hits including Cum on Feel the Noize and Metal Health (Bang Your Head). Sarzo also appeared on the album's followup, Condition Critical (1984), before leaving the band in 1985. He later rejoined in 1997 for a six-year stint, leaving again in 2003.

During his time away from the band, Sarzo worked with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne, Dio, Blue Öyster Cult, Geoff Tate's Operation: Mindcrime, The Guess Who and Whitesnake.

In a recent interview with Adika Live! (transcribed by Blabbermouth), Sarzo discussed his return to the band. 

“My decision, in addition to [it] being [late Quiet Riot drummer] Frankie [Banali's] request that I return to the band, was a decision that I had to meditate on, because it is that important. Not meditate whether it was the right decision to make or not, [but rather] to meditate about the timing of it. Because it could not be an abrupt decision that you drop everything you're doing and you change the band.”

Continuing on the Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk podcast in August, Sarzo added: “After Frankie passed away, I went over to [his wife] Regina's house, and we talked, and she expressed to me that Frankie wanted me to come back to the band, that he wanted to have a founding member there.”

He added that his decision took “a lot of time to think about” because he was “already traumatized by Frankie's passing."

He continued: “So, the time came when I was ready to accept the reality, that it's our responsibility, of us left behind, to carry on with the legacy and celebrate it. So that's when I decided. I said, ‘Okay, it's time for me to come home.’”

Quiet Riot – the band formed by Randy Rhoads in 1973 – have announced they will welcome bassist Rudy Sarzo back into the fold in 2022 after an 18-year absence. He will replace Chuck Wright, who is stepping aside to focus on his solo career.

During a new appearance on SiriusXM's Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk, Sarzo says he is “returning home to Quiet Riot in the beginning of 2022, next year”.

“Next year marks 50 years of my journey with Quiet Riot, because that's when I met and I started playing with Frankie Banali, another founding member of the Metal Health version of Quiet Riot. That was a turning point [for me] as a musician,” he says.

1983's Metal Health was Quiet Riot's third studio album, and spawned hits including Cum on Feel the Noize and Metal Health (Bang Your Head). Its followup – Condition Critical – was the last album featuring Sarzo before his departure from the band in 1985. He did, however rejoin for a six-year period from 1997, before leaving again in 2003.

During his years out of the band, Sarzo has played with Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake, Dio, Blue Öyster Cult, Queensrÿche and The Guess Who.

Regarding his return to Quiet Riot, Sarzo continues: “After Frankie told me in 2019 that he had pancreatic cancer, and then he started his fight, it was a daily fight. I mean, he would be taking multiple treatments to fight it, and he would be touring. It was really an exhausting thing. So we stopped hanging out as much because, obviously, he was too tired. So we would text each other a lot – every day – and stay in touch.

“He let me know in April of 2019 [of his cancer diagnosis], and Covid happened in 2020. That really made it impossible for me to be in his presence. It wasn't until a couple of days before he passed away that I was able to go to his house.

“[Banali's wife] Regina requested it, and I spent time with him. And then, the following day, when he was taken to the hospital, Regina made it possible for me to be with Frankie for his last hours. 

“So, after Frankie passed away, I went over to Regina's house, and we talked, and she expressed to me that Frankie wanted me to come back to the band, that he wanted to have a founding member there.”

He continues: “I was already traumatized by Frankie's passing, so it was a decision that I had to take a lot of time to think about – let the mourning period [pass].

“So, the time came when I was ready to accept the reality, that it's our responsibility, of us left behind, to carry on with the legacy and celebrate it. So that's when I decided. I said, ‘Okay, it's time for me to come home.’”

Rufus Publications has revealed the latest addition to its collection of electric guitar star-based books, Randy Rhoads by Ross Halfin – an extensive collection of photos and features that seeks to celebrate the life and legacy of the late Ozzy Osbourne guitarist.

Rhoads joined forces with Osbourne at the end of 1979, and played a pivotal part in both helping the former Black Sabbath frontman launch the next stage of his career and redefining the metal scene of the early ‘80s.

In 1982, the Quiet Riot guitarist tragically passed away at the age of 25 following a plane crash incident.

According to Rufus Publications, “Randy Rhoads by Ross Halfin celebrates his time with Randy and Ozzy Osbourne both onstage and off with hundreds of beautiful, largely unseen images from those early years.”

The generously sized feature-packed book measures 240mm by 340mm, and boasts 280 pages of celebratory content, as well as an introduction written by Osbourne and an epilogue penned by Rhoads fan Tom Morello.

“It’s weird, I only knew Randy for a couple of years, but it felt much longer. I felt like I knew him for my whole life,” said Osbourne. “I still think about him a lot, and I do wonder what he would be doing now.

“I owe him a huge amount – he was the beginning of me. He wasn’t just my guitarist, he was my friend,” continues the Black Sabbath legend.

Upon its release, the book will be available in three editions: the standard book, which features the volume and a cloth slim case, as well a Deluxe Signed Leather Edition and Super Deluxe Edition. While both sport the signatures of Ozzy Osbourne and Ross Halfin, the former features a blue leather cover and white leather slip case.

The latter edition boasts a larger 297mm by 420mm measurement, and flashes a blue leather cover, blue slipcase and outer presentation box with three numbered giclee prints.

Randy Rhoads by Ross Halfin will be available to preorder on May 12, and ships at the end of August.

Head over to Rufus Publications for more info.

It's not the first time Rufus Publications has teamed up with revered rock photographer Ross Halfin for a book, having recently released the Eddie Van Halen photo book.

Back in 1987, Zakk Wylde had yet to record with Ozzy Osbourne and Sebastian Bach hadn’t even met the guys in Skid Row. What did they have in common? Sky-high blond manes and a friend named Mark Weiss.

