Ultimate Rhoads

We've probably all heard the story by now: Randy's practicing some classical material, and Ozzy says "That's mine, I'm stealing that". Or, something to that effect. Randy was playing Leo Brouwer's Study No. 6. A variation of this piece would become part of the intro to the song 'Diary Of A Madman".

I was browsing Vimeo today, and ran into a video of a guy playing it. Thought I'd share for those that never heard the original piece.

Hopefully a Vimeo account is not required to view: http://www.vimeo.com/618565

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Agreed. At a faster speed, it sounds much more Latin in flavor, and would not have been likely to catch Ozzy's interest. Very cool sounding piece IMO.

About ten years ago, I attended a private guitar concert put on by a friend of mine. He had just earned a Performance degree from Berklee College of Music, and was repeating his senior performance set for a small audience. He ran through a gamut of styles -- from jazz to rock to classical. He performed the Leo Brouwer piece; but before he did, he explained the relation of the piece to Diary of a Madman (as there were more than a few metalheads in attendance).

He said that in Brouwer's instructional book, Brouwer presented a simplified version of the piece as a way to get the chords under your fingers without having to immediately master the tricky arpeggios. The simplified version is nearly identical to what Randy played -- a slow eight-note arpeggio per chord, as opposed to the more-complicated version in the videos above (same version in both, though the second guy obviously plays it much faster).

So there are really two versions of this piece, and the one you usually hear (the advanced version) is arpeggiated very differently than Diary of a Madman. The one Ozzy heard and wanted to use was the simplified version.

(Inexplicably, Ozzy has identified it as a Mozart piece in his new book.)

Cornelius wrote:(Inexplicably, Ozzy has identified it as a Mozart piece in his new book.)

To a non-Randy fanatic or a non-classical guitarist Leo Brouwer doesn't exist. To the average listener who is no a classical music devotee, there are only two classical composers - Mozart and Beethoven. Fact of life, people often don't care about the details, so a "Mozart piece" = a "classical piece" = anything classical sounding.


It'd be nice if people in general were more interested, but they really aren't, at least not in the States.

Well I used a variation of a Mateo Carcassi piece once.

mateo carcassi wrote some beautiful pieces!!!along with giuliani, corbetta, sor, legnani, coste, dowland, de visee,carulli,weiss,i can go on and on but i only stumbled on these composers by reading that randy was facinated with classical guitar and looking to get a degree at ucla..so i decided to look into what his love for this music was and i fell in love with classical music.. i learned to read music and appreciate the baroque,renasance(sic),and classical periods of that beautiful music..and i have to give thanks to randy for introducing me to that aspect of guitar playing..bless you randy!!!!

Same here -- Randy definitely inspired my interest in classical guitar and classical music in general.

I read something online about Leo Brouwer and how he was thinking of suing Ozzy for Diary of a Madman, but when he found out that Randy had passed, he felt bad and dropped it. I don't know if this is really true or not, but I wonder what would have happened if the Randy were still around.