The Lost Genius of Randy Rhoads

Randy Rhoads is one the greatest what-ifs in the history of metal. a pure technician on the fretboard, Rhoads pioneered the neoclassical guitar style that would come to define the metal sound of the '80s. to this day, many of the genre's most important guitarists still cite him as a key influence, but his tragic death at 25 meant he never got to reach his full potential. a founding member of Quiet Riot who left before they got famous, he only ever played on two mainstream albums: Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman, the first two records of Ozzy Osbourne's solo career. but in those two albums, Rhoads left an indelible mark on the genre, leaving fans to wonder what might have been. what incredible music could we have gotten if he'd been able to develop his talents even further? and I think the best way to answer that is by studying the music we did get. Rhoads was a great songwriter and a talented performer, but he's best known for his incredible technical solos. I'm gonna look at three of them to try to understand what made his style so unique. (tick, tick, tick, tock) before we get started, if you want to see my next video a month early or just watch this one ad-free, those are both live now on Patreon. there's a link in the description, more on that at the end of the video. the first solo we're gonna look is, what else? Crazy Train. when I'm analyzing a solo, I always like to start by asking what they're playing on top of, because knowing the chords and the arrangement informs the choices they make. and here, we can get all that from Bob Daisley's bass. (bang) ok, so. two things. first, it's super fast. he's smashing out 16th notes at an aggressive tempo, so even without the guitar, there's already a lot going on. if he wants to stand out, Rhoads has two options: go long and slow for contrast, or try to outshine him by playing even faster. we'll see in a second which way he goes. and the other thing is the harmony: the bass walks down the scale, implying a chord progression of, basically, I-VI-IV-I in F# minor, linked with passing chords at the end of each bar. it's a decorated version of a four-chord loop, which Daisley plays four times, giving Rhoads a simple foundation on top of which to build. that's the backdrop, now it's solo time. to me, one of the most important things in a solo is space: you need to give your listener some moments of rest so they can properly digest what you're playing. but Randy Rhoads is a machine gun, so to compensate, he sticks to really simple phrase structures. the bass loop is four bars long, and Rhoads breaks his solo up cleanly into four separate four-bar phrases, each ending with a relatively slow bar to complete the thought. there's no blurring of barlines, no complex hypermeter, no odd lengths or overlapping themes. just four ideas, each fitting snugly into its own metric cage. this makes the solo easy to follow even when he's going completely bananas. structurally, the key word here is alchemy: in order to tell a story, a solo needs to build. many great solos start low and slow, with some long held notes to walk you in before ramping up to a bombastic conclusion. but Rhoads was an extremely high-energy player who liked to come out the gates blazing, which puts him in danger of giving away too much too early. if he starts with everything he's got, he has nowhere to go. so instead of that classic low-and-slow beginning, he just balances different kinds of energy before combining them all at the end into one massive explosion of sound. and the first element he introduces is, of course, speed. (bang) he's arpeggiating the chords, but the notes aren't the point. what matters is the two-hand tapping. that's a technique where, instead of fretting the notes with one hand while plucking the string with the other, he's just hitting the frets hard enough to set the string in motion without a pluck. this requires less coordination, so he can play faster, and he can also play cleaner: two hands covers a much broader range on the fretboard, letting him play the whole line comfortably on a single string. but if "clean" isn't quite the adjective you'd reach for to describe these first two bars, there's a reason for that: the entire solo is double-tracked. he recorded two versions, with one panned hard to left and the other on the right. he actually plays different notes in a couple places, but more importantly, this double-tracking adds both size and chaos: size because the panning make it feel like the guitar surrounds you on all sides, and chaos because at this speed, it's impossible to keep all his rhythms precise. like, these first two bars are all 16th-note sextuplets, but if I slow it down: (bang) they don't quite line up. they can't. he's not a machine. those subtle, microrhythmic differences blur the sounds together, making it less like a distinct melodic line and more like a reconstructed chord. he can synchronize the two takes for the slower parts, but whenever he starts tapping, that blurring effect comes back in. but the first line doesn't introduce us to the other main element of this solo: register. I mean, sure. these notes are a little high. I guess. but the highest pitch in the entire first phrase is this D: (bang) whereas in the next fragment: (bang) the lowest note is the E above it. notice, though, that he's slowed down here. there's two reasons for that. first, again, is balance

