Intervju - Rudy Sarzo, Dio och Blue Oyster Cult Rudy Sarzo har spelat i fler band än jag orkar räkna upp och verkar ständigt vara ute på turné. För tillfället är han aktiv i både Dio och Blue Oyster Cult och hoppar mellan banden på ungefär samma vis som Eric Singer delar sin tid mellan KISS och Alice Cooper. Han har även nyligen gett ut en bok om sitt turnéliv med Randy Rhoads och Ozzy Osbouren, "Off the rails". En intressant bok om det tidiga 80-talet och alla de galenskaper som följde med att ligga ute på vägarna med en av "the true madmen". Efter att ha läst boken tyckte jag att det kunde vara rätt tillfälle att ställa lite frågor till den hårt rockande basisten. Sagt och gjort, vi bestämde en tid via mail och så ringde jag upp Randy i LA. Det blev ett långt samtal om bl a hans karriär, Randy Rhoads, Ozzy och Sharon och självfallet boken. Hi, is it Rudy? Rudy Sarzo: This is Rudy. Is it Niclas? It is. RS: How are you? Good evening! I´m good. How are you? RS: Really good. Where in Scandinavia are you calling from? Stockholm, Sweden. RS: Ah, beautiful city! Yeah, but really cold and kind of wet for the meoment. We had a lot of snow a couple of days ago, but there´s nothing left now. It´s just been raining the last couple of days. RS: (laughs) That´s good for coming into the Christmas spirit. Well, to start off. I´ve read your book and it´s very interesting. I love reading stories like these, especially about things that happened in the 80´s since I was a teenager in the 80´s. RS: Yeah, one of the things that I wanted to put across, was how different it was then to the way it is now, because a lot of the readers that were not around, like kids who might take things for granted. I mean, the latest technology we had in 1981 was actually the Walkman. That was it! Video games were very rustic and if you had a microwave in your bus you were in luxury. Stuff like that. Nowdays the travelling accomodations and the technology we have with the Internet, it´s a whole different world, a different way of touring. That´s why I beleive a lot of musicians used to hang out at the bar a lot. It´s very rare that I go on tour now and the guys go "Hey, I´ll meet you at the bar!". Everybody goes to their room and their laptop. Yeah, I´ve noticed that tto. I´ve done a lot of interviews now and a lot of the people I meet are just siting there with their laptop. You never get the feeling that there´s a lot of partying going on. RS: The party is online! (laughs) Exactly! About the book. When was the first time you started thinking about putting together a book like this? RS: Well, I was hoping that somebody else would write it besides me, because it took about a year and a half of my life to write this book and I did it during three bands. I was on tour with Quiet Riot and then I went on tour with Yngwie Malmsteen, but I finished the book when I was on tour with Dio. And I went through two different laptops. (laughs). So it took me a while. You know, writing a book... you have to commit to yourself of writing at least one page a day. That´s the minimum. You really have to sit down and do it. I would be like on the bus and all this stuff going on or I´d be in my room and everybody´s going shopping or sightseeing and I would be the guy in the room, sitting there writing the book. It was something that I needed to do, because I needed to tell the story of Randy Rhoads because all around the world fans would come up to me and I know exactly what they´re gonna ask me, "What was it like to play with Randy Rhoads?". The story has never been told before completely, or at least from somebody who has played with him. For example in my case, I was the only guy who got to play with him in Quiet Riot and Ozzy. So I saw two different Randy Rhoads. The Randy Rhoads who was in a band called Quiet Riot that were trying to please the local Los Angeles record industry into getting a record deal. That was our goal. And once he joined Ozzy and Ozzy told him "Look, just be yourself! Play music that comes from you!" and that´s where you get the Randy Rhoads that everybody´s pretty much familiar with. There´s a lot of conversation between you and Randy and others in the book. Since I rarely remember what I did last Christmas, how much of it is really accurate? RS: You know, even if I was gonna write in prose, it would still be memoirs. Written from memories, whether it´s prose or written dialogue. One of the things that I really wanted to do is to put the reader in the story. Not telling the story more as to live the story. This is the way people talk. You have to remember, in 1981 the 80´s were not invented yet. You´re talking about randy who´s still living at home and society was very different from what it is today. There was not as much violence, not as much slang. Let me put it like this, we were more "Happy days" than we were "Boyz n´the hood". It was a whole different society and especially if you were living in California. You know those