Jack here, jbf music and guitar lessons, back with some musings for you here, specifically
why Randy Rhoad’s legacy will probably be a lot shorter lived than it deserves to be…
Alright, so for my signature licks video; I’ll link to Randy’s one with the little I up there;
I like to take some time and just go through various live performances of the artist-
listening out for reoccurring; trademark licks; concepts, ideas tricks and that sort of thing.
With Youtube, this is usually a blast and really easy to find a tonne of options;
if anything there’s almost too much choice- not that I’m complaining!
I’ve started filming and sort of critiquing these videos,
adding in some practical applications of the stuff I talk about- you can
check out that playlist with the I up there if you want a reference.
Anyway, as regular viewers will know; and if you’re not yet, feel free to do the subscribe,
notification thing, leave a like comment ach you’ll now the drill by now I’m sure!;
I ran a poll over a series of months to try and work out which players you guys
were most interested in seeing content on. Mr Roads came up in the top four,
so when I went to look for clips of him playing live, I ran in to a bit of an issue.
Now, I use studio recordings and isolated tracks when I can find them,
but live versions of solos and improvisatiosn make it way easier to see the positions;
you know where they’re playing; and get a much better feel for their idiosyncrasies.
And while there is sort of isolated guitar for Crazy Train- it’s his guitar, double tracked, one
in the left one in the right and a handful of live clips, I really struggled to find the same wealth
of content most players; including many below his levels of fame and notoriety usually have.
Now, we’ve got 3 main possibilities- 1- not that many people like him so there’s not much footage.
Which, I mean sounds so unlikely to be true, it’s not really worth entertaining.
With Crazy Train ranking as the 9th-greatest guitar solo ever
by readers of Guitar World magazine, being one small argument to quash this theory.
2- people like him but never bother to film anything and/or upload it.
Considering how many obscure videos there are on here, again seems really, really unlikely.
Or 3- It’s a copyright issue.
I’m putting my money on that last one. I’ve only got anecdotal reasons as to why;
so please do correct me if you know better. Sorry, I’ve realised this is spiralling in
to a bit of a video essay, no real intention of doing more of these,
but let me know what you think- good or bad any pointers are usually pretty helpful!
The Osbourne estate is notoriously bad for taking recognition away from the session
musicians who wrote and performed ozzy’s music- removing, or hiding their writing credits.
Randy Rhoads, bassist Bob Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslake recorded and released two albums
“Blizzard of Ozz” September 20, 1980 and “Diary of a Madman” on November 7, 1981.
Daisley and Kerslake were reportedly unexpectedly fired by Sharon Osbourne after the recording of
“Diary of a Madman“ was complete. Bassist Rudy Sarzo and drummer Tommy Aldridge;
both great players as well; are credited in the liner notes and also pictured on the inner sleeve.
However, it was Daisley and Kerslake who performed all bass guitar and drums on the original release.
Jump forward to In 1986, Daisley and Kerslake successfully sued the Osbourne’s for unpaid
royalties, eventually winning, being granted their songwriting credits for
“Blizzard of Ozz” and “Diary of a Madman“. In 2002 reissue of the albums were made with
Daisley and Kerslake’s, what happened here, well the original bass and drum parts were removed and
re-recorded. The new parts were being played by Osbourne’s drummer at the time Mike Bordin;
of Faith No More; and bassist Robert Trujillo; who most us probably know from Metallica.
Ok two things here; firstly I know Sharon gets blamed for all of this type of stuff,
which may very well be true, but I don’t know one way or the other
so I’m not casting the finger of blame on any one specific person. Again if you can
shine some light on this matter, please do. This goes in the face of what I’ve just said,
surely?? They KEPT Randy’s part, well they kept the others as well but
had them re-recorded- doesn’t this just show favouritism towards Randy and indeed his legacy?
It’s an argument, sure. But, not a very robust one…
Otherwise, I would have certainly found a tonne of live clips. Now I’m sure you could find them
through more nefarious means, but Youtube is pretty much a first port of call for most people
as the 2nd most visited website, according to Alexa Internet; the web traffic analysis company.
Why did that sound like an awkward sponsor rather than a sourcing a refernce?
So secondly, to me, what we’ve got here is a revisionist history of sorts.
I can think of 3 main reasons why you would issue takedowns/not allow live content online-
1. You want to get paid for streams of your work; fair enough,
but this will come at the price of legacy. 2. The Osbourne estate wants to control the
content, so they could potentially release a Randy Roads Best Of, or unheard archives type thing
3. The live performances might not be up to par; or the standard they want them to be.
Now I can only speculate, but I would guess a mix of these reasons.
The 3rd one in particular stands out to me, because I’m sure this has already happened.
Now there are a few songs from Ozzy’s live TV set from Rochester, New York in 1981; ‘Mr. Crowley’
and ‘I don’t know’ seem to have survived. But Crazy Train; which you could find a few
years back has been purged. What makes this more interesting is the first time I saw that video;
years ago; Ozzy bunged the last line leading into the solo, you’ve got to listen to my words,
his voice cracked on words and he looks to the side, clearly annoyed at himself.
Now, I’m not having a go, it’s live, you’ll mess up. Par for the course.
But when I watched that video again, maybe a year or two ago- that part had
been edited out as had his facial reaction. Now, I could be totally misremembering this,
but I’m about as sure as I can be that this is accurate. Again, any additional information
of confirmation or this would be great. Considering how notorious Ozzy was for drug
use and being pretty out of it, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to hypothesise a lot of his
gigs with Randy, might have been pretty ropey. The thing is. I don’t think any of us would even care.
Ozzy is one of those guys who has sort of transcended being a musician, or singer to
an almost mythical status. You don’t see Ozzy to hear a pitch perfect rendition of the record
you’d go to experience “him” - to see him do that clapping thing he does, weird or wonderful
crowd banter he might unleash, walking excitedly around the stage in his oddly charismatic way
you go for the ‘aura of the original’. Proposed by Walter Benjamin, explaining;
“even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: Its presence
in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be”. Laymen’s terms-
a reproduction is not as good as the real thing. Now, we can’t see Randy live, that opportunity has
long since gone. What we’ve got are live clips; that’s as good as we’re getting.
Except we don’t have many of them. Whether it’s purely to make money, shine the
light more firmly on Ozzy, diminishing Randy’s role, hiding sloppy gigs, or some other reason
I’ve not even thought of. The end result is that it’s way harder to introduce someone to
Randy’s playing than it ought to be. The only outcome I can see happening here, is that his
legacy is much shorter lived than deserved. Most of these critique type videos get claimed
by the owner, so I’m not sour about not making some bang here- that doesn’t really happen on
these videos I’m afraid! It just seems like such a shame, a real waste. I don’t think there’s
anything we can do about it. All I’d say is if you have these sorts of videos in your own collection,
keep em safe, back them up. Hopefully one day they’ll see the light of day!
Anyway, a real departure from my usual stuff, but felt oddly compelled to make this,
just going through Randy’s licks, tricks and ideas. Let me know if youse want of more of
this kind of thing- or less, haha! If you’re still here and haven’t done the subscribe thing,
it’s always much appreciated, but yeah take it easy guys, have a good one.