he doesn't want to give everything away yet, so he's isolating his different types of energy. things can be fast or high, but they can't be both until he's ready. but also, it's a cooldown: really fast rhythms are exhausting to listen to, so giving you a moment to unwind keeps the solo from going entirely off the rails before it's even really started. and this slowdown doesn't come out of nowhere. after the first two bars, he gradually walks back: bar 3 switches from two-hand to one-hand tapping: (bang) with a little divebomb on the whammy bar to keep it interesting, then bar 4 releases the rhythmic tension entirely with a slower figure. (bang) actually, let's talk about that figure, because it's another important part of this solo. I said each line ends with a slow bar for punctuation, but they actually all end with the same slow bar. sort of. the first phrase gives us the basic pattern, which is a minor-3rd leap from F# to A and back down. (bang) we're in F# minor, so this is a strong tonal figure, grounding us again after the chaotic start. the third phrase takes that same pattern up an octave: (bang) because it's building into the finale so it needs more energy to lift it up. but you might've noticed I skipped the second phrase, and that's because that ending is a little different. ok, kind of a lot different, but I still think it's connected. looking at the other two phrase endings, we have a low minor 3rd on F# and a high minor 3rd on F#. to fill the gap between them, the second phrase ends with a middle-register minor 3rd, starting on C#. (bang) ok, that's not really what he played, I just pitch-shifted the first one, but it's the starting point. this ending also pays tribute to one of the song's most important ideas: if you watched my Crazy Train video, you know it's taking full advantage of the overlap of F# minor and A major. to highlight that, instead of C#, this lick ends by dropping all the way down to A, completing an A major triad. (bang) and finally, there's the rhythm. the F# lines both start on the downbeat, and the leaps are quick, staying on the A for just an 8th note before dropping back. that's because, in those phrases, the tension he's releasing is mostly rhythmic. but in the second phrase, it's register, so the release needs to be different. after starting with those high bars, he flips it back, walking down the scale with fast, but still controlled, 16th-notes: (bang) and when he gets to the ending, he hits the first note early, then holds the high E for a long time, echoing the slower phrasing at the start of the line. all this syncopation and pitch-shifting camouflages the figure, but it's still just similar enough to tie everything together. anyway, the third phrase combines all these ingredients, playing very high notes very fast: (bang) but there's still one trick left, one he saves until the very end: direction. so far, whenever he plays fast, he's also playing pretty static: if the line moves at all, it moves slowly, and it doesn't move much. the only exception is that 16th-note run in the second phrase, but that goes down, releasing the tension from the higher register. he's avoided any sort of sweeping upward gesture, but now, going into the fourth phrase, it's finally time. we get this static looping figure on another F#-A dyad: (bang) that holds you in place just long enough to max out your anticipation before releasing in this colossal three-octave run: (bang) taking us from by far the lowest note we've heard up to the highest in a single bar. it's a fitting conclusion, combining all the different elements that made each previous phrase exciting into one ultimate climax that seals the deal and sends us careening back into the main riff. the next solo I want to look at is completely different. this one's from Diary of a Madman, and again, let's start with the accompaniment. (bang) Diary is a heavy metal take on a ballad, with a slow tempo and an acoustic guitar. also, unlike in Crazy Train, this is borrowed from earlier in the song, where it plays under the verses. all of that makes it feel much calmer, giving Rhoads room to spread out instead of fighting to keep up. but it's not entirely simple: that riff is in 7/4. odd meters are particularly difficult for soloists to navigate without getting lost, so Rhoads has to think really carefully about how he wants to structure his phrasing. it's also more chromatic: in Crazy Train, Daisley was just walking down the scale, but this features some out-of-key sounds, which gives Rhoads permission to get a little weirder with his own note choices. and finally, it's massive. the backing guitar is at least double-tracked and drenched in reverb, filling up most of the soundtrack and engulfing whatever happens on top of it. the solo sits inside the music rather than above it, so there's no point making it as flashy as the last one. this is more about ambience. with that in mind, he starts like this: (bang) and we can immediately see how he's adapted to those differences. it's way more melodic, opening with an elaborate run down two octaves. the basic pattern here is what I'm gonna call a stepped run: each beat is four descending notes