early Van Halen records about partying and going to the beach and checking out chicks, that´s what it was like. More Beach Boys than death metal! (laughs) So when you put a guy who was living at home in his early twenties and you stick him with a bunch of rock and roll pirates. Ozzy had been around the world with Black Sabbath and you throw him in that element, there´s still a ceratin element of innocence that Randy held on to, just so he could keep his own identity and there was a certain element of "I´ve got to be a little bit more like these guys in order to survive!". Bu teven if you look at the lifestyle, the craziest lifestyle of any rock band had in the 70´s, you can not compare it to the guys who nowdays carry guns. I´m talking more about the hip hop, the heavier, brutal world that we live in. It´s harder now, so another thing that I really wanted to put a cross is, if I´m gonna tell a realistic story of what it was like... things were pretty innocent compared to what they are today. So somebody might read it now and say "Wow, this is pretty soft!" and I say "No, it´s exactly how it was!". As a matter of fact, very few people uese the word "dude" in 1981. (laughs) So that was one of the things I really wanted to keep in perspective. You´re reading about 1981, you´re not reading about today. Times they are a changing. RS: Oh absolutely! And quicker every day. I was wondering, you´ve said that you kept a journal... RS: I kept a record, a ledger with every single date, every single tour, every single hotel expences. Everything. For example, at the beginning of a tour we were given a itinerary. With Ozzy, it was one of very few bands that by the time you finished that leg of a tour, I would say that half of the shows were either rescheduled, postponed or cancelled. Just because... I mean, you´ve read the book, so I could not really go by my itineraries. I had to go back to my ledgers and see "Oh, this is where we went instead of here!". That was the only way to really keep track of the actual dates. Are you still doing something like that? RS: No. I only did that for tax purposes and I found better ways to keep track of my taxes. And all the pictures from Ross Halfin. How did you get in touch with him? I guess you knew him from the times with Ozzy. RS: Yeah, he was travelling with us and he´s remained a very good friend. So you just told him that you needed a couple of pictures for the book? RS: No, the publisher struck a deal with him. When I originally published the book, I self published a few years ago and it was only photos from my own collection. There´s some really cool photos in there. RS: Yeah! He had access to us 24/7. At the end of the book, when you write about the plane crash, I get the feeling that you think that the pilot deliberately tried to crash the plane? RS: Yeah! From the moment that I woke up to that crash, today still my opinion is that it was a deliberate attack on the bus. Wow! Unbelievable! RS: This is from someone who was there. That´s what I walked away with. That must´ve been so freaky, knowing that Randy talked to you just before he went up and asked you if you wanted to join them. RS: Yeah, if you look at the book, that was the only event that we did not partake in. We were always hanging together and doing stuff together, you know. How much do you think, when it comes to Randy´s playing and being considered a guitar hero, how much do you think has to do with the accident and that he died so young? Do you think that has anything to do with his status as a guitar hero? RS: No, not at all. As you read the book, by December 1981 he was already recieving Guitar Player magazine... all the accolades. One of the things that really certifies the fact that he is a true guitar hero, is when I get e-mails or myspace messages from kids who´s just picking up heavy metal because maybe they´re playing Guitar Hero or Rock Band and getting into that type of music, and they hear Randy for the first time and they get it! He has as much of an impact on them as Randy did to the 80´s generation. So it´s in the grooves, like in the old school records. It´s in the recordings. It´s in there and it´s the magic. Once you hear it, it´s like hearing Hendrix. The magic is there and in my opinion Randy has his own magic that he was able to bring to those recordings. Right. As I read the book and the more I read about Ozzy and Sharon and the things that happened, the picture you got of them from the tv-show "The Osbournes", seemed to be the same thing that happened in the early 80´s. They seemed to be acting in the same way back then. RS: They have actually mellowed out. Because of Ozzy´s drinking he was prone to be more violent, which thank God he´s not anymore, at least from what I´ve seen. Definitely a thing that I wanted to puta cross in the book was that while I was in the band, I was living with an alcoholic and it´s horrible. It´s horrible to his career, they way he treated the people that