On September 20, 1980, an album was released in England that introduced the rock world to a ground-shaking new guitar playing talent. The album was Ozzy Osbourne’s debut as a solo artist, Blizzard of Ozz. The guitarist he unleashed on an unsuspecting world was a diminutive young man with a giant talent: Randy Rhoads.
Tragically, on Friday, March 19, 1982, rock lost one of its most iridescent and influential 6-string stars of all time when Randy was killed in a senseless plane crash. He was only 25.
In Randy’s fleetingly short time with us though, his guitar playing prowess left an indelible legacy of influence. What is even more remarkable is that this was achieved via a mere two studio albums that he recorded with Ozzy — the aforementioned Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman. A posthumous, double live album entitled Tribute was also released on March 19, 1987, on the fifth anniversary of Randy’s passing.
Some 36 years after his lamentable passing, Randy’s remarkable fretwork continues to influence a whole new generation of guitarists. And many of the players he inspired are now 6-string stars themselves, including Zakk Wylde, Kirk Hammett, Dimebag Darrell (RIP), John 5, Mark Morton (Lamb of God), Doug Aldrich, Alexi Laiho (Children of Bodom), and Paul Gilbert, to name but a few.
Producer Max Norman on Recording Randy
In 1992, I was fortunate enough to interview Max Norman for a Guitar World magazine issue largely dedicated to Randy Rhoads. In case you’re not aware, Max is the man who both produced and engineered Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman and also mixed Tribute. In this interview, Max revealed that most of Randy’s solos were not only double tracked but triple tracked. “That’s why they sound so bloody big,” the amiable Brit revealed. “If you listen very, very carefully to some of his leads through headphones, you’ll hear the main track in the center, backed by two other, identical takes that have been pulled back in the mix and panned hard left and hard right.”
“For the benefit of cynics,” Max continued, “I must stress that none of this was accomplished through the electronic wizardry of ADT (Automatic Double Tracking) or ‘artificial’ harmonizing. Randy did it all himself because he was so very good at duplicating his parts identically, over and over again. He could make three passes sound like one, and that’s something that is incredibly difficult to accomplish.”
In order to try to approximate Randy’s recorded solo sound, the backing track for both the intro and outro of the video that accompanies this article features two other recorded takes of the fills and solo. The amp used for both the video and the recording of the backing track was a 100W BOSS Katana Artist 1×12″ combo. While my triple-tracking prowess is not even close to Randy’s brilliance, having two “duplicate” takes of the lead work, pulled back in the mix, will hopefully approximate his “so bloody big” recorded sound! That said, let’s get to the transcriptions of the eight licks.
Lick 1 (1:51) is based on an overdubbed guitar lick Randy played in the explosive intro of “I Don’t Know” — the opening track of Blizzard of Ozz. The only difference is the half-note pinch harmonic squeal I added at the start. The body of this lick (bar 2) uses the A natural minor scale (A, B, C, D, E, F, G) and is played in the open position. Part of the reason this short burst of sixteenth notes is so dramatic is that it is syncopated so that the moves to the G, D, and A strings occur on the upbeat, thus “stressing the weak beat,” which is the definition of syncopation.
Lick 2 (3:04) is another A minor gem that marries the A natural minor scale with the flattened fifth (Eb) of the A minor blues scale (A, C, D, Eb, E, G). This is based on a 1-bar fill he does shortly after his amazing “I Don’t Know” solo. He also plays an identical phrase in a run during the first chorus of “Crazy Train” (F# minor). To make this great lick fit in the context I was using it, I added the short dyad (two notes played at the same time) intro in the first bar.
Lick 3 (3:54) is an extension of the memorable 2-handed tapping arpeggio pattern that opens Randy’s classic “Crazy Train” solo, moved from the key of F# minor to E minor. As mentioned in the video, what makes the start of his solo such a stand-out moment is the fact that he taps with his picking hand twice before doing a slur (hammer-on or pull-off) with his fretboard hand, as is the norm when most players perform 2-handed tapping. By doing this, Randy gives the arpeggios he’s playing a unique sound. This fairly rapid tapping can be done with either a finger or the side of your pick — the latter produces a sharper, more pronounced attack.
