Randy Rhoads was a great guitarist on his way to the top when his life was abruptly ended in a plane crash in 1982. Yet his work would never die. Five years after his death he was still being called a virtuoso. His music influenced many metal guitarists to start incorporating classical music in their work. Although he was only in the public eye for a short while, his music, to this day, still inspires young musicians, and even older ones. Today if you hear a rock song that has classical influences, you’re probably hearing a band inspired by Randy.
 On December 6, 1956, Randall William Rhoads was born at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, CA. He was the youngest of 3 children, with a brother named Doug and a sister Kathy. Randy’s father left when he was very young. All three children were raised by their mother Delores Rhoads. Randy went to school at First Lutheran Day School, John Muir Junior High, and Burbank High.
 At age 6, Randy started taking guitar lessons at Musonia in North Hollywood. The school was owned by his mother. Kathy started guitar lessons at the same time as Randy. His mother wanted him to take piano so he could learn to read music. He did this, but quit shortly after starting. At 12, Randy became interested in rock guitar, so he took lessons from Scott Shelley, an instructor at his mother’s school.  He took lessons for almost a year, when Scott went to Delores and told her that he had taught Randy everything he knew. Later, Randy became interested in classical guitar.
 Randy was in many bands starting when he was 14. His first band, Violet Fox, was named after his mother’s middle name, Violet, and included his brother. Other bands Randy was in included the Katzenjammer Kids and Mildred Pierce.
 Randy had taught a longtime friend of his, Kelly Garni, to play bass. Together, they formed the band Quiet Riot in 1976. They got Kevin DuBrow to sing vocals for them. There are many variations of exactly how they got together. They started out calling themselves “Little Women,” but got the name Quiet Riot from one of Kevin’s friends in Status Quo.
 When Quiet Riot first started out, Randy was teaching guitar  at his mother’s school. He said that teaching developed his
technique and style. From teaching students all day, his technique improved drastically, and a style was formed.
 Meanwhile, Quiet Riot was playing gigs at night. They shortly became very big on the Los Angeles scene. They signed a recording contract with CBS/Sony and released 2 records.
 “Quiet Riot 1” was released in 1978, and “Quiet Riot 2” in ‘79. They were both released in Japan and got rave reviews that they were “the next big thing.” Unfortunately the albums were never released in the U.S. These would be the only records Randy would release with Quiet Riot.
 Four to five months before leaving Quiet Riot, Randy went to a friend of his, Karl Sandoval, to have a custom guitar made. What they came up with is Randy’s black and white polka-dot flying V-style guitar. This guitar would become synonymous with the name Randy Rhoads. This would also be Randy’s most frequently used guitar.
 Randy’s most famous work are the songs he wrote with ex-Black Sabbath frontman, Ozzy Osbourne.
Together, they would write legendary songs such as “Goodbye To Romance,” “Steal Away (The Night),” “Crazy Train,” and “Diary Of A Madman.”
 At a friend’s request, Randy went to audition for Ozzy’s new band in late 1979. Ozzy had auditioned every guitarist in the Los Angeles area, so the story goes, when Randy showed up at Ozzy’s hotel room. All he had was his guitar and a practice amp. He played a few warm-up exercises, and was hired.
 Sometime before Thanksgiving of ‘79, they went to England to start writing an album. Once in England, they sat down and began writing the album “Blizzard Of Ozz.” Every time they finished writing a song, they would go to a local pub and play it. When they played “Crazy Train,” they found that it got people “moving.” They then realized that they “had something.” On March 22, 1980, they started recording. The band included: Ozzy Osbourne (vocals), Randy Rhoads (guitar), Lee Kerslake (drums), and Bob Daisley (bass). In April of ‘80 Randy returned home. There, he would play for the last time with Quiet Riot at the Starwood Club.
 “Blizzard Of Ozz” was released on August 18, 1980. On this album was Randy’s classical piece “Dee,” named after his mother.  With the first proceeds, he went out and bought a fretless classical guitar. On September 12 they started their first
“official” tour in Scotland, at the Apollo Theatre. Meanwhile, in the U.K.,“Blizzard Of Ozz” went straight to no. 7. They toured the U.K. for 3 months, playing 34 shows.
 Randy returned home for Christmas 1980. While home, he had another custom guitar built. This time he went to Grover Jackson of Charvel Guitars. Jackson made this from a drawing on a piece of paper. This was the first Jackson guitar ever built. It was a white flying V-
style guitar. This would also become synonymous with Randy’s name. Since he couldn’t stay around until it was completed, Jackson sent it to him in England.
