Ultimate Rhoads

This should not be a sad day, but a day to remember a long, good and successful life. Delores Rhoads lived for 95 years and spent the last few in poor health. Today her suffering is over and she has gone to be with the God she loved and taught her children to love. Today is a day her children and g...

The first time I heard "I Don't Know" on the radio at an Independence Day Carnival (on the Round-up) during the summer of '81. It was perfectly constructed and I loved the middle section (still do), and then how it rips your head off coming out of it and right into the guitar solo. Then, a...

"He pretty much raised the white flag and surrendered when he chose to go to university. My point is that Rhoads didn't believe he could be successful being the owner of his own band because the singer makes it work, not the guitarist. He's not alone. Example: Jimmy Page. He's supposed to be th...

"I read somewhere that Randy was getting offers from New York to do session work and the he was interested in doing that for a little while." I believe that was in the John Stix interview. If I'm not mistaken, Stix as a journalist was tied into the NYC scene and offered to make introductio...

Nick - you are correct. Mixing my shows up. King Biscuit was 7.28.81 at St. Denis Theater in Montreal, Canada. I should know, since this concert was listed as 7.31.81 for the longest time until I found the newspaper announcement stating it was being moved to the earlier date. Obviously, Ozzy and the...

"I Don't Know Live" was a B-side to the Flying High Again single that was released in '81 and it was the unedited version from the Cleveland Music Hall / King Biscuit Live Show from May, 1981, which is found on the Tribute album - except Ozzy re-recorded his vocals for the album release. D...

I work in business continuity and IT disaster recovery, so any news about cyber hacks into company's computer systems get my attention - like Target, Anthem, Home Depot and others that have had valuable information stolen from them. Well, I thought about the hack into Sony's computer system over the...

We've heard "Mr. Crowley" and " Suicide Solution" from the Southampton show released on the "Mr. Crowley Live" EP, along with "You Said it All" recorded during sound check with crowd noise added in later. Then we heard "Goodbye to Romance" and "...

There is a lot more live material. Remember when "Ozzy Live" was released as part of the DOAM Legacy CD for the 30th anniversary? Ozzy's producer/ engineer at the time, Kevin Churko, went on the record in an interview that in pulling that live CD together he listened to a lot of live shows...

Hmmm...now I don't know Randy well at all, but from all that I've read and heard from those that did, he really seemed to have loved playing guitar and teaching guitar. My thought is that he would've have received his degree from UCLA or a similar school and then split his time between teaching (pos...

Although my allegiances lie with the Rhoads Family (and always will), I am SO glad that I got these books. The two highlights of the book for me are the postcard he sent Jodi about playing Boston (which is where I live) and the Diary of a Madman recording track listing with the working song titles a...

I still think that the gentleman connected with the Capitol Theater is in control of THAT footage...and he is kind of stuck. Sharon won't pay for the value of what it's worth at this point and he can't do anything otherwise with it, legally, because Ozzy and Randy's image are all over it and others ...

To me, I still maintain in the hard rock / metal genre, that Randy's historical significance was a more intellectual approach to guitar playing given his teaching background...I know some before him had a learned approach to composing their songs, solos, and passages but he also had the chops. Yes, ...

And my opinion:

1. Mr. Crowley
2. Revelation
3. Diary of a Madman
4. I Don't Know
5. Flying High Again

I think Randy's music knowledge and vocabulary - because he not only played, practiced, and taught so much, was immense and beyond what the typical guitarist had at his thinking fingertips...the ability to so perfectly translate what he heard in his head to our ears was his strength, because he was ...