Which is how 19-year-old Bach, who had been singing for Detroit glam-metallers Madam X, and 20-year-old Wylde (then still going by Jeffrey Wielandt) both ended up putting on their Sunday best and attending Weiss’ wedding at the Molly Pitcher Inn in Red Bank, New Jersey on June 14, 1987.

Weiss was already a big-name photographer, having shot the album covers for Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry and Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet (Jon Bon Jovi’s parents were at the wedding, too), as well as taken iconic shots of Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Motley Crue, Quiet Riot and many other hard rock and metal bands. You can see these and more in his recently released book, The Decade That Rocked.

Soon enough, Weiss would be instrumental in hooking up Wylde with Ozzy and Bach with Skid Row. But for one day only, the two became members of his wedding band.

Together, they played covers of Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll and Whole Lotta Love, as well as Quiet Riot’s Metal Health (Bang Your Head), with another wedding attendee, Quiet Riot vocalist Kevin DuBrow, joining in somewhat reluctantly on vocals.

“Kevin had said something to Sebastian like, “No matter what, do not ask me to come up onstage. I don’t feel like it,’ ” Weiss recalls. “And so of course Sebastian gets up there and the first thing he says into the mic is, ‘Kevin DuBrow, come on up!’ ”

Weiss recently premiered this wedding footage during a virtual pay-per-view event, Welcome to My Exhibition, that raised funds for New Jersey’s Monmouth Museum, which hosted an exhibition of Weiss’ photography this year. Guests during the broadcast included Wylde, Yngwie Malmsteen, Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy and others. 

But this is the first time he has shown the Metal Health performance, which in addition to Bach and DuBrow on vocals features Madam X drummer Mark “Bam Bam” McConnell and bassist Chris Doliber, as well as an insanely shreddy solo from Wylde on a Fender Telecaster.

Additionally, Weiss has contributed photos of DuBrow, who passed away in 2007, to author Missy Whitney’s new book, Keep On Rollin’, which chronicles her time running the Quiet Riot Squad Fan Club during the band’s heyday in the early 1980s.

Whitney is currently running a preorder for the book on Indiegogo, which is available here.

You can check out Guitar World's premiere of Metal Health, with a new intro from Zakk Wylde, above.

Break out your spandex and hairspray, because it’s time to head back to the Eighties. To many, the Eighties was the single most iconic era for rock guitar, as it produced so many legendary players.

In this new lesson video, Robert Baker kicks off the new year like it’s 1986, bringing you five iconic metal riffs for beginners. Rock out to riffs from Dokken, Def Leppard, and even Whitesnake.

You can grab the tabs for the lesson down below.

For more of Robert’s lessons, stop by his YouTube channel.

Quiet Riot guitarist Alex Grossi and American Idol finalist James Durbin recently announced a new collaboration, Maps to the Hollywood Scars.

Volume One, the duo’s debut five-song EP, which was released today (February 17), sheds light on the darker side of Hollywood and the music industry—at least from the perspective of two of rock’s hardest-working artists.

Songs like “Roads” and “The Lost Boys” showcase the stinging one-two punch of Grossi’s ace guitar playing and Durbin’s powerful voice, while “Never Ending Ride” is a window to a post-apocalyptic world of ruin.

I recently spoke with Grossi and Durbin about Maps to the Hollywood Scars, Volume One—which is available now via Amazon and iTunes—and more in this exclusive interview.

How did this collaboration come about? How did you guys meet?
GROSSI: I met James in 2011 via a mutual acquaintance. I remember being taken back, not only by his obvious vocal prowess but by his knowledge and love for real rock n' roll. Then, last year I went to a Vegas show he was doing, and we ended up jamming together at the after-party.

DURBIN: After the Vegas show I was involved in ended, I unexpectedly received an email from Alex sending me some instrumentals. I took a listen and was immediately inspired. We started sending ideas back and forth and before long decided, hell, why not make an album or two?

How would you describe the EP in terms of its sound—and maybe how it relates to some of your past projects?
DURBIN: We both have our own influences, and there's an age gap between us, but I think that works to our advantage as far as the writing and crafting goes. It’s all loosely based around rock n’ roll, so it’s not hard for us.

GROSSI: It's honestly like nothing I have done to date. We’ve both been involved in many different projects, but this happened so quickly and organically, it really stands on its own.

You’ve mentioned that this project was meant to showcase the darker side of Hollywood and the music biz. Can you elaborate on that?
GROSSI: It's not really about selling the industry—or Hollywood—down the river. It's more of a reflection of where the record industry was, is and where it's going. What once gave artists and record labels a medium to actually sell music has now become a place where the general consensus is that music is free. Where some people will gladly spend $4 on a cup of coffee without batting an eyelash but feel totally fine about illegally downloading a song or record that cost thousands of dollars and countless hours to create, produce and market.

What was the writing process like?
GROSSI: I usually just start with a chorus chord progression and then add the riffs and the guitar "window dressing" around that. I like to leave things wide open for the vocalist to do their thing, and that’s exactly what James did.

DURBIN: I keep a collection of lyrics and melodies in my phone and on my computer. As soon as I hear music, my brain immediately goes through my subconscious notebook. I tend to draw from fantasy or personal experience but usually end up matching the two of them together. The songs Alex wrote immediately fit with some of the lyrics and lonely melodies I’ve had for years.

Let’s discuss three standout tracks from the album: “Roads,” “The Lost Boys” and “Never Ending Ride.”
DURBIN: “Roads” is my answer to anyone who is curious about rock n’ roll. The simplest way to put it comes from the song itself: “It’s never pretty or fair, but we like it here, not for the money or the glory, but the chandelier.”

“The Lost Boys” was directly inspired by the Eighties cult movie of the same name. It was actually the first song I completed and demoed for Hollywood Scars. It goes by that fantasy/personal experience inspiration format.

“Never Ending Ride” is one of those songs that just wrote itself. I’m not sure if it’s about having hope in a hopeless world or about two lost souls trying to find life in a post-apocalyptic world. In many ways, it’s a companion song to “Roads."