after which he bounces back up a little bit, then continues down. that gives it a stairstep effect: he's walking down the scale at two different speeds, so you get the rapid downward gesture of the 16th notes but also a slower, more melodic descent from the overall motion of the individual fragments. he uses this pattern a lot, but he likes to play around with the contour, which he does incredibly well here by changing a single note. at the end of beat 4, you'd expect the D to go down to Cb, but instead it goes back up to Eb. that's literally all he does, but that one change effectively starts the next downward run a 16th note early, masking the otherwise fairly repetitive structure, and giving the solo the powerful, mysterious opening it deserves. this opening lick also establishes the scale he's gonna be using, and it's a doozy: again, the riff is a little ambiguous, but this is a very clear statement in Ab double-harmonic minor. if you're not familiar, in this context, "harmonic" means that there's an augmented second, basically the same as a minor 3rd, between consecutive notes. you can hear that most clearly in this fragment, which starts with D natural to Cb. (bang) unsurprisingly, the double-harmonic scale has two of those, one between the #4 and the b3, which we just heard, and another between the b6 and the major 7th, which happens a little later. (bang) the double-harmonic scale is a really distinctive one, with shades of mystery, danger, and temptation, and there's a couple reasons for that. first, the augmented second is an unusual interval for western listeners. if you're used to traditional major and minor, then you're used to all your scale steps being separated by, well, steps. augmented seconds feel unnaturally large, and whenever he runs through one it's a little jolt to the part of your brain that thinks it understands the pattern. also, and this is probably even more important, adding extra-large steps means you have to compensate with more smaller ones, so this scale winds up with a lot of half-steps and tritones. these are dissonant, ominous intervals on their own, and running through a scale full of them is naturally gonna put you on edge. but there's also a third reason, one that's not super great. I don't think this is all that relevant here, but I feel like I should mention it anyway: larger scale steps are a lot more common in the scale patterns of other cultures, and double-harmonic scales specifically have a long history in western music as signifiers of Arabia or the Romani, invoking stereotypes of enticing exoticism, foreign threats, or, often, both. again, there's not much reason to believe that's an association Rhoads was intentionally referencing. it's still just a cool-sounding scale, and a good fit for this song, with its shifting tonality and chromatic intrusions. but cultural context is a large part of musical experience, and my job is to describe musical experiences. that connection is one you almost certainly picked up on, albeit subconsciously, so I wanted you to know it was there. that's all. this opening is pretty respectful of the slippery 7/4 meter, but as he gets into it, that starts to change and his phrasing becomes more fragmented. we can see this start to manifest at the end of the first line, where he arrives on the low Ab a 16th note after the final beat, and that rhythmic tension continues to build. in the second line, he skips the downbeat, which is really dangerous in odd meter, then plays two separate bursts of notes in seemingly random positions. (bang) this arbitrary rhythm starts to unmoor you from your already shaky sense of time, as if the solo and the song are drifting out of phase. and we should also talk about endings again. there's no shared motif this time, but the pitches are interesting: in Crazy Train, he mostly circled back to somewhere stable to end each phrase, but here they're much more scattershot. the first three bars have four total phrases, ending respectively on Ab, D, Eb, and G. he's alternating between consonance and alienation, with the first and third phrases ending on the root and 5th respectively, while the others highlight the exact two dissonant notes that separate double-harmonic minor from the natural minor scale. the first time, on D, he cuts it off early by cramming another phrase into the end of the bar. but when he once again finds himself on one of those less familiar pitches, in this case G, he hangs on it for longer than any other note in the entire solo. (bang) in fact, the whole line leading up to that G is gorgeous, running up and down the scale, changing directions at random points, and running through so many augmented seconds, including one that's not even supposed to be in the scale, from Eb to F#. this leans hard into the intoxicating double-harmonic sound, musically portraying the declining mental state of the song's madman. so far, everything's been very measured and restrained, but if this is gonna be a Randy Rhoads solo then we've gotta have some 16th-note sextuplets, which he finally delivers in the last bar. (bang) but here, we see a very different side of Randy Rhoads playing 16th-note sextuplets. instead of the chaotic sprawl of Crazy Train, the slower tempo lets him still play very melodically, walking up the scale in 8th notes while adding these lower neighbor tones for decoration and energy. but the overall

