Hard Rockers to Celebrate Randy Rhoads’ Legacy at Benefit

The continuing fame and influence of the late guitarist Randy Rhoads will again be celebrated, to benefit a scholarship fund named for him, when a crowd of hard rockers perform Wednesday night at the Palace in Hollywood.

Before he was killed in 1982 in an airplane crash while touring with Ozzy Osbourne, Rhoads had just begun to emerge as a new voice in the hard-rock genre. The playing and co-writing he did in the two years before he died, on Osbourne’s first two solo albums, became strong influences, later heavy metal guitar heroes have said.

The Palace show, which will include performances by Lita Ford, George Lynch, Carmine Appice, Tim Bogert and dozens of other players, will focus on that lingering legacy. But the event is also designed to raise funds for the Randy Rhoads Charitable Trust Fund, established by his mother, Dolores Rhoads, to help support the educational pursuits of young classical guitarists.

“Randy was very interested in pursuing the classical guitar field,” said Dolores Rhoads, co-founder in 1949 of the Musonia Music School in North Hollywood. “He was heavily into it, and he had already asked me to get information for him to continue a college education in that vein, and eventually go to Europe to get his master’s degree in classical guitar.”

Even during those tours with Osbourne, bassist Rudy Sarzo recalled, Rhoads could be heard playing an acoustic guitar in his hotel room well into the night. “His passion became the classical guitar,” said Sarzo, an organizer of Wednesday’s show. “And it got to the point on the tour where in every city, he would get out the Yellow Pages and look up a music school and look for a classical guitar teacher.”

The trust fund originally came from royalties still being earned from Rhoads’ work as a player and songwriter. The fund has already provided one annual scholarship at UCLA, awarded to a classical guitar student with demonstrated talent and financial need.

Proceeds from the Palace concert, co-sponsored by Guitar for the Practicing Musician magazine and KNAC-FM, are to be added to the fund. The first benefit concert last year raised more than $6,300.

“We’re not helping out musicians who just want to learn a few chords,” Sarzo said. “These are classical-influenced musicians who want to take music to a new level.”

Rhoads discovered the guitar when he was 6 at his home in Burbank. For relaxation, his physician grandfather had played an old Gibson acoustic and “Randy found that in the cupboard someplace in the house here, and just from that day forward that was his whole life,” his mother said. “He would not put the guitar down. If we went on vacation, the guitar went with us, no matter where or what.”

At the age of 18, Rhoads became a rock guitar teacher at his mother’s school, spending his days with beginners who were often only interested in learning Van Halen songs, before joining Sarzo and singer Kevin Dubrow at night for rehearsals of their band Quiet Riot. But that was at the end of the ‘70s, years before that band would win a recording contract and reach a massive pop audience.

“We couldn’t get arrested,” said Sarzo, who would later join the band Whitesnake. “We had a huge fan club, and we even got our fan club to picket record companies. We tried everything. But forget it. In those days, unless you looked like the Knack or the Motels, they were not interested. And that’s when Ozzy came to town looking for a guitar player.”

The former Black Sabbath front man hired Rhoads away from his hometown frustrations in 1980 and made him a key element on the “Blizzard of Ozz” and “Diary of a Madman” albums, recorded in quick succession that same year. “When he finally joined Ozzy and Ozzy told him to be yourself, that’s where he really grew as a musician,” said Sarzo, who was himself recruited into Osbourne’s band on Rhoads’ recommendation.

“Those two records that he did do not reflect the musician that he was by his dying day,” Sarzo said of the guitarist, who was only 25 when he died. “They were recorded two years before, and then we went out on tour. And on every date, he came up with something new.

“He had a very charismatic personality, and he was a great songwriter. His songwriting was at a certain high level that very few people have touched in the heavy metal genre.”

The fame that resulted from the albums and tours with Osbourne “came rather suddenly and grew suddenly,” his mother recalled. “He was overwhelmed with it. I think he was more surprised than I.”

Part of the impetus for his fellow players to do these benefits, Sarzo added, is to help keep the late musician’s memory alive, although it hardly seems necessary in heavy metal circles.

“It’s amazing,” Sarzo said. “I’ve been to Iceland and Japan, from Guam to Brazil. When I first meet a young musician, I can look at their face and know what their first question is going to be: ‘What was Randy Rhoads really like?’ The interest in him has not faded.”

The second annual benefit for the Randy Rhoads Charitable Trust Fund begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Palace, 1735 N. Vine St., Hollywood. Tickets are $15. Call the Palace, (213) 467-4571, or Ticketmaster, (213) 480-3232.