James, what was the biggest lesson you learned from being on American Idol?
DURBIN: I don’t think I’ve figured out what the biggest lesson is yet, but one thing I’ve learned for sure is that at the end of the day I’m happy, grateful and blessed to have been given the opportunity to be an artist for a living. I’ve learned a lot about myself since being on American Idol. It was an epic life experience. I made some life-long friendships and got to work with some of my heroes. I don’t think it will ever stop teaching me things.

Alex, can you give me an update on Quiet Riot?
GROSSI: Quiet Riot has a lot of shows on the books as well as a new record coming out later this year via Frontiers Records. The Quiet Riot documentary, Well Now You're Here, There Is No Way Back, has been in active rotation on Showtime for a couple of years now. You can check it out at quietriotmovie.com. I’m so proud to be a part of such an iconic heavy metal band's continuing history.

What’s your current guitar setup like?
GROSSI: My preferred amp is the PRS Archon. It encompasses what I believe every amp should be. It can go from crystal clean to full-blown high-gain rock without losing clarity. I did the entire new QR record with a 1x12 25-watt Archon combo, and it didn't miss a beat. As for guitars, 2017 will be my 20th year as a PRS endorser. I’ll never play anything else. They can take a beating on tour and still sound great in the studio the next morning. I am also really digging the new Mooer pedals. They’re tiny but sound as good if not better than pedals eight times their size.

What gives you the most satisfaction about this new project?
GROSSI: What excites me most is the fact that James and I did this of our own free will, without anyone feeding us song ideas, lyrics or concepts. It was a creative process where we could be ourselves musically and professionally.

DURBIN: Like Alex said, this is our project. We own it and we’ve grown it. It’s been a pleasure writing, recording and laughing with each other, and I can’t wait for our collective audiences to hear what we’ve created.

Follow along on Facebook:

• Maps to the Hollywood Scars

• James Durbin

• Alex Grossi

Below, you can check out a fan-filmed video (ugh, it's vertical) of Quiet Riot performing their 1983 hit, "Cum On Feel the Noize," with their new lineup this past New Year's Eve in Flagstaff, Arizona.

The show marked the debut of the new lineup, which includes brand-new singer Jizzy Pearl (L.A. Guns, Ratt), plus drummer Frankie Banali, bassist Chuck Wright and guitarist Alex Grossi.

"I knew that resurrecting Quiet Riot was going to be a major challenge and undertaking," Banali told Loudwire recently. "You simply don't replace a singer and personality like Kevin DuBrow because he was the complete package, the real deal and my best friend. I never set out to replace Kevin, I set out to continue the band in his memory."

DuBrow died in 2007 of an accidental cocaine overdose at age 52.

For more about Quiet Riot, visit officialquietriot.com.

"Cum On Feel the Noise" was originally released by Slade in 1973.

A new Randy Rhoads biography is available now for $99 from Velocity Publishing Group.

The 400-page, full-color book by Steven Rosen and Andrew Klein features hundreds of rare photographs and samples of memorabilia and chronicles an oral history of Rhoads' life through the words of the people who knew him. The book is packed with poignant stories about the guitar icon.

Authors Klein and Rosen will host an exclusive book signing and Q&A session 4 p.m. Saturday, September 8, at Book Soup in Los Angeles.

The event will kick off 3 p.m. with a GJ2 guitar giveaway, courtesy of Grover Jackson, who was the founder and owner of Jackson/Charvel. He will give away the first guitar in his new line for the company. Jackson also will give away one Randy Rhoads book to the first 10 people who buy guitars from the new line.

There will be live music by Matt Beal and other giveaways, including 50 limited-edition posters of Rhoads, all of which have never been published (signed/numbered by the respective photographers). This will be the only book-signing venue in Southern California for 2012.

Before his death at age 25, Rhoads was on a fast track to being hailed as one of rock's best guitarists. Over a two-year period, he recorded two multi-platinum albums with Ozzy Osbourne.

Through his jaw-dropping six-string work on “Crazy Train,” “Mr. Crowley,” “Flying High Again” and other songs, Rhoads achieved legendary status as a guitar icon.

Rhoads' ability to bridge rock and classical techniques helped him forge a new style of playing. In 1981, Guitar Player magazine honored Rhoads by selecting him as best new talent of the year. The honor only motivated him to work harder.

His life ended March 19, 1982, when he was killed in a small private plane that careened into the garage of a plantation home in Leesburg, Florida. Since then, Rhoads has become a pop culture institution.

For more information about the book or to order, visit the book's page at Velocity Publishing Group’s website. Check out a video about the book below:

Since Rudy Sarzo turned up on heavy metal's radar in the early '80s as Ozzy Osbourne's bassist, he's made a career out of providing the low end to a bevy of heavy, household-name bands, from Whitesnake and Quiet Riot to Dio and Blue Öyster Cult.

However, Sarzo recently left BÖC to concentrate on a fairly new project, Animetal USA, a new version of a successful Japan-based power-metal band that reigned from 1996 to 2006.

Animetal USA includes singer Mike Vescera (who goes by "Metal-Rider" in the band), guitarist Chris Impellitteri ("Speed King"), Sarzo ("Stormbringer") and former Slayer drummer Jon Dette ("Tank"), who replaced Judas Priest's Scott Travis due to the ongoing success of Priest’s Epitaph Tour.

How to sum up the Animetal USA experience? Try mentally melding Japanese-style anime with speed metal.

"Animetal USA really excited me to be able to play more of the speed metal style," Sarzo says. "To play at 160, 180 bpm doing 16 beats. I never played like that with Whitesnake, I never played like that even with Quiet Riot, so this gives me a fresh challenge. It's also is an outlet to put my creativity playing in speed-metal style."

Below, Sarzo discusses the new album, reflects on his early days with Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads and discusses the future.

