02CRAZY TRAIN OZZY OSBOURNE

(1980)

“RANDY RHOADS WAS THE GREATEST HARD ROCK GUITAR PLAYER OF ALL TIME” TOM MORELLO

How Randy Rhoads resurrected a lost soul

When he was kicked out of Black Sabbath in 1979, Ozzy Osbourne feared that his days as a rockstar were over. Until, that is, a young American guitarist named Randy Rhoads came into his life. Rhoads, poached from LA band Quiet Riot, would prove the perfect foil for Ozzy’s reinvention post-sabbath. On his debut solo album Blizzard Of Ozz, that unique voice was framed in a modern context, in which Rhoads’ ferocious neo-classical guitar technique was pivotal. And Crazy Train was the key track – an anthem that would forever define Ozzy as a solo artist and Randy as one of the great guitarists of his generation.

Unusually, the Crazy Train lick was not in the standard metal keys of A or E, marking the first time a guitarist had written to order for Ozzy’s doomy holler. “In Sabbath,” he noted, “they’d just write something and say, ‘Put a vocal on that’. Randy was the first guy to make it comfortable for me.”

Years later, questions would be raised over the authorship of the Crazy Train riff. Greg Leon, who played bass alongside Rhoads in Quiet Riot, claimed: “I showed Randy the riff to Steve Miller’s Swingtown. I said: ‘Look what happens when you speed this riff up.’ We messed around, and the next thing I know he took it to a whole other level.” But this was disputed by Bob Daisley, the bassist on Blizzard Of Ozz. “The signature riff in F# minor from Crazy Train was Randy’s,” Daisley said. “Then

I wrote the part for him to solo over, and Ozzy had the vocal melody. The title came because Randy had an effect that was making a psychedelic chugging sound through his amp. Randy and I were train buffs, and I said: ‘That sounds like a crazy train.’ Ozzy had this saying, ‘You’re off the rails!’, so I used that in the lyrics.”

Released as a single in 1980, Crazy Train was only a minor hit (peaking at No.49 in the UK). But the song’s influence on the guitar scene was inestimable. “I remember the moment I first heard Randy,” said Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello. “I was packed in the back of somebody’s mom’s hatchback in Libertyville, and Crazy Train came on. This blistering riff came at me, followed by an incredible solo, and of course there was Ozzy – I recognised his voice as the guy from Black Sabbath. By the end I was like: ‘What just happened?’”

Crazy Train set Ozzy on the path to mega-stardom, and confirmed Randy Rhoads as the most gifted guitar player to emerge since Eddie Van Halen. Tragically, he would not live to fulfil his potential. He died in a plane crash in 1982, after recording one more album with Ozzy, Diary Of A Madman. But his influence was profound, and as Tom Morello said in tribute: “Randy was the greatest hard rock guitar player of all time.”