Among Randy Rhoads’ earliest musical projects was Violet Fox, a short-lived band he formed with his brother Kelle on drums and high school pal Kelly Garni on bass. In 1973, after playing in several cover bands, Rhoads and Garni recruited singer Kevin DuBrow and drummer Drew Forsyth to form a new band called Little Women, according to Louder Sound. Fortunately, the band’s Louisa May Alcott-inspired moniker was quickly dropped in favor of Quiet Riot. With DuBrow’s charisma and Rhoads’ fretboard pyrotechnics, the band became a local favorite.

According to Kelle Rhoads, Randy’s abilities went beyond his musicianship. “He was a very intelligent kid who got good grades in school, and he didn’t even have to try,” Rhoads told author Jas Obrecht. Still, music was Randy Rhoads’ life, and by the time he was a teenager, he had mapped his career. As a musical prodigy, it was clear to  Rhoads that a standard educational path was a hindrance to his dreams. While attending Burbank High School, Rhoads was allowed to participate in a special accelerated learning program. Consequently, he graduated at 16, which allowed him to focus on bands and teaching guitar at his mother’s music school full-time.

Randy Rhoads’ dedication to the guitar is legendary. Constantly striving to improve his musical vocabulary and technique, Rhoads spent countless hours practicing. “All Randy ever wanted to do was play the guitar,” Kelle Rhoads recalled to Jas Obrecht. “I don’t remember him ever saying he wanted to do anything else.” Agreeing with her eldest son, Delores Rhoads adds, “Randy just loved [playing guitar] so much. He played all the time. He never put it down. … In all the years I had been teaching — and that’s a good many years — I’ve never seen a student who just loved it so much.”

According to liveforlivemusic.com, Randy Rhoads’ obsession with music sometimes put his health on the line. As a child, his incessant practicing so concerned Delores Rhoads that she consulted a doctor out of fear he might permanently damage his hands. After joining Ozzy Osbourne’s band, Rhoads would practice for hours before and after gigs in pursuit of musical perfection. To alleviate swelling after these marathon practice sessions, Rhoads would be forced to soak his aching hands.

As the hottest guitarists on the LA music scene in the 1970s, Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen maintained a mostly amicable rivalry during their early years. Decades after Rhoads and Van Halen’s rise to the pantheon of guitar godhood, rock and metal fans continue to make their cases for who was the best.

According to biographer Andrew Klein, Rhoads was “devastated” after seeing Van Halen play for the first time. “Everyone was always telling him how great he was,” Klein told Peter Lindblad of Backstage Auctions. “Then he saw Eddie and it opened his eyes, and he got a major reality check. It was healthy for him. … He thought Eddie was great. He wanted to be great also.”

Randy Rhoads was always the first to admit Van Halen’s influence on his music. Still, he felt that his use of Van Halen’s techniques ultimately held him back. “I have my own personality on the guitar but as of yet I don’t think I have my own style,” Rhoads told Guitar World’s John Stix in 1982. “For instance, I do a solo guitar thing in concert, and I do a lot of the same licks as Eddie Van Halen. Eddie is a great player, but it kills me that I do that.”

In an interview conducted shortly after Rhoads’ death in 1982, Van Halen remembered his late rival. “He was good,” Van Halen stated, adding, “But, I don’t think he did anything that I haven’t done.”

As detailed in “Sharon Osbourne Extreme: My Autobiography,” Ozzy Osbourne was still married to his first wife, Thelma Riley, when the singer became romantically involved with Sharon Arden. Initially, Osbourne and Arden hid their relationship for the sake of Osbourne’s family. To that end, they concocted the fiction that Sharon and Randy Rhoads were an item. Despite being committed to his girlfriend Jodi Raskin, Rhoads went along with the ruse.

However, when Osbourne’s wife showed up at Ridge Farm Studios during the recording of “Diary of a Madman,” Arden was left out in the cold. Rhoads offered to share his room with Arden pending the departure of Ozzy’s wife. Close quarters mixed with alcohol resulted in a single night of passion between Arden and Rhoads.

In “Ordinary People: Our Story,” Sharon Osbourne recalled her dalliance with Rhoads. “Ozzy knows and has never wanted to discuss it,” Osbourne wrote. “That’s his way of dealing with it, which means the details will remain with me until I’m gone. … Ozzy knows the onetime occurrence was loving, not lustful.”

Although his talent,  kindness, patience, and dedication are well-documented, fond remembrances by Ozzy Osbourne and others have transformed Randy Rhoads into a veritable heavy metal saint. Sadly, the man has become lost in the mythmaking. One aspect of the legendary guitarist that’s been largely overlooked was his wicked sense of humor.

According to longtime friend and bandmate Kelly Garni, Rhoads loved a good prank, and, at times, his jokes could get out of hand. “[Randy] took me aside and informed me that he had gone into the bathroom [of a house owned by friends], locked the door, crawled out the window and then stuck the garden hose into the window and turned it on,” Garni recalled in an excerpt from his autobiography, “Angels With Dirty Faces,” quoted in a Guitar World feature. Garni, feeling that Rhoads had taken the joke too far, came to blows with his friend. During the brawl, Rhoads struck Garni in the head with a telephone. Garni retaliated by whipping Rhoads across the face with an extension cord.

Rhoads and Garni also had a penchant for crashing Hollywood parties and wreaking havoc on the homes of unsuspecting hosts. “We would put eggs under the pillows on their beds, hiding things that would smell, like meat, under the bed,” Garni told Louder Sound. “We’d help ourselves to some trinket if we saw something that we liked … We never took anything valuable. … We had sort of a conscience, you see.” 

Randy Rhoads’ death in a small plane crash in Leesburg, Florida, on March 19, 1982, left many unanswered questions for fans, friends, and family. One of the mysteries surrounding Rhoads’ death is the question of why the guitarist, who was uncomfortable with flying, boarded the plane in the first place. “Some weird f*cking unexplained sh*t went on that morning,” Ozzy Osbourne writes in his 2010 autobiography “I Am Ozzy.” “A lot of people say, ‘Oh, they were pissing around, typical f*cking rock stars.’ I want to set the record straight … Randy was a very level-headed guy and he was afraid of flying. None of it makes any sense.”

The plane was taken without permission by bus driver Andrew Aycock, whom some conjecture may have been attempting to kill his ex-wife, who was standing near the Osbourne tour bus. Flying extremely low, Aycock, who was operating the craft on an invalid pilot’s license and was under the influence of cocaine, clipped the bus, sending the plane careening into a nearby house. Rhoads, Aycock, and seamstress Rachel Youngblood died in the crash.

Bassist Rudy Sarzo credits Rhoads with saving the lives of the band. “I am a thousand per cent convinced that Randy saved everybody in Ozzy’s tour bus, keeping the plane from crashing into us.” Sarzo told MusicRadar. “It clipped the bus, but it did not crash [directly] into the bus, and if that had happened, we would all have perished along with Randy and the others in the plane.”