GUITAR WORLD: How did Animetal USA come about?

The band is Mike Vescera, our singer. He was a member of band called Loudness, which was one of Japan’s most significant metal bands. They were very popular in Japan, so he has been living in Japan for about two years. While he was there, he became a fan of anime. A few years ago, there was band called Animetal, and they did what we do, which was basically take anime theme songs and do them in the style of heavy metal or speed metal. We’re basically more of a speed metal band.

Animetal ceased to exist a few years back, so a couple of years ago, Mike was having a conversation with our record company, Sony Music. He was talking about the idea of resurrecting the whole concept of Animetal. So we're now called Animetal USA. The reason I was asked to join the band is I'm a 3D animator, I do graphics, compositing, animation and all that, and I'm fan of anime, being one of the most influential art forms of visual art that there is. Also I had toured in Japan with Ozzy, Quiet Riot, Whitesnake and Dio.

Then next came to getting a guitar player, Chris Impellitteri, which was one of the most popular guitar players in Japan with his own group, Impellitteri. The guy is just an amazing, amazing musician. On our first record, Scott Travis of Judas Priest was the drummer, but he’s so busy with his schedule with Judas Priest; when it came time to perform in Japan we recruited Jon Dette, who had been a member of Testament and Slayer. So that’s our band.

When we went in to record our second album, that was the group. We have two albums on Sony Music. The first is called Animetal USA. The second is called W. it’s a very famous phrase in the anime world. It’s distributed throughout the world through Century Music. Through Century Music we basically have what’s called the Special Edition, which is songs taken from the first and second albums.

As a bassist, are you playing differently with Animetal USA than with any of your other bands?

It’s always refreshing where you can play with a group where you can actually use certain musical skills you didn’t get to practice with other bands. One of the things that enabled me to go toward playing with Ozzy to Quiet Riot to Whitesnake to Dio to Animetal USA is the fact that I can adapt to the style of the band. With Animetal USA, it excited me to be able to play more of the speed metal style. To play at 160, 180 bpm doing 16 beats -- I never played like that with Whitesnake, I never played like that even with Quiet Riot, so this gives me a whole fresh challenge. It's also an outlet to put my creativity playing in speed metal style.

Are you still using Peavey basses?

I do still play Peavey basses, which is what I played on both albums. I use a four-string and the five-string. There’s a lot of different tuning, a lot of drop tuning. So sometimes instead of me dropping down to a C, I actually tune my D string to a C, which actually gives me a tighter feel, especially when I’m playing really fast -- anything from 140 beats and above. It gives me better articulation and clarity in my count. It’s ideal to have a tighter string.

With the Peavey, the neck is stained, not painted. When that's the case, do you feel the vibrations in the wood?

That’s exactly what it is. After playing all these years, I’ve noticed that the more bare the wood is ... when I test a base I never plug it in. I pick it up and I see how it feels acoustically. I look at my left hand as a grip, and if I feel the vibration, that is a sign of a great instrument.

Do you use Peavey amps?

No, I haven’t used Peavey amps since Whitesnake. There was a period where I was using Ampeg prior to Whitesnake and Quiet Riot. With Ozzy I used mainly Ampeg, but in the '70s, I was using Acoustic and recently I started playing with Acoustic amps again, and I just love it. With Animetal USA, every single track and performance I do live is with my Acoustic amps. I just can’t believe the clarity, the punch, the volume. Actually, for the first time I have to put the amp as far away from me as possible. The volume, the clarity is just so overwhelming.

You were good friends with Randy Rhoads, who died in 1982. Do you still see his influence today -- and do you still think about him?

I think about him enough to have to sit down and write a book to answer the No. 1 question I get asked around the world: What was it like to play with Randy Rhoads? He’s such an influential musician even today, 30 years after his passing. The way I put it is, in any post-Randy Rhoads guitar player, I always hear some kind of influence in their performance, even in their compositional style. Every time I receive an email or a message on Facebook or whatever, from kids, young guitar players, 10, 14 years old, they say, "Man, I discovered Randy Rhoads. He’s my favorite guitar player."

That really touches me because it’s great to hear a new generation giving Randy the credit he deserves for being the well where most guitar players drink from. He has influenced generations and still does. So do I think of Randy every day? Of course I do. We all do. All of us that got to know him and perform with him. We have that common. We'll never lose that bond, that thread, our admiration toward Randy as a musician and as a friend.

A long time ago, you were feuding with Ozzy and a few other people. Is all that in the past now?

Yes, yes. Silly things happen. If you look at the big picture, you look more at what we have in common than what we have not. At the end of the day, that’s what always takes precedence. As a matter of fact, I’ll be doing a lot of interviews on behalf of Ozzy and Sharon for the latest release of the Speak of the Devil DVD. Everything is really wonderful between the Osbournes and me, which is the way it should be. Because if you ask me what the most significant group in my career was, it has to be being a member of the Ozzy Osbourne band. They gave me my first break, they took a chance on me, a complete unknown, just based on Randy’s recommendation. If it wasn’t for them we would probably not be having this conversation. I owe my career to Sharon, Ozzy and Randy Rhoads.

For someone who has been in the metal circuit for more than 30 years, how do you feel it has evolved or changed?

When I look up my influences, I can look back as far as Hendrix, to me the first metal influence, and then bands like Vanilla Fudge, which were metal and progressive. Then it keeps evolving -- Led Zeppelin, The Who, Deep Purple. They’re all part of the roots of the metal tree, and then it evolves. In the '70s, it kept evolving. It branched out to prog-rock, then Judas Priest, then to be a part of the new wave of metal with Ozzy, British metal. To tour with Ozzy with bands like UFO; then with Quiet Riot with bands like Iron Maiden. I see it has a huge tree with some really deep roots that just keep branching out.

