Cuba Libre!
The ultimate rock bass journeyman looks back – and forward. Read and learn!
“WHEN I’M ON TOUR, MY BASS SLEEPS WITH ME. I WAKE UP IN THE MORNING AND PLAY!”
Rudy Sarzo is a hero of no fewer than six decades of bass. In the 60s, as a Cuban refugee living variously in New Jersey and Florida, he plucked the bass in garage-rock bands. In the 70s, he made his bones with Quiet Riot, pioneers of Hollywood’s hairmetal scene. Catapulted to fame in Ozzy Osbourne’s band in the 80s, courtesy of a recommendation from his erstwhile Quiet Riot colleague Randy Rhoads, Sarzo toured the planet with bands such as Whitesnake. By the mid-90s he was a classic rock bassist who commanded enormous respect, laying down lines with Yngwie Malmsteen, Dio and Blue Oyster Cult in the decade that followed.
In recent years Sarzo has trodden the boards with Geoff Tate’s version of Queensryche, Animetal, and now the Guess Who, where he continues to tour today. He’s a bassist with much wisdom to impart, and where better to share it than in these pages? Read on as he talks essential gear, professional attitudes, dealing with the still-shocking tragedy of Rhoads’ death in a plane crash in 1982, and the skills you need to take the big sounds to the big stages...
How’s it going with the Guess Who, Rudy?
It’s going great. I started playing in the 60s, and I know a lot of people think of me as a heavy metal bass player, but I started playing before metal existed as we know it. So the Guess Who’s music was part of the soundtrack of my life. We had a new record out a few months ago [The Future Is What It Used To Be] and we’re playing songs from it. It was really well-received, so it’s all good. They keep adding dates, and then in March all the spring tours begin.
Do you still enjoy life on the road?
Oh yes. I know from doing this for so many years that a band like ours has a certain routing, dedicated by flying. A lot of bands in our situation avoid travelling in winter time, and pick it up in March. But I remember going on tour with Ozzy, when [his wife and manager] Sharon Osbourne really wanted to establish him as a solo artist by playing the A, B and C markets. She saw it as an advantage for us to tour in the winter time in the United States, because there would be less competition. There’s different schools of thought.
What gear are you using?
I play Spector basses. When Spector asked me to design my signature Euro4 LX, I didn’t just want there to be a cosmetic difference between my model and the other signature models. I was walking around NAMM, and a friend of mine grabbed me and said, ‘You’ve got to check out these basses’. They were Martin Sims’ Lionheart basses. I saw the Sims Super Quad pickups on them, and I was completely blown away – and I thought, ‘This is what I’m looking for. I’ll add them to my signature model to make them different from all the other Spector basses’. I’m blown away by the whole diversity of the instrument, to be able to have pickups with so many combinations, from split humbucker, single coil, and double pickups, and have it use the preamp or bypass the preamp. It’s just an incredible combination.
Do you have a preferred setting for those pickups?
No, no. It all depends. I hear a sound in my head, and if I want a Jazz tone, say, then I go for the two single coils. If I’m going for a Precision tone, I just use one pickup, because the way that I have them is with a blend. I just blend it over to the split coil pickup in the front, which basically shuts off the bridge pickup.
Are you equally happy with five strings as well as four?
I play four, I play five, and I also play six. They’re all tools for the job, you know. I mean, you can’t show up for a job with just a Phillips screwdriver.
Which other endorsement deals do you have?
Oh, I need to go down my pedalboard... Ampeg, D’Addario, Ultimate Ears In Ears, Boss, J Rockett Audio and TC Electronic. Sometimes I need a compressor, sometimes I need a chorus. The TonePrint technology is phenomenal. I also recently started using what is called the SoloDallas Storm, and I’ve got to give you a little story about that. When I first started playing with Ozzy back in 1981, I inherited three of the original SchafferVega wireless units that used to belong to ELO, the band, because Jet Records was not only the label for ELO as well as Ozzy, but