he loved or how he treated himself and the band. It´s a true picture of what it was like living and working with an alcoholic. I was living with it on the bus. When we were on tour we were all in the same bus. The travelling accomodations were not what they are today. Plus they were kind enough that when I got off the road, they invited me to live with them, because I was basically homeless before I joined the band, so I was with them all the time. It was just a fight between Sharon to keep Ozzy sober and Ozzy trying to keep Ozzy being Ozzy. I have the utmost respect for Sharon. She works so hard to have Ozzy even get up on stage. It must´ve been really difficult being on the road and shows getting cancelled because of this or that. You must´ve felt unsure all the time? RS: Yeah. There was a certain uncertainty. But it´s a situation that you learn to live with because at least there are people and by people I mean Sharon (laughs) to make things happen. She always kept things moving forward. With Ozzy you could not stay in one place because that´s when he used to get in trouble. A matter of fact, when shows were cancelled she would keep the tour moving. Rarely did she say "Ok, we cancelled the show and we´re gonna go to this city and be there for three days!". No, that would be a disaster. It happened at least once or twice. I get the feeling that you stayed away from most of the partying and that stuff. RS: I tried to keep up with him in the beginning, just because Tommy Aldridge was not gonna be hanging out with Ozzy getting drunk, because you know, he´s been doing it for a long time. And randy wasn´t going to do it either, because he had been there before so I was the new guy. I think Sharon was actually looking for a drinking buddy for Ozzy. When I left the band, Pete Way (UFO) joined the band, so he became his drinking buddy and that did not quite work out. I thought "Hey, I´m the new guy! Ozzy wants me to hang out with him and drink or whatever.", it didn´t last too long. I couldn´t keep up with him and after spending years trying to get to that level, I looked at myself and said "You know what? Now that you´re here, you can´t throw everything that you´ve been working for all your life, away.". Certain people are meant to be drinkers, I am not! Ten years ago I completely quit drinking, just because. I got to a point in my life when I said it´s not for me. I din´t quit drinking because of drinking. I quit drinking because of hangovers. Isn´t that difficult living in that rock and roll world where it´s so accepted and everybody´s doing it? RS: There were no laptops then! (laughs). In the old days you either went to your room to watch very limited television. There was no satellite or cable. Nowdays you go to your room and you´ve got a hundred channels to chose crap from or your laptop. You can do things on the road. I´m always training with 3-D animation or writing music with my music software. I´m always doing something. In the old days it was like "What? Look out the window?". Makes sense. About Quiet Riot. What would you say is your best or fondest memory from the days with that band? RS: There was certain tours, ceratin shows that we did, like playing Madison Square Garden with Iron Maiden, we had the number one album and the song "Cum on feel the noize" in the city. Once you get to be number one in New York city, it doesn´t get any bigger than that and that happened in the summer of 1983. Those are incredible memories. Things you take with you for the rest of your life. Could you see it coming when it comes to Kevin´s OD and death? RS: No! See, I hadn´t been playing with him since 2003, so it had been a few years since I had been in contact with him. It took me by total surprise. Yeah, it was weird. I met him briefly at Sweden Rock Festival just a couple of moths prior to his death and we just shook hands and I had a funny t-shirt on that he laughed at and then a couple of months later he was dead. He seemed happy and they put on a really good show. What´s your thoughts about the album "Condition critical"? A favorite album of mine and I believe that Kevin said it was his least favorite for some reason. RS: Yeah, it´s definitely my least favorite album. Mainly because we were pulled off the road and given a few weeks time to actaully make that record so it could be released before the summer. The "Metal health" album had been such a huge success and we toured for over a year with that record, then the record company said "Wait a minute! We need to release another album and it has to come out in summer time!", you know, they have release schedules so they basically pulled us off the road and said "Go into the studio and make a record!". When you make your first album you have years to prepare for it. You have a catalog of songs that you´ve been writing over the last couple of years. When they pull you in to make the next record you have like, what, six weeks? Some of the songs were left over