Month: March 2012

Many people know me as a huge Eddie Van Halen fanatic, with him influencing me both as a guitarist and as a non-musician (I at one point maintained three different VH websites – VHTrading.com. VHFAQ.com and VHGuitar.com).

Yet at one point there was someone else who inspired my playing just as much as Eddie. That person was the late, great Randy Rhoads.

For those of you unfamiliar with the story, here’s the condensed version. Randy cut his teeth at his mother’s music school while playing in the local L.A. music scene. He was a founding member of Quiet Riot, and left that band after ripping out two albums with them (and before they recorded their multi-platinum breakthrough Metal Health) to join Ozzy Osbourne’s new solo outfit after he departed Black Sabbath in 1979. Randy became Ozzy’s main man and songwriting partner, and together they forged instant metal masterpieces in the early ’80s with Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman. Both of these records, with help of Van Halen’s early material, created a blueprint of what guitar-dominated hard rock with be for the next 10 years…