SEVENTEEN SONGS. FOR most artists, that would hardly amount to a substantial career. For Randy Rhoads, however, the 17 songs he tracked during his brief tenure as Ozzy Osbourne’s lead guitarist and co-writer on the albums Blizzard of Oz and Diary of a Madman were more than enough to establish him as one of the truly outstanding rock guitarists of his generation.
Rhoads came from a musical family and, while in his late teens, taught guitar in his mom’s music store, Musonia, by day, then rocked the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles by night with local heroes Quiet Riot. The group recorded two commercially stylized albums that were released in Japan in the late ’70s, but the band had trouble landing a record deal stateside. When Rhoads was offered the Osbourne gig in September 1979 (he allegedly blew the former Black Sabbath singer’s mind with some warm-up scales),