To extend this lick over 4 bars, I merely ascended the run by moving it up the B string in bars 3 and 4, using the Dorian mode (E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D). And to get my picking hand back to picking position for the next lick, the final tap is a single one that’s slid up the neck (a neat trick, shamelessly stolen from the 2-handed-tapping master, Edward Van Halen).
For ease of explanation, I’m going to break this 3-bar E minor passage (5:15) into three 1-bar chunks. The first two bars are heavily influenced by Randy’s rapid-fire opening to his “Flying High Again” solo.
Lick 4, Chunk 1: The first bar is a repeated 4-note E pentatonic minor (E, G, A, B, D) descent where only the first and final notes of the pattern are picked — the middle two notes are sounded without a pick with a “hammer-on from nowhere” to the 15th fret on the B string, followed by a pull-off to the 12th-fret note.
Lick 4, Chunk 2: This short E minor run marries the Dorian mode (E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D) with the blues scale (E, G, A, Bb, B, D) to create a symmetrical, 3-note pattern on the G, B, and high E strings as shown in diagram 1. All notes in this 1-bar, 1/16-note descent then ascent are picked apart from the final two.
Lick 4, Chunk 3: This is merely a repeated, 1-step bend at the 15th fret on the B string that slows the pace down a hair and sets the solo up nicely for the next RR salvo…
Lick 5 (7:35) is an E minor blazer lifted straight from bars 2–4 of Randy’s epic “I Don’t Know” solo (G minor). The first bar is purely an E minor blues burst (E, F, G, A, Bb, B, D). Then in the second bar, it moves to E natural minor with an emotive (well, when Randy does it, anyway) half-step bend from F# to G. This is followed by a tension-building trill between E and F# on the high E string, before hitting the D note at the 15th fret on the B string and sliding down (in terms of pitch) to…
As explained in the video (8:30) — this dramatic, descending chromatic run (straight from the “I Don’t Know” solo) features something I call horizontal symmetry. In a nutshell, it starts with a 4-note (G, F#, E, D) fingering pattern on the B and G strings in E natural minor (E, F#, G, A, B, C, D). The whole pattern is then descended chromatically (one fret at a time) down the neck until the same exact 4-note pattern falls totally within the same scale. In the case of this particular pattern and scale, the desired scenario occurs when the pattern hits the open position where, hey-presto, the four notes played in the pattern are C, B, A & G.
Each and every note in this tension-building, chromatic run is both picked and lightly palm-muted, giving it a crisp, staccato feel. This descending volley is finally resolved at the fourth and final beat of the second bar when its journey back to E natural minor is complete!
This penultimate lick (10:27) is another piece of plunder from “I Don’t Know,” and it follows Randy’s chromatic descent. I do the exact same thing in E minor in the open position, using the good ol’ E minor blues scale (E, G, A, Bb, B, D). An added bonus of playing this sinewy lick in the open position is that it finishes on the open G string note, giving me extra time to quickly move my fretboard hand up the neck for the climax “call and response” lick an octave higher at the 12th position.
Just like the end of Randy’s amazing “I Don’t Know” solo, I wanted this final lick (11:12) to be a nice “response” to the “call” of lick 7. I also wanted it to be one bar long and finish with a bend on the final downbeat. So I came up with the very best “Randy-inspired lick” I possibly could to do this deed — and lick 8 is the result. Just like lick 2, it melds the E natural minor and blues scales.
I sincerely hope that a few of these eight licks will either make it into your arsenal of licks or, better still, inspire you to create a Randy-influenced lick or two of your own.
And if you’re as big a Randy Rhoads fan as I am, please check out our “Rudy Sarzo Remembers Randy Rhoads” interview video. Not only is Rudy Sarzo one of rock’s finest-ever bassists, but he was also a dear friend of Randy’s and played with him both in Quiet Riot and with Ozzy Osbourne. So as you can imagine, his insights into what made Randy pick are pretty amazing.
The one and only Rudy Sarzo (right) and the author of this piece
Enjoy…
Mr. Rhoads — thank you for the amazing music and also the incredible inspiration — both are timeless.