On March 18th, 2004, Randy Rhoads was inducted to the Guitar Center Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California.

Randy’s family and Dave Widerman, Guitar Center’s Director of Artist Relations asked me to say a few words about Randy during the ceremony. This is what I said:

I met Randy in the summer of 1978 when I auditioned for Quiet Riot, the local Los Angeles band he formed in the mid 70s. The first thing I noticed about Randy was how effortlessly he managed to alternate from playing rhythm to soloing without loosing the fullness of his sound. Though we were just jamming on a blues based riff I could tell that he had a rich musical vocabulary reaching well beyond the average rock guitarist.

During the next couple of years Quiet Riot performed at the Whiskey, Roxy and Starwood, not far form where we are gathered today. As we struggled to get the attention of the music industry during the New Wave and Punk era, we managed to carry on with the support of our local fan’s love for Randy and the band.

It was during this period that Randy asked me join the teaching staff at Musonia, his mother’s, Delores, music school. I watched him daily teach his students, some who are present here today, with love and dedication. One afternoon I asked him about his approach to teaching. Randy told me he believed that his students weren’t any different than he was at their age. They just couldn’t wait to get up on stage and tear things up and that it was his responsibility to prepare them for that moment the best he could.

In the winter of 1979, Randy left Los Angles to join Ozzy Osbourne and form one of the most prolific musical partnerships in Heavy Metal history. After being creatively stifled by the local LA music scene, Ozzy gave Randy the complete freedom and encouragement to fulfill his musical potential as a guitarist and composer. While in England, Randy took the opportunity to further his musical knowledge by taking classical guitar lessons form some of the most renowned guitar teachers in London. His newly acquired musical skills can be heard on Revelation Mother Earth, Diary of a Madman and Dee, a composition written for Delores, just to name a few.

In March of 1981 Randy recommended me to Ozzy and Sharon and shortly thereafter I became the bass player on the Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman tours. I’m eternally grateful to Randy for giving me the opportunity to share all the wonderful and crazy fun filled moments we all shared together.

While on the road, Randy would go through the yellow pages as soon as he checked into his hotel room and phone a local music school to book a classical guitar lesson. Most of the times Randy wound up giving the star struck local music teacher the guitar lesson but still pay for the lesson himself. You see, in his heart Randy never lost his love for teaching.

As we are all gathered here today to celebrate Randy’s contribution to the world of music. It breaks my heart that he is no longer with us. But I rejoice knowing that his music lives on every time I hear Crazy Train being played by a young guitarist while checking out a new amp at guitar center, when it’s played over the P.A. system at a sporting event or when I turn on MTV to watch The Osbournes.

Randy we miss you and we love you. Thank you for coming and sharing this joyful occasion with all of us. God bless every one of you.