Ozzy’s Management Almost Didn’t Hire Guitarist Randy Rhoads – Here’s Why

Ozzy's Management Almost Didn't Hire Guitarist Randy Rhoads - Here's Why
Randy Rhoads: rick, CC BY 2.0 (Wikipedia)/ Ozzy Osbourne: Ozzy Osbourne Facebook
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During a recent interview with Stefan Adika, songwriter Bob Daisley spoke about how Ozzy Osbourne‘s management was initially against the idea of Randy Rhoads coming on as a guitarist for Ozzy’s band.

Daisley has collaborated with Ozzy before, providing bass, vocal, co-production, and songwriting work. In this interview, Daisley talks about the initial lineup for Ozzy’s band and how changes ended up being made. Eventually, he brings up how Randy Rhodes (who worked on Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman) came to be part of the lineup.

However, there was some resistance coming from Ozzy’s management when it came to Rhoads, due to him being “unknown” and “young.”

However, as history has proven, Randy Rhoads ultimately did become part of Ozzy’s lineup. Here is what Bob Daisley had to say (the following has been transcribed by Ultimate Guitar):

“It was after that, that [Ozzy] said to me, ‘I met this other guitar teacher in LA. His name’s Randy Rhoads.’ I said, ‘Well, let’s get him over.’ But when he said ‘guitar teacher’, I envisaged this older guy with pipe and slippers and a cardigan. David Arden didn’t want to do it, because he was in charge of the band at that point.

“He didn’t want to fly Randy over. He said, ‘He’s unknown, he’s young, nobody’s heard of him.’ But then, David Arden’s words were, and I still remember [them], ‘Against my better judgment, I flew him over.’

“The three of us caught a train up to Ozzy’s, and we stayed over there. And we had that first play together, in Ozzy’s rehearsal room at his house.

“And as soon as Randy and I started playing together, at the end of the first little knock that we had together, we said to each other, ‘Well, great, this is good.’ I said, ‘I like the way you play,’ and he said that to me, almost at the same time, almost the same words. We knew that it was going to happen.”

As one of the most iconic and brilliant guitar players in all of rock history, it is surreal to hear that Rhoads was almost prevented from being part of Ozzy’s band.

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