where does randy rhoads still stand?

[danny.guitar]

Guitar tone aside, Randy was, and still is one of, if not my favorite guitarist ever. And he was amazing even at his young age/before he really had too much time to do his own thing.

I can't imagine how good he'd be if he were still alive.

 

[Tadpui]

That's exactly what kills me, Danny. There's no telling where he'd be today when he was that talented at 25.

If you go to wikipedia and read his bio entry there, Ozzy said that Randy really wanted to get a degree in music, and would probably have left the band before too long to pursue an education in music.

 

[Farview]

I think Randy's tone was great. Live, it was phenomenal. Listen to TRIBUTE. In addition, his studio tone on CRAZY TRAIN is awesome... it was achieved using some kind of studio delay (AMS?), not a stomp box.

As far as your comment about "stompbox mentality", I think it's true that more people use the devices today than "back in the day."

Randy was using an MXR distortion + for distortion pumped through a couple 100 watt marshalls. His tone was thin and scratchy and sounded like an MXR distortion + through a couple of non-master volume Marshalls. (oddly enough)

 

[skyguitarworks]

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As far as his playing, I think he was great. He could be a little derivative from EVH and also the general neoclassical thing going on then, but he was tasteful and melodic about it. a.

if you look at the years, he STARTED the neo classical influence in heavy metal, he came before all the shredders of the 80's

 

[Tadpui]

Didn't Richie Blackmore beat him to it by a few years on the neo-classical front?

I'm not sure at what point Blackmore's style started to be considered neo-classical though.

 

[Farview]

Didn't Richie Blackmore beat him to it by a few years on the neo-classical front?

I'm not sure at what point Blackmore's style started to be considered neo-classical though.

Blackmore and Uli Roth did the neo-classical thing long before Randy, but Randy showed up right when the genre was getting recognized and he popularized it.

 

[skyguitarworks]

i did not mean to leave out or over look roth or blackmore, but for me Randy was the guy who made me really start to work my ass off at it, ace frehley may have made me wanna play it and be cool, but randy made me respect it

 

[Sirnothingness]

He could be a little derivative from EVH and also the general neoclassical thing going on then, but he was tasteful and melodic about it. You can go back and listen to his riffage so many years later and maybe it doesn't sound mind blowing but it still sounds solid and smooth, not silly and forced like a lot of the stuff from that era.

Not at all. Their styles were very different. If I were to compare Randy to anyone it would be more along the lines of a Richie Blackmore than EVH. Even their tapping techniques were different from one another.

And Randy's riffs/playing certainly still holds up to todays standards.

 

[danny.guitar]

If he were still alive he'd wipe the floor with most if not all guitarists of that genre and probably other genres as well!

 

[TerraMortim]

As much as I liked him and every other guitarist that Ozzy ever had with him,
Tony is still the man,as well as Geezer and Billl.

yeah, I absolutely prefer black sabbath to ozzy's solo stuff..there are some good ozzy solo songs, but he was too drunk and high all the time to top the great sabbath stuff.

 

[Farview]

If he were still alive he'd wipe the floor with most if not all guitarists of that genre and probably other genres as well!

If Eddie VH had died in 81 instead of Randy, we would be saying the same thing about him. The reality is that if Randy, Jimi, Cobain, etc... had lived, they would have eventually faded away and/or become just as irrelevant as EVH, Uli Roth, Richie Blackmore, Yngwie, Vai, etc...

It's only natural.

 

[danny.guitar]

If Eddie VH had died in 81 instead of Randy, we would be saying the same thing about him. The reality is that if Randy, Jimi, Cobain, etc... had lived, they would have eventually faded away and/or become just as irrelevant as EVH, Uli Roth, Richie Blackmore, Yngwie, Vai, etc...

It's only natural.

When someone dies they do seem to gain a lot of respect/praise. But I think Randy's a little different in that respect. He was a very disciplined/gifted musician and guitarist. My personal opinion is he would have done something truly great if he were given the time to go on his own and do his own thing (which is what he said he wanted to do).

EVH is a great guitarist, and I'm sure people would say the same thing about him if he died back about the same time Randy did.

Truth is you never know, maybe I'm wrong. Just saying that's what I think.

 

[Gorty]

Randy was good, nice playing, especially his tone live. Dimebag was good as well but his tone sucked in my opinion. Plus he could be a real jerk to his support bands.

 

[Gidge]

back in the day on my 4 track, i recorded guitar from a stomp box distortion direct in...thats about what the studio version of "Crazy Train" sounds like....terrible.....his live sound rocks though......

his recorded tone, i think, can be blamed on bad engineering/production/mixing......

 

[Farview]

Dimebag was good as well but his tone sucked in my opinion. Plus he could be a real jerk to his support bands.

That's the first time I've ever heard anyone say something bad about Dime. I was in one of his support bands and became friends with him. He was one of the nicest guys in the world, what did he do to you?

 

[mshilarious]

If Eddie VH had died in 81 instead of Randy, we would be saying the same thing about him. The reality is that if Randy, Jimi, Cobain, etc... had lived, they would have eventually faded away and/or become just as irrelevant as EVH, Uli Roth, Richie Blackmore, Yngwie, Vai, etc...

It's only natural.

It's true, but I get the feeling those guys weren't quite done yet. Hendrix would have done interesting stuff at least until 1975; hard to say if he would have delved into fusion at that point, and thus been forgotten, or played disco

Rhoads I can see doing good stuff to 1985 when, like EVH, he would succumb to keyboards

I can't see any result for Cobain other than killing himself, unless he did the world a favor and offed his wife instead

 

[Farview]

I wasn't saying that any of these guys wouldn't have done anything cool had they lived, I'm just saying that 25 or 30 years later they would be in that group of guitar heroes that you kind of wonder what happened to. (like Roth, Blackmore, Jake E Lee, Tony Mac Alpine, etc...)

Eventually, they become old, out of touch, and uncool. Same would have gone for Morrison, Joplin, Lane Staley, and every other loser that assumed room temperature through their own doing.

I think that Dime will not be remembered the same way as Randy because he didn't die at the height of of his popularity or even the upward swing of his career.

 

[ozraves]

Randy Rhoads studied Classic guitar in his own fashion. He also happened to work with Ozzy. Those two things sort of sounded fresh together compared to the downer sound of Tony Iommi combined with Ozzy. I enjoyed Randy Rhoads before his death. I found his playing more difficult to comp than Eddie Van Halen's, which wasn't that hard once you figured out that down tuning thing of his.

 

[Farview]

I really wasn't trying to compare EVH with Randy. I was just trying to point out that anyone who comes up with a fresh approach and dies shortly there after, will be put on a pedestal simply because they didn't get the chance to write the boring album that they would have eventually written.

If Randy would have quit Ozzy and put out a couple classical albums, then faded into obscurity, we wouldn't be talking about him like this now.

Perception and reality are not always the same thing. Jim Morrison, for example. Great vocalist? No. Great poet? No. Did he have an attitude that people embraced at the time? Yes. That attitude would have either: A. changed as he matured or B. become the but of a joke because it would be pretty silly for a 60 year old man to still act that way. (never mind the PC police)

Had he not died when he was still popular, there wouldn't have been movies and all that about him. He would have been hanging out with the leader of Stepenwolf and playing the county fairs like everyone else from that era.

 

[skyguitarworks]

That's the first time I've ever heard anyone say something bad about Dime. I was in one of his support bands and became friends with him. He was one of the nicest guys in the world, what did he do to you?

i agree with Farview, i have never heard anything bad to say about dime, i am curious alos as to what dime did to make him say that.