 Ozzy and the band entered Ridge Farm Studios again in February and March of ‘81. There, they started recording “Diary Of A Madman.” They had a U.S. tour soon, to promote the album. Because of this, the album was rushed. The “Little Dolls” solo was actually a scratched solo and was not intended for the finished song.
 On April 22, 1981 they started their North American tour in support of “Blizzard Of Ozz.” Tommy Aldridge joined in on drums, as well as ex-Quiet Riot bassist Rudy Sarzo. They toured from May to September of ‘81. They played songs from “Blizzard Of Ozz,” “Diary Of A Madman,” (though it wasn’t released yet) and some Black Sabbath songs to close the shows. “Blizzard Of Ozz” went gold in 100 days.
 Because too many people thought Randy’s white Jackson was a Flying-V, this prompted him to have another custom guitar built. Again he went to Grover Jackson, and they designed for an hour before they came up with a design. It was a variation of the first Jackson, but with a more defined look to the upper wing. This was the 2nd Jackson guitar ever made, and Randy received it in early 1982.
 On October 31, 1981, “Diary Of A Madman” was released. The band went to Europe in November of ‘81 to tour. The tour only lasted 3 shows, before Ozzy collapsed from mental and physical exhaustion.
 The “Diary Of A Madman” tour began December 30, 1981. When the tour began, “Blizzard Of Ozz” was selling at a rapid rate of 6000 records a week. On the opening night of the tour in San Francisco, Randy was awarded “Guitar Magazine’s” Best New Talent award. He also won “Sounds” Magazine’s Best New Guitarist.
 From the beginning, the tour was plagued with problems. There were boycotts by many cities. Many concerts were attended by S.P.C.A. officials, due to rumors of animal abuse. Then there was the all too famous “Alamo Incident.” One day, when Ozzy was
wandering around drunk beyond belief, nature called. He found a piece of a wall, and was arrested for urinating on the Alamo. Concerts were banned from San Antonio for 10 years.
 In each city, Randy would hire a classical guitar tutor. At this point, he wanted to quit
rock ‘n’ roll, and go back to school and get a master’s degree in
classical guitar.
 On March 18, 1982, Randy would play his last show at the Civic Coliseum in Knoxville. After this show, the band was headed to Orlando to play at the “Rock Super Bowl XIV” with Foreigner, Bryan Adams, and UFO.
 They stopped at their bus driver, Andrew Aycock’s, home in
Leesburg Florida. He lived at Flying Baron Estates, which consisted of 3 houses, a hangar, and a landing strip and was owned by Jerry Calhoun. Aycock had his pilot’s license, so he took a 1955 Beech model F35 from the hangar and took keyboardist Don Airey up for a few minutes. After they had landed, he took up Rachel Youngblood and Randy for a few minutes. While in the air, they made 3 passes over the tour bus, “buzzing” it. On the 4th pass, the left wing hit the bus. Then the plane (with the exception of the left wing) hit a pine tree, severing it half way up, and crashed into the garage of one of the houses. Everyone in the plane was killed.
 Randy was laid to rest in San Bernadino. Five years after his death, Ozzy released “Tribute” on May 11, 1987. It consisted of live recordings from their tours. Randy’s solo in Montreal in July ‘81 continued to earn him recognition Five years after his death.
 Randy’s work has inspired hundreds of musicians. He is one of the earliest pioneers of classically influenced metal.
 Randy’s early classical influences were Vivaldi, and Pachelbel. He adapted a harmonic progression from the Pachelbel canon for “Goodbye To Romance.” Many classically influenced songs rely on a gothic overtone from Baroque music. The opening of “Mr. Crowley” begins with a synthesized organ
playing a cyclical harmonic progression that was modeled on
Vivaldi. “The minor mode, ominous organ, fateful cyclicism, culminating in a suspension, set up an
affect of mystery and doom.” (Walser p.79) The sung verses and first solo of “Mr. Crowley” are supported by a metal-inflected Baroque harmonic progression: Dm/Bb/Em7b5/Asus4/A.”(p.80) The move from Bb back up through C (bVI-bVII-I) is uncharacteristic of Baroque (bVI usually resolves to V), yet it frequently happens in metal, and normally functions in an aggressive and dark Aeolian mood. A similar progression underpins the “outro” solo, but is a more straightforward Vivaldian circle of fifths: Dm/Gm7/C/F/Bb/Em7b5/Asus4/A. “Until classically influenced heavy metal, such cyclical progressions were unusual in rock, which had been fundamentally blues-based.” (p.80) Classical influence contributed to greater reliance on the power of harmonic progressions to organize desire and inevitability. “The circle of fifths progression was picked up by metal because it sounds archaic, directional, and thus fateful.” (p.80) The first “Mr. Crowley” solo is a “...frantic scramble against the inevitability of the harmonic pattern.”(p.80) The second “...rides the wave of harmonic teleology with more virtuosic aplomb.”(p.80) Randy uses arpeggios, tremolo picking, trills, and fast scales to keep up with the drive of the progression.