Animetal USA's self-titled debut (Buy it on iTunes) is gold-certified in Japan. Their latest album, Animetal USA W, came out June 6 (Available as an import only at this point).

For more about Animetal USA, check out their official website and Facebook page.

Iconic hard rockers Quiet Riot have announced Scott Vokoun as the band's new vocalist following their split with Mark Huff back in January.

Taking the place of Huff for the band's recent live dates with former Montrose vocalist Keith St. John, who the band thanked in their official statement announcing their new singer.

"I spoke several weeks ago with my friend and vocalist Keith St John, to once again thank him for lending his talents to Quiet Riot during our time of need," said the statement. "Keith stepped in on very short notice so that Quiet Riot could meet our live dates in February. Keith knocked it out of the park with great vocals and performances and we are forever in his debt."

The band have also announced the following tour dates for 2012.

• March
• 28 - Scottsdale, AZ - Westworld Scottsdale

April
14 - Lyons, TX - Carts Bikers And Babes
15 - Chicago, IL - Mayne Stage
20 - Boca Raton, FL - Sunset Cove Amphitheater
21 - Cape Coral, FL - Legends Of Rock

May
11 - Peterburg, VA - Old Towne Civic Center
12 - Columbia, MD - M3 Festival

June
23 - Idaho Falls, ID - Sandy Downes Race Track

September
8 - Las Vegas, NV - Sunset Station Casino

The following interview, which appears in the April 2012 issue of Guitar World magazine, is excerpted from the book Randy Rhoads by Steven Rosen and Andrew Klein (Velocity Publishing Group).

In 1979, Randy Rhoads had to decide whether to stay with a struggling unknown act called Quiet Riot or join forces with the famous former lead singer from Black Sabbath. The decision wasn't as easy as you think.

Dana Strum -- the Hollywood-based Badaxe and Slaughter bassist who Ozzy Osbourne considered for his new band -- recalls the events surrounding Randy Rhoads' audition for Ozzy:

You hooked up with Ozzy Osbourne in Los Angeles in the fall of 1979, after he left Black Sabbath. How did that come about?

DANA STRUM: Ozzy walked into the Starwood one night with another guy from Jet Records [Don Arden’s label, which released Osbourne’s records], who said to me, “Ozzy wants to talk with you about a new band he is putting together.” I was directed to Frank Zappa’s rehearsal and recording facility on Sunset Boulevard and told to be there around 4:30 or 5 o’clock with all my gear.

I walked in and met a very young Ozzy Osbourne, who was sitting on a couch, clearly not looking like the photographs I was used to seeing. Gary Moore was there, auditioning with a bass player and drummer, and I thought, I don’t think Ozzy has the right band. As I watched Gary Moore, I thought, That guy is phenomenal, but he’s not right for this kind of music. It was now my turn to audition, and Ozzy later said, “Come back to the hotel so we can talk about doing something together.”

Ozzy was drinking quite a bit at the time, and I’m sure there was even more substance abuse. He would often go out on the balcony and very strange things would happen. He’d open the balcony and kind of look at the sky and scream, and it would start to rain. He kept referring to me as “the band,” but there was no band, and he would talk about writing riffs, but there was no guitarist.

So I said to him, “I know the guitar player that you need to see. Oh, believe me, I know the guy; he’s definitely the guy.” Ozzy said, “Calm down, let’s have a drink and talk some more, because tomorrow I need your help. We’re going out to look at guitar players.”

I got Randy Rhoads’ number from [Runaways bassist] Jackie Fox, called him and left a message that said, “My name is Dana, I have seen you a million times and I think you’re unbelievable. I don’t think you belong in Quiet Riot, and I have an opportunity for you. Call me. It’s about the singer from Black Sabbath.” I thought, Who wouldn’t want to play with the singer from Black Sabbath?

After receiving no response, I called again. Then, I called again at 10:30, 11, and then again at midnight. Finally, at one in the morning, he answered and said, “Yeah, I got your message.” I said, “This guy will give you your big chance, and you have to hear me out on this.” Randy said, “Well, I am not really a big fan of that music,” and I was devastated. “What? How can you play like that and not love Black Sabbath? You have to like Black Sabbath,” and he said, “No, not really.” I went down the Sabbath song list. “Well, what about this song?” “No.” “What about this one?” “Nah, not really.” And I thought, Oh no, this is terrible.

I said, “Randy, listen, even if you didn’t like the band, this is still a great opportunity. You’ve got to come down. I want you to play and I want Ozzy to see you, but not at a Quiet Riot gig.” I wanted Ozzy to see him the same way I envisioned it. After more phone calls, I said, “Please tell me you are cool with this.” Finally, he said, “Yeah, it sounds kind of interesting.” I said, “Okay, great. Let me figure this out, because we’re supposed to go see some other guitar players today.”

For the rest of this story, including details on the audition process, the first meeting between Randy and Ozzy and their first rehearsal together, check out the new April 2012 issue of Guitar World magazine. It's available everywhere, including the Guitar World Online Store.

For more information about the new issue, head here.

Photo: Ross Halfin

The late, great Randy Rhoads wasn’t born a heavy metal legend. In this exclusive interview, Kelly Garni, Randy’s childhood friend and fellow member of Quiet Riot, recalls the early years of the guitarist who became Ozzy’s boy wonder.

“I feel like he watches over me in a lot of ways.” Kelly Garni is talking about his departed friend, Randy Rhoads. A slim, compact man of 36, Garni still sports a roosterish rocker’s hairdo and earring. He was Rhoads’ best friend and played bass behind the legendary guitarist for years, first in teenage backyard bands and then in the first incarnation of Quiet Riot. Garni is the foremost witness to Rhoads’ early years, before his brief yet blazing tenure with Ozzy Osbourne, a musical adventure that ended in tragedy when a plane crash took the young guitarist’s life in 1982.

“I spent nine years playing with Randy Rhoads,” Garni says with quiet pride. “No other musician on earth can say that.

