Randy Rhoads

Randall William Rhoads (December 6, 1956 – March 19, 1982) was an American guitarist.

Rhoads was born on December 6, 1956, in Santa Monica, California, the youngest of three children.

His parents were both music teachers.

His brother was also a musician, who performed under the name "Kelle."

In 1958, when Rhoads was 17 months old, his father left the family and remarried.

All three children were subsequently raised by their mother, Delores.

She had received a bachelor's degree in music from UCLA and had played piano professionally.

She opened a music school in North Hollywood called Musonia to support the family.

The Rhoads family did not own a stereo, and the children created their own music at home to entertain themselves.

Rhoads listened to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as a child and would imitate their performances with his brother Kelle in the family garage.

Rhoads began folk and classical guitar lessons at approximately age seven at his mother's music school.

He became interested in rock guitar and began lessons at Musonia from Scott Shelly.

Shelly soon approached Rhoads' mother to inform her that he could no longer teach her son, as Rhoads' knowledge of the electric guitar had exceeded his own.

Rhoads also received piano lessons from his mother to help build his understanding of music theory.

Rhoads met future bandmate Kelly Garni while attending John Muir Middle School in Burbank, California, and the two became best friends.

According to Garni, the pair were unpopular due to "the way we looked. Every time we showed up for school it was usually problematic, so we pretty much avoided it. We weren't nerds, we weren't jocks, we weren't dopers, we were just on our own."

Rhoads' sister Kathy recalled, "People really gave him a hard time. They used to want to beat him up."

Rhoads taught Garni how to play bass guitar, and together they formed a band called The Whore, rehearsing during the day at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, a 1970s Hollywood nightspot.

It was during this period that Rhoads learned to play lead guitar.

"When I met him he didn't know how to play lead guitar yet at all. He was just starting to take lessons for it and really just riffing around," said Garni.

Rhoads spent several months playing at backyard parties around the Los Angeles area in the mid-1970s.

The pair performed for a short time in a backing band for a vocalist remembered only as Smokey before forming a cover band, Violet Fox, with Rhoads' older brother Kelle on drums.

Violet Fox, which was together for approximately five months, staged several performances in the Grand Salon at Musonia.

Among their setlist was "Mississippi Queen" by Mountain and songs from the Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper and David Bowie.

After Violet Fox dissolved, Rhoads formed various other short-lived bands such as The Katzenjammer Kids and Mildred Pierce.

The Katzenjammer Kids' lead vocalist would often wear dresses on stage, which sometimes led to violent reactions from the audience.

According to Garni, he and Rhoads frequently listened to Long Beach, California radio station KNAC because it was "the only radio station that would play anything of interest to us," and it was through KNAC that Rhoads discovered much of the music that influenced his playing.

The home of a neighborhood friend with a high-quality stereo and large record collection became a regular hangout for the pair, and there they smoked pot and listened to more obscure hard rock music such as early Scorpions records.

Live bootleg recordings were very popular at that time, and Rhoads began to take note of the differences between studio recordings and the live versions, particularly the different licks guitarists incorporated when playing live.

He was the co-founder and original guitarist of the heavy metal band Quiet Riot, and the guitarist and co-songwriter for Ozzy Osbourne's first two solo albums Blizzard of Ozz (1980) and Diary of a Madman (1981).

Rhoads was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.

Originally educated in classical guitar, Rhoads combined these early influences with heavy metal, helping form a sub-genre later known as neoclassical metal.

With Quiet Riot, he adopted a black-and-white polka-dot theme which became an emblem for the group.

He reached his peak as the guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne's solo career, performing on tracks including "Crazy Train" and "Mr. Crowley" on the Blizzard of Ozz album.

"Crazy Train" features one of the most well-known heavy metal guitar riffs.

Despite his short career, Rhoads is regarded as a pivotal figure in metal music, credited with pioneering a fast and technical style of guitar soloing that largely defined the metal scene of the 1980s.

He helped popularize various guitar techniques now common in heavy metal music, including two-handed tapping, tremolo bar dive bombs, and intricate scale patterns, drawing comparisons to his contemporary, Eddie Van Halen.

The Jackson Rhoads model guitar was originally commissioned by him.

He has been included in several published "Greatest Guitarist" lists, and has been cited by other prominent guitarists as a major influence.

He died in a plane crash while on tour with Osbourne in Florida in 1982.