A virtuoso rocker: The metal guitarist Lemmy said “never missed a note”
Rock and roll is never really about perfection. It’s about getting the right vibe for every song you play, and if it’s a little bit imperfect, that’s what gives it the attitude half the time. While Lemmy would be proud to have made more than a few imperfect masterpieces on his own, he thought he was listening to a true master of his craft when he saw Randy Rhoads playing with Ozzy Osbourne.
Despite not getting as much acclaim, there’s a case to be made that Motörhead helped start heavy metal alongside Osbourne when he was in Black Sabbath. Both bands didn’t really enjoy being in the same conversation as heavy metal, but their blistering take on rock and roll was what made a million people’s hairs stand on end when they were listening to either ‘Paranoid’ or ‘Ace of Spades’.
But once Osbourne fell out of step with the rest of the group, you could argue that Rhoads was the one who saved his career. While his wife Sharon was the one to pick him up off his ass, Rhoads’ amazing approach to guitar was just what Osbourne needed, along with being the exact opposite of what Tony Iommi was going for.
No matter how much they changed their sound, Iommi would always have a darker tone to many of his riffs, as if he sculpted them in the depths of Hell and then resurrected them for the next generation. With Rhoads, it was all about brightness, taking his cues from classical music and putting an almost optimistic spin on Osbourne’s first major hits like ‘Crazy Train’ and ‘I Don’t Know’.
While Lemmy was more straight-ahead rock and roll than Osbourne, he knew that Rhoads had something much more interesting going on, saying, “Randy was just brilliant. I mean, of course, he got better after he died because everybody does. But I loved Randy. He took risks. He wasn’t scared. He knew his instrument, so he’d just go for it. Ozzy used to throw him up on his shoulder while he was playing, and he never missed a note.”
Osbourne was probably bound to be a star no matter what he did afterwards, but Rhoads’s riffs were like mini-songs within themselves without needing any singing over the top. Compared to the menacing licks that ‘The Prince of Darkness’ was used to, hearing the bridge to ‘Mr Crowley’ was the metal equivalent of someone getting Bach or Beethoven behind the fretboard for a few minutes.
And it’s not like Lemmy didn’t take notice. Although 90% of Motörhead’s discography consisted of whatever the hell he wanted to do, projects like Another Perfect Day probably wouldn’t have sounded so progressive if the frontman’s eyes hadn’t been opened to what could be done outside the confines of standard rock and roll.
But that was the whole point of Rhoads in the first place. For a frontman like Osbourne, who relied on making amazing pieces of music in the standard rock format, Rhoads helped point out possibilities far beyond what a standard blues lick was supposed to sound like.