“My earliest memory of Randy is of being in the seventh grade and seeing this funny looking kid. He was a little skinny kid with long hair. At school, everybody seems to fall into some kind of category or social group. Randy didn’t. He was definitely not like anybody else. I thought: I have to get to know that person.”

Rhoads came from a highly musical family. He started playing guitar at seven and soon began teaching at the local music school that his mother still runs today. “The Rhoads family lived just around the corner from me,” says Garni. “The house was always full of musical instruments. Randy’s brother [also named Kelly] was a drummer and had this wonderful kit setup. His sister also played guitar, and there was a big old organ that you had to pump with your feet. His mom played every instrument in the universe. And, of course, there was Randy with his guitars. He had two at the time: a very old Gibson acoustic, called an Army Navy Special, as I recall, and an Ovation electric. His dad worked at Ovation and gave him this beautiful f-hole semiacoustic. Randy loved the guitar. He shined it all the time. He had that and a teeny, tiny Gretsch amp.”

Eager to learn an instrument, Garni took to bass at Rhoads’ prompting: “There was a little Japanese bass laying around Randy’s house, and I kind of adopted that. He began to teach me how to play it. He would come home from his lessons and say, ‘I learned this really good chord progression today. Here’s what you need to do to play it on the bass.’ As he learned, I learned. He was still working on chords at first, but soon he began to learn his leads. I was very useful to him then, because I could play a little pattern for him to do his lead over. That’s pretty much what we did all day. We didn’t go out and play games or sports or anything. We just jammed.”

When asked about their early influences, Garni goes to his record cabinet and produces an old Alice Cooper live bootleg: two well-worn vinyl discs in a soiled, plain white jacket, the paper sleeves torn at their circular centers from extensive use.

“This was one of Randy’s most prized possessions,” Garni says with all due reverence. “It fascinated him because it wasn’t all carefully rehearsed and polished like a studio album. You could hear the mistakes, and that was of great interest to both of us. There’s a big, long jam on the song ‘Eighteen,’ on the chord progression C, D and E. That was probably our favorite chord progression. We’d jam on that a lot. [Alice Cooper guitarist] Glen Buxton was a very big guitar hero of Randy’s. That’s never said enough in interviews. I always see names like Beck, Page and Leslie West, whom Randy certainly admired; he even went on to become friends with Leslie West. But Glen Buxton was the original big influence on him. And then, later on, Mick Ronson became a very major influence for Randy, both in technique and image. Look at Mick Ronson on a live Bowie video and it’s scary how much Randy resembled him.”

Asked if Rhoads chose a white Les Paul as his signature ax because Ronson played a similar guitar, Garni says, “No one has ever suggested that before, but yes, I think he did.”

It was Rhoads’ older brother who turned the boys on to Alice Cooper, exposing their impressionable young minds to Easy Action and Love It to Death. He also encouraged the duo to attend their first rock and roll concert: a 1971 show with Alice Cooper and Black Oak Arkansas.

“We were completely blown away by both bands,” says Garni. “It opened up a whole new aspect of life for us. Not only is it fun to play music; it’s really cool to go to a concert and watch people play it. And to see Alice Cooper back then doing a show! Most people just got up and played music in those days. But here, these guys came out dressed really weird, and Alice tried to hypnotize the audience and all. Black Oak Arkansas was great too. We thought they were really cool because they had hair down to their waists and they wore real tight jeans. So we started dressing like that and showing up at school that way. We really started raising some eyebrows.”

Longhairs were not very plentiful at Burbank’s John Muir Jr. High in 1971. By Garni’s report, he and Rhoads were by far the freakiest of all the guys who ventured to sport the rock fashions of the early Seventies: “We were harassed, beaten up, constantly threatened and constantly chased home. We often had to leave school early. I’ll never forget what I call ‘The Day Randy Wore the Red Pants.’ He’d saved his money for weeks to buy these red pants he’d seen and just had to have. They were the brightest red pants you ever saw, and skin tight. He was so proud of them. He wore them to school and the whole place went nuts. Everyone was talking about it. They called him a fag and all that. All the jocks were planning a mass lynching after school. We even got called up to the office and escorted home. After that, he put those pants away and never wore them again.”

To this day, there’s something quaintly “Fifties” about Burbank, a town that is oddly unlike any of the other suburbs that surround Hollywood. There are a lot of cute little family shops and, as you ascend the hills that lie to the north of the town, suburban neighborhoods that evoke images of Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. It was in this environment that Rhoads and Garni first performed in public.

“We played a lot of parties in the neighborhood, every Friday and Saturday night, or any other night we could. If we heard about a party in town, we’d go over there and say, ‘Hey can we play at your party? We got all our gear right out in the car. We’ll do it for free.’ Usually it was a bunch of guys with a keg and they’d be happy to let us play. It was just me and Randy and whatever drummer we could get that night. We’d do ‘Johnny B. Goode,’ ‘Oh Carol,’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ and all Alice Cooper songs. And we’d just jam the blues. We also had some early originals that were just guitar patterns. We took some of the riffs from when we were first learning and carried them over, making little songs out of them.”

Garni has one of these party jams on tape: a 12- bar blues with a series of inebriated vocalists trading off on the mic. The cassette is one of the few recordings of Rhoads playing with a second guitarist. “Randy was so shy, and the other guitarist was older than him and was sort of dominating the jam,” Garni recalls. “He was pretty good, but eventually Randy just had to blow him off his back.”

Garni puts the tape on. Sure enough, a few choruses into the jam, the teenaged Rhoads takes off with an astounding ascending minor riff, lightening fast but very tasteful and fully within the context of the blues. Incredibly beefy tone, too. “That other guitarist didn’t bother him after that,” Garni says, laughing.