from... not that they were left over, but they were songs that didn´t make it. If we would´ve taken at least six months to make that record, I think it would´ve sounded different and it would´ve been different songs. At least three or four different songs. Well, I love it! RS: I´m glad you do. (laughs) It came out when I was a young teenager and it was pretty much around that time that I got really into the whole LA scene. RS: Yeah you know, "Metal health" was definitely more of an honest record plus another thing they were trying to do with the second one was to make it into "Metal health 2". "Metal health" was a very organic album. It wasn´t forced into being a huge record. It was a huge record because it was very honest. Do you know if there´s anything archived from when you played with them? RS: Well, as I said I played with that band... I joined in ´82 and left in early ´85 and came back in ´97 till 2003 and Frankie Banali has been there for most of the time and if there´s anything that is unreleased I think Frankie has knowledge of that. Myself, I am not the keeper of the Quiet Riot archives. So Dio then? What´s going on with Dio? RS: Well you know, Ronnie´s working with Heaven and Hell and their new record, so while Ronnie does that I go out and work with Blue Oyster Cult. The plan for Dio then? Is it to make a new album? RS: He´s all pretty much with Heaven and Hell now and he wants to make the best Heaven and Hell record. Last year we did some shows in Scandinavia and that was about it. It was basically for the fans. They wanted to see Dio again. Right now I think he´s pretty much gonna be concentrating on Heaven and Hell. One band at a time. Cool. A band like Blue Oyster Cult, how long does it take learn the songs you perform live? Does it take a weekend or...? RS: They had me learn at least about forty songs and I´ve been playing with them for almost a year and a half now. As we go on we keep adding songs to the list and I ask them for certain songs. I´m a fan of the band, a fan of the work and once in a while we try a song here and there and if it sticks we keep it in our repertoire and if it doesn´t we just move on to something else. For how long do you see yourself playing with Blue Oyster Cult? RS: Let me see... I´ve got my crystal ball. I have no idea! I hope to be there for as long as they want me. We have an understanding that when I need to play with Dio I do that and otherwise I´ll be playing with Blue Oyster Cult. Then I read about something going on in Las Vegas. Monster Circus? RS: Yes, Monster Circus. It´s pretty interesting. Tony Montana from Great White, we became friends when we were on tour back in ´87-´88 and he´s a really good guitar player. I always knew him as a bass player, not as a guitar player. He´s basically put together this project called Monster Circus and we´ve been talking about this for the last couple of years. Las Vegas has become such a centre for rock and roll and we wanted to put together kind of like a Circus Soleil atmosphere, live performance spectacle mixed with 80´s rockers. This is what we´re doing. We´ve got Bruce Kulick from KISS and John Corabi who was with Mötley Crüe for a while and Ratt and Bobby Rock, who´s the drummer from Nelson and then Tony Montana and myself of course. Then we have guests performes like Dee Snider, who´s gonna be singing and then Dave Kuschner from Velvet Revolver. We´re doing it at the Hilton at the Elvis stage which is supposed to be the largest stage in Las Vegas. We´re just having a blast and we´ve been rehearsing every day and it´s fun. A lot of fun. Dress rehearsal is Monday and the actual show is on Tuesday. And this is a show that will be running for some time? RS: It´s just one show. Ok. I thought it was like an ongoing project. RS: Well, I mean first you´ve got to do one show to show the promoters and the bookers and everybody that buys the show and then you take it from there. Alright! Any chance of you guys putting something together for yourselves? Releasing a record or something? RS: No, right now we´re just taking it as... the Monster Circus thing is basically, when you come to the show, you´re gonna see a band performing songs from their own catalog and it´s gonna be a celebration of the 80´s by 80´s performers and Cirque du Soleil. Then there´s this songwriting thing you´ve got going on over the Internet? RS: Yeah, there´s a website called www.kompoz.com and it´s a website where people go and collaborate. For example, you´re a guitar player and you´re looking for a drummer or a bass player or a singer, you lay down your tracks and then you leave it there for other people to add on to it. It´s really exciting what we´re doing. We´re running a contest and we´re giving away some wonderful prizes such as a Randy Rhoads guitar, a Peavey Sarzo bass, some audio gear for recording, Sony software etc. You just go there and download my bass loops from my Sony collection and the goal is to create a bass song