contour is still very clear, and it's… hold on. that'd Db. and Gb. this is minor pentatonic. the mysterious double-harmonic has been swapped out at the last second for a much simpler scale, giving the solo a chance to resolve itself cleanly. actually, come to think of it, he did the same thing in Crazy Train: that solo was F# minor, but the final upward run was in dorian, once again a less dissonant scale. it's a neat trick, releasing the inherent scalar tension while building enough excitement that you don't really mind if all the fun notes are gone. and the last solo we're gonna look at comes from Over The Mountain. here, the accompaniment question is a little trickier, because this solo has sections. like, not just different phrases: it's divided into four distinct segments, with clear changes in the orchestration to mark the boundaries. this makes it feel like more of a journey, and Rhoads has to vary his approach in order to keep in touch with what's happening around him. the first section is one that I'm not sure is technically part of the solo itself: it feels more like a riff, but it's a riff that doesn't happen anywhere else, and it's where Rhoads first claims the spotlight, so I'm counting it. Daisley's just playing 8th notes on G, and on top, Rhoads plays this. (bang) and it's just a good old-fashioned tritone. he spends a bar doing low, slow octave Gs to prime your ears, then lands hard on Db. it's classic devil's-interval stuff: every metal solo should spend some time hanging on a tritone, and Randy Rhoads… knows that. but it also introduces to something we haven't really seen yet: repetition. he plays that tritone figure twice, then launches into another scalar walk: (bang) that he once again repeats verbatim. in the other two solos, he may have reused techniques or concepts, but each phrase was still clearly distinct. he didn't repeat melodies. but those were over simple, looping patterns, which did the repetition for him. the section structure changes things: before he was painting a picture, but here he's telling a story, and the repetition establishes distinct chapters. you may have also heard that he's double-tracked again, but he's using it pretty differently. this time, the two lines are playing in octaves, with the left part low: (bang) and the right part high. (bang) in Crazy Train, the double-tracking was for chaos, but here it's more about scope. octave doubling gives the guitar this massive, all-encompassing sound, especially with the aggressive panning to surround you and reverberate through the soundscape. also unlike Crazy Train, the doubling doesn't last. he uses it for the repeated phrases in the first two sections, but once the third section starts spinning off again: (bang) he switches to one guitar straight down the middle. it's a subtle handoff that tells us something's coming. each section also uses its own scale. the first one was… I dunno, something minor with a tritone. locrian, I guess. or just blues. whatever. but the second section is a big stepped run down G phrygian. (bang) which makes sense: the song is mostly in phrygian, as indicated by the prominent Ab in the main riff. (bang) that b2 has a strong gravitational pull back to the root, making this walkdown feel ominous and powerful. it also happens to fit the chord: Daisley's playing C here, and G phrygian is the exact same notes as C natural minor. the dissonance is well-placed and coherent. in the third section, though, the chord moves back to G, and suddenly the Ab becomes a little more daunting. if he's not careful, it'll rub really hard against the bass. to avoid that, he does the whole thing in G minor pentatonic: (bang) never playing that phrygian 2nd but also not contradicting it. it's really smooth. which brings us to the fourth section. here, the chord is Eb, over which Rhoads chooses to solo in Eb minor. (bang) this is a huge leap, changing almost half the notes from our original scale of G phrygian, including the most important one, G. in whatever story he's telling, this is where things really hit the fan. and that's echoed in the orchestration: so far, the section changes have been reasonably subtle, but not anymore. here, the band cuts the groove and instead plays a series of rhythm stops: (bang) leaving a ton of room for Rhoads to build up toward his final release. this last section is also where we finally get the one thing I'm sure you've all been waiting for: 16th-note sextuplets. (bang) these are interesting because there's not really a scale. I mean, it's basically Eb minor still, but I don't think that's the right approach. as we've seen, at this speed, the notes blur together, so what matters is the shape, both melodically and, in this case