More serious bands eventually grew out of these backyard rave-ups. The very first was called Mildred Pierce, a name suggested by Rhoads’ older brother, who’d seen the Joan Crawford movie of that name. “We thought it was really cool, ’cause it was a name kind of like Alice Cooper,” Garni recalls. “That band consisted of me, Randy, Drew Forsyth—who eventually became the original drummer of Quiet Riot—and a guy named Guy who sang and played guitar. That was when we were in eighth grade.”

Other bands followed. As part of a unit called the Whore, Garni and Rhoads played one of their very first bar gigs. Garni still has vivid memories of it: “The place was initially a massage parlor, but the owner got busted. He didn’t know what to do with his property, so he turned it into a rock club. All the girls who’d worked as masseuses were promoted to barmaids. The club was open for like a week. We played the opening night and made 10 dollars each to play the whole evening. We thought that was a fortune. After we got paid, these women tried to get us to go in the back room with them; they wanted to earn our 10 dollars. We were like, ‘No way!’ because we just weren’t interested in girls. That didn’t develop until later. It took a little while for us to even figure out what they wanted. They had cots set up in the back, and we said, ‘Why do you want us to lay down on the cot? Why should we give you 10 dollars for that?’ They were like, ‘Oh, you’ll see.’ We said, ‘No thanks. We’d rather buy some cigarettes and Cokes and guitar strings.’ ”

Stories like these are difficult to credit. These guys were playing in a band called the Whore and they couldn’t figure out what the girls were after? There’s something suspiciously sanitized about the extra-wholesome image that has become a large part of the Randy Rhoads legend. As if to fuel these suspicions, Garni produces a photo of a fifteenish Randy posing with a cigarette, a bottle of vodka and a half-filled glass. It’s an innocent enough picture, the kind most teenage boys pose for at some point. There’s a very similar shot of the young David Bowie.

One can only imagine what temptations the boys withstood when they played as Smokey, backing a transvestite vocalist of the same name, and became the house band at Rodney’s English Disco in Hollywood. Rodney Bingenheimer was, and is, a prominent L.A. rock scenester. In the early Seventies his club was the hub of the Hollywood glam scene. Bowie was a regular, as was Eric Burdon and a whole particolored parade of rock stars and glitterati passing through town. Rodney took up Smokey for a while and even gave his new house band the keys to his place so they could rehearse there during the day.

For two boys from Burbank, Hollywood held a special allure. It was a place where they could buy bootleg albums and find fresh musical collaborators. This latter aspect was especially appealing since they’d played with nearly everyone in Burbank. And it was at a girl’s apartment in Hollywood that Garni and Rhoads heard about a singer looking for a band—kind of a Rod Stewart type, they were told. The singer turned out to be Kevin DuBrow. With Rhoads and Garni’s old friend Drew Forsyth on drums, Quiet Riot was born. A homemade poster commemorates the band’s inaugural gig: Halloween Night of 1975 at the Machinist’s Hall in Burbank.

“It turned into an actual riot,” Garni recounts. “I’ve got it all on video. The whole place was destroyed. It was designed to hold maybe 1,000 people and about 2,000 showed up. We had to lock the doors, so they went up on the roof and kicked holes in the ceiling. Guys were falling down into this huge crowd. People were getting pissed off and it turned into a giant fight. Every single person who worked for us went to the hospital that night with broken arms, concussions… things like that. They called out the entire Burbank Police Department. And we were born.”

DuBrow’s arrival marked a real turning point, according to Garni: “Kevin was a real go-getter. He had business savvy; he knew how to make things happen, whereas me and Randy had no real direction up until then, other than ‘Where can we play tonight?’ ” It was DuBrow who found the band’s first manager, who brought the boys to Sound City, then an eight-track studio in nearby Van Nuys. There they made their first record, an EP on the management’s own Magic Wand label. The A side is “Suicide Show” by Randy Rhoads, with “Just How You Want It” by Kevin DuBrow and Randy’s “West Coast Tryouts” on the B side. The label bears the serial number EP002 and the advice “Play It Loud.”

Professional management also meant “better stage clothes and better equipment,” according to Garni. This was when Rhoads bought his trademark white Les Paul. It was purchased at a west-side music store; Garni can’t recall which one. “It was a band thing—we all went down with Randy to pick out the guitar. We traded a speaker cabinet for it.”

At the time, Rhoads was amplifying his ax through a Peavey head and Ampeg 4x12 cabinet. Thus armed, he was ready for the higher caliber gigs that management was procuring for Quiet Riot. They became the house band at the Starwood club on Sunset Strip. “The real hardcore music was going on at the Starwood,” says Garni. “You had Van Halen down the street at Gazzarri’s, and they were doing a Top 40 thing. They may have been doing originals, too, but I know they were doing Top 40 stuff so people could dance. There was a nicer, more upscale crowd at Gazzarri’s. The Starwood was a pretty rough club. Nobody danced at the Starwood. My dad used to come see us play and he’d say, ‘Man, I never had to step over more bodies and dodge more knives in my life.’ It was nothing to be a 15-year-old kid and belly up to the bar and get a Bud. The first time we played the Starwood we got a case of beer for our pay. Eventually we worked our way up to being the highest- paid band there, kind of a house band situation. But that took two years to accomplish.”

Even with the demonstrative, outgoing Kevin DuBrow onstage, Rhoads “unquestionably stole the show” at those Starwood gigs, according to Garni. “You couldn’t fail to see the amount of talent he had. I mean, here was this little guy…he was five-foot-seven and weighed 105 pounds. His guitar was almost bigger than him. But he’d run around like a wild man with it and just be humongously loud. His biggest thing was noises: feedback, working the knobs and switches, bending the neck. I swear he’s the one who invented that: various ways of bending the neck—with the strap, on his leg, all different ways. As shy as he was, he was a great showman. Randy was unquestionably the star. No one in the band was really jealous of that. We felt lucky to have him.”