using my bass loops. Whatever is written should include some of my bass loops. What will happened to the finished song? RS: It will be posted, uploaded to a website and then there´s gonna be a round of people voting, like people from the website, they come in and vote for their favorite song and then we will pick a winner and the winner will win certain prizes. Finally, I was kind of wondering since you´ve written this book and you´ve been in some really cool bands, have you had any thoughts on writing any more books or is this a one off thing? RS: One of the hardest things for me to write "Off the rails", was to try to keep myself out of the book because I wanted it to be about Randy and not me and... eeehhh, no not really. (laughs) I wrote the book for Randy and I wish somebody else had written it, but after everything is said and done, I´m glad that I did write it. I wish somebody else had written it, but I´m glad I did because it brought me a lot of closure that I didn´t have prior to writing the book. The hardest part was writing chapter 18 and just letting Randy go and chapeter 19 when the crash happened. It took me about a month to write that chapter because I didn´t want to let him go and once I was done it was just a matter of finishing the book and telling the story of what it was like after his death. But no, my motivation for writing that book was to answer the question "What was Randy really like and how was it working with him?" and playing with Ozzy in those days. I was a film major in school and this is answering your question of why did I choose to have dialogue. When I sat down to write this book I had never written a book, but I took courses in how to write screenplays. One of the things about writing a screenplay that you learn, is that sometimes... what I really wanted to avoid is to give too much of my opinions of things rather that to present a scenario. This is what´s going on, this is what people are saying about it, how they feel about certain things and I wanted the readers to come up with their own conclusion. The only part where I give my own opinion is about the crash. Everything else that went on between Ozzy, Sharon, Randy... I just presented a scenario. This is what their thoughts were on certain things, like Randy not wanting to participate on "Speak of the devil" and why, but I really didn´t give an opinion. If I was writing in prose I would have to start giving opinions. It´s just like you would do in a film. You let the dialogue tell the story and bring you into the story. Have you had any reactions from the Osbournes? RS: I did prior to the book being released. Sharon was not ahppy with it, at all. Originally it was gonna come out on another publishing company and they actually do business with the Osbournes. She heard about it and pressured them that they were gonna drop their business if the book got released. The publisher really tried hard to please them and come up with some kind of compromise and she refused. They were willing to send her the book and like "Hey, this is what´s in the book!", but she would not sign the agreement so eventually the book got dropped and for about a year it was sitting on the shelf. Then I decides to self publish it. I said "If you want to read it, go to amazon.com and order it and that´s it!". I just wanted the story to be told. That´s it! Then "Too Smart" came into the picture and they became the publisher and they rereleased it, or actually released it for the first time. The order of events was, it was released as a print for order on amazon.com, then it was released in Japanese through "Burrn". That was actually the first real publication of the book. Beautiful artwork and pictures, so that became my measuring stick of what the book should be like, so when I got together with "Too Smart" I went "Listen, this is what Japan did!". I´m very pleased with the way the book came out. It looks great. The picture on the cover, where was it taken? RS: It was taken at Disneyworld. It´s from the same session as the inner sleeve for "Diary of a madman". We were at Disnyworld and that was the afternoon of the last show we did for that leg of the tour, the "Blizzard of Ozz" in the US. That photo session... we were playing in Daytona and we drove from Daytona to Disneyworld and then we did that phot shoot. There´s a picture of my cutting Randy´s hair and that´s on the way to that photo shoot. All those pictures were from the same session. Then we did the show, the last show with Def Leppard in Daytona and that was it. So that was at Disneyworld at the Space mountain. Yeah, a great picture and a great book. RS: Thank you! It was a labor of love. I´ll bet! Thank you so much Rudy and great talking to you! RS: Great interview! Thanks! I wish you all the best! RS: Next time we play Sweden, come on down! I´d love to meet you! Oh absolutely! Have a good day! RS: You too! Niclas Müller-Hansen

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