 In classical, the virtuoso strives to manipulate the audience by skillful deployment of shared musical codes and signification. This was achieved by Randy in his “Suicide Solution” solo in Montreal, heard on “Tribute.” Contemporary accounts show that until the late 19th century, behavior of concert audiences was far from the “classical” norms of silence and passivity. The musical audiences were tamed at the turn of the century. Until the 20th century, the audiences reacted the way that audiences for metal and other popular music of today do. They reacted with spontaneous
expressions of pleasure and disapproval in the form of cheers, yells, gesticulations, hisses, boos, and others.
 During live shows, since “Suicide Solution” had no solo, Randy had a solo or cadenza at the the end of the song. Ozzy used this to exhibit Randy’s prowess as a soloist. He used techniques borrowed from the semiotic trick bag of classical music to manipulate desire by suggesting, deflecting, achieving, or making ambiguous a variety of tonal goals. His cadenza follows Baroque models. In it, Randy invokes the toccata.
 The toccata is a virtuoso solo instrumental genre of the late sixteenth through mid eighteenth centuries, mainly performed on fretted and keyboard instruments. “Heavy metal guitarists rely on precisely those musical tactics that characterized the toccata: ‘quasi-improvisatory disjunct harmonies, sweeping scales,broken-chord figuration, and roulades that often range over the entire instrument....[N]othing is more inappropriate than order and constraint.’46” (p.81)
The formal plan of Rhoads’ cadenza is similar, in some respects, to that of Bach’s. In both, an impressive array of virtuosic figuration is explored, until a disorienting harmonic meltdown leads to a long drive toward cadence. In Rhoads’ solo, the harmonic confusion preceeds a lengthy tapped section, which itself melts down. Initially, the tapped arpeggios circumscribed with only some ambiguity, the closely related harmonic areas of Em and Am. But a succession of more distant chords- G/Am/F/Faug./A/C#m-leads to a complete breakdown, embellished by whammy bar wows and a wailing high harmonic. After pausing to let the audience voice it’s approval of his transgressions, Rhoads begins again with a fast-picked figure, which he slides chromatically up the neck with increasing frenzy. This sequence winds up with another high wail and some low growls; at this point, he allows the framing “ritornello” to return, and the band joins in a short reprise of “Suicide Solution.”1
 Randy’s classical influence on mainstream music changed the face of rock music forever. His success helped to promote and inspire classical study among guitarists. His influence was so great that the study of classical guitar increased in metal guitarists, and all over the U.S. “Rhoads brought to heavy metal guitar a new level of discipline and consistency, derived from classical models.”(p.84) “Rhoads’ accomplishments also contributed to the growing tendency among guitarists to regard their virtuosic solos in terms of a division of labor long accepted in classical music, as opportunities for thoughtful composition and skillful execution rather than spontaneous improvisation.”(p.84) There was an increase in the teaching of music theory in colleges and high schools. “... Rhoads helped precipitate a shift among guitar players toward a new kind of professionalism, with theory, analysis, pedagogy, and technical rigor acquiring new importance.”(p.84) The demand was so great that colleges had to look for more music teachers, as well as more knowledgeable ones in this area. Also, there was an increase in the opening of music schools. “The most influential metal guitarist after Van Halen (Randy Rhoads) clarified the issues, expanding the classical influence and also convincing many that the trend toward systemization did not represent unambiguous progress.”(p.93)
 Randy Rhoads inspired many people and helped create a new kind of heavy metal that was highly classically influenced. His
inspiration did as much as to increase the study of music theory and classical music. He was truly a gifted and talented musician that left us too early.