By this point, Quiet Riot had “outgrown” their first manager, as Garni puts it, and thrown in their lot with a new team, the Toby Organization. The search for a record deal began in earnest. “We showcased for over 30 labels who all thought we were great, but no one would sign us. Our type of music just wasn’t selling, in their opinion. They were more impressed by a band like the Knack.”

The best that could be arranged at the time was a deal to make two records for Sony/Japan, with the hope that the recordings would eventually be picked up for stateside distribution. The band began preparing for the studio. By Garni’s account, they were heinously overrehearsed: “Eight hours a day, seven days a week, in a cramped, dirty rehearsal hall, we’d go through the same 12 songs over and over again. Kevin was the whip cracker. He made us stick to those 12 songs. Otherwise we probably would have just jammed after we’d gone through them seven or eight times.”

Finally, after the band was expelled from the rehearsal hall for having food fights, they were allowed into Wally Heider Recording, a fairly top-drawer 24-track facility in Hollywood at the time. Garni recalls that Rhoads mainly used his Les Paul for the sessions, although he also played a Strat, and experimented with a variety of amps including Marshalls, Peaveys, a Sound City, a Fender Champ and Twin Reverb. Right from Quiet Riot I, the guitarist was already practicing his famed technique of triple-tracking solos with astounding accuracy. Even onstage, Garni recalls, Rhoads’ solos “didn’t deviate a lot. He always played solos the same way, although he might add or take out whole sections. In fact on the new CD there’s a song called ‘Laughing Gas,’ which is a six-minute live guitar solo. If you listen to that and then listen to the three-minute guitar solo that Ozzy let him have on the Tribute album, you’ll hear a lot of the same things. And the two solos were played years apart.”

Discussion of Rhoads’ technique leads to the ultimate Guitar World question: Who was the first person to tap, Eddie Van Halen or Randy Rhoads? “I have to give that credit to Eddie,” Garni replies. “Randy didn’t really get into that until a lot later. Randy was always striving to be an individual. I think he actually shied away from tapping at first because Eddie did it.”

Quiet Riot I met with substantial success in Japan. It’s a pop-edged metal album that invites comparison with the first Van Halen album in many ways. Yet, despite the record’s success abroad, it never made it to the States, except as an import. And though they constantly planned for it, Rhoads, Garni, DuBrow and Forsyth never made it to Japan for a tour. While their old Sunset Strip rivals Van Halen hit the fast track to success, Quiet Riot’s career seemed stuck in first gear. Dejected, yet determined, the band rallied its spirits and recorded Quiet Riot II with producer Lee DiCarlo and the L.A. Record Plant. Garni feels this second record is better than the first. But shortly after the sessions were completed, the bassist was out of Quiet Riot.

“There was a lot of tension in the band due to our lack of progress. I just wasn’t enjoying it anymore. So it was felt I should move on. In the meantime I’d grown up. I’d been playing music all my life, and I was curious about what else was going on in the world besides playing the Starwood every two weeks.”

Garni began training to be a paramedic. For someone who’d been on top of the Sunset Strip metal scene, it was an abrupt transition—suddenly becoming anonymous, just a regular guy doing a regular job. One of his most prized possessions is a 21st birthday card Rhoads gave him around that time, with a long, heartfelt note offering support and encouragement.

Three months after Garni’s departure from Quiet Riot, Rhoads left the group to join Ozzy Osbourne’s band. From that point onward, Garni would see his old friend only every three months or so, on rare hiatuses from touring and recording. After leaving Quiet Riot, Garni saw Rhoads play only one more time, with Ozzy in Vegas. He still becomes animated when he recalls the performance. Rhoads had flown in a day early and the two old friends stayed up the whole night, cruising around town, hitting the all-night buffets at the casinos. A few months later, Rhoads was dead, leaving his childhood companion with his memories, photos, artwork and tapes. Garni says there’s plenty more material where Quiet Riot: The Randy Rhoads Years came from.

“There are over 30 songs. We only put 10 on this first album, so there’s enough for two more albums. But in the meantime, more than anything, I’d like to invite everyone down to Mount View Cemetery on March 19 and December 6. If you’re any kind of Randy fan, you’ll have a real good time.”

On September 18, Quiet Riot drummer Frankie Banali & Friends will release 24/7/365: The Tribute to Led Zeppelin (RSM Records), a 12-song homage to the legendary rock band. This release finds Banali along with bassist Tony Franklin working with a rotating cast of vocalists and guitarists. According to Frankie, "The album is dedicated with love and respect to the memory of [Zeppelin drummer] John Henry Bonham, and it has truly been a labor of love." 24/7/365: The Tribute to Led Zeppelin is produced by Banali and recorded and mixed by Grammy Award–winning engineer Neil Citron. TRACK LIST The Wanton Song Four Sticks Kashmir Out on the Tiles Ramble On The Ocean The Immigrant Song Royal Orleans Gallows Pole Custard Pie When the Levee Breaks (They Were) The Eye of God Sample MP3 audio tracks can be found at frankie-banali.com. RHYTHM Frankie Banali Drums and Percussion Tony Franklin (The Firm/Blue Murder): Bass VOCALS Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple/Black Sabbath) Bobby Kimball (Toto) Don Dokken (Dokken) Jeff Scott Soto (Yngwie Malmsteen/Journey) Alex Ligertwood (Santana) Kevin DuBrow (Quiet Riot) Robin McCauley (Michael Schenker/MSG) Mark Boals (Yngwie Malmsteen) Paul Shortino (Rough Cutt/Quiet Riot) Chas West (Bonham/Lynchmob) GUITAR Doug Aldrich (Whitesnake) Gilby Clarke (Guns N’ Roses) Bruce Kulick (Kiss) Reb Beach (Winger) Bill Leverty (Firehouse) Steve Fister (Lita Ford) Neil Citron (Hero) KEYBOARDS Michael Lardie (Night Ranger/Great White) Neil Citron