ergonomically. I think this part is best understood on the actual, physical fretboard of a guitar. in each set of three notes, he starts on the third fret, then he does a series of pull-offs to the second fret, then the open string. throughout the phrase, the only difference is which string he does it on. he's walking up and down the top three strings, using that moment with the open note to reposition his hand for the next line. it's got this slow, undulating contour that gives you something to follow when you lose track of the individual notes. and finally, we have to talk about the whammy bar. this is that metal stick attached to the bridge that you often see rock and metal guitarists messing around with during held notes, and what it does is change the tension on the strings. pitch is determined by tension and length, so fretting a note, then reducing the tension, lowers that note. you can do this quickly for a little vibrato, or you can do a big, slow dive-bomb. this happened a little in the Crazy Train solo, but it's much more prominent here, showing up four different ways in four different phrases. three of those happen in the final section, but the first use comes right before it, when he does this loosely arhythmic series of hammer-ons which he slowly bends up. (bang) that builds into the beginning of the rhythm stops, and with that release, the whammy bar's work is temporarily done. he doesn't use it at all on the first phrase, but he does bring it back for the end of the second: (bang) bridging the gap from the sextuplets to a slower cooldown by carrying the momentum forward in a different way. in the third phrase, he does this one-hand tapping figure that divebombs down: (bang) before, in the final phrase, hitting a low open string that he slowly glides back up to deliver us back to the main riff. (bang) and that shows us one final difference: both the previous solos ended with these large, fast, upward sweeping runs, hitting their peak and letting the song come back in underneath them. here, though, he instead ends with a sort of denouement, taking the story he's built and threading it seamlessly back into the larger piece. so what have we learned? what is a Randy Rhoads solo? well, it's fast. no matter how slow the tempo, he always finds a way to work in some blistering runs, either with tapping, hammer-ons, or just good old-fashioned picking. but more than that, more than the techniques he loves to show off, what makes a Randy Rhoads solo stand out is his commitment to musical structure. his sound is distinctive, but it's also malleable, taking different forms to match the needs of the song. in Crazy Train, it needed chaos, so that's what he gave it, balanced by clear, motivic phrasing to keep it coherent. in Diary of a Madman, it needed atmosphere, so that's what he gave it, balanced by bursts of energy to keep it fresh. and in Over The Mountain, it needed a story, so that's what he gave it, balanced by flashy techniques to keep it dynamic. more than any particular device, technique, or idea, that attention to detail is what made Rhoads such a legend, and it's why, with only two albums, he remains one of the most influential guitarists to ever touch the instrument. but while Rhoads was busy reinventing metal, there was another musical revolution going on in the early '80s: the rise of synth pop. regular viewers will know I love talking about synth pop, and this time, I made a video about Nena's classic anti-war protest song, 99 Luftballons. did you know it was an anti-war protest song? if you speak German you probably did, but a lot of Americans think it's just about balloons. it's not. anyway! it's a really cool song, with some truly iconic synth riffs, and I had a great time breaking it down, so if you want to see me do that, you're gonna have to check out Patreon. these days, being a youtuber is getting increasingly hard thanks to the proliferation of AI slop into everyone's feeds, I'm sorry, I hate it, it's so bad, but it's tough to compete with 'cause making high-quality stuff by hand takes time. my patreon patrons help me give that time, letting me focus on research, writing, and drawing cute elephants instead of trying to outpace the slop, so to say thanks for keeping me afloat, I post all my videos early over there. the 99 Luftballons one will come out in about a month or so on youtube, but if you want to watch it now, there's a link to my patreon in the description. and as always, thanks for watching. thanks to our featured patrons, Susan Jones, Jill Sundgaard, Howard Levine, Warren Huart, Damien Fuller-Sutherland, Neil Moore, and Geoff! check out Patreon for a fuller outro, and as always, keep on rockin'.