Dead Rocker's Society
Randy Rhoads
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Placed with permission at Weldon Spring CA. Thanks to John Vogel for his support of Geocaching! Please park in the designated area. This is less than .17 miles from car to cache. Small hills and some maneuvering around trees.
This is a series dedicated to past rockers who have left their mark on our society. To be a member of the Dead Rocker's Society, a person must be dead.. Sorry, the living still have a chance of becoming famous. The person must have been in a rock band with an album. Too many rockers died before they ever achieved fame. They will not be included. This is also not a rock and roll hall of fame. This is for die hard rockers that impacted the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's and 2000's. Each person will have a cache placed in their honor. If you knew the person through their work, please indicate it in the log. Share with us what you remembered about this person. If you have never heard of them, this hopefully, will introduce you to their work.
Randall William Rhoads was born on December 6, 1956 at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California. With one brother (Doug) and one sister (Kathy), Randy was the youngest of three. When Randy was 17 months old his father, William Arthur Rhoads, a public school music teacher, left and all three children were raised by their mother, Delores Rhoads.
Randy started taking guitar lessons around the age of 6 or 7 at a music school in North Hollywood called Musonia (pictured), which was owned by his mother. His first guitar was a Gibson (acoustic) that belonged to Delores Rhoads’ father. Randy and his sister (Kathy) both began folk guitar lessons at the same time with Randy later taking piano lessons (at his mother’s request) so that he could learn to read music. Randy’s piano lessons did not last very long. At the age of 12, Randy became interested in rock guitar. His mother, Delores, had an old semi-acoustic Harmony Rocket, that at that time was "almost larger than he was". For almost a year Randy took lessons from Scott Shelly, a guitar teacher at his mother’s school. Scott Shelly eventually went to Randy’s mother explaining that he could not teach him anymore as Randy knew everything that he (Scott Shelly) knew. When Randy was about 14, he was in his first band,Violet Fox, named after his mothers middle name, Violet. With Randy playing rhythm guitar and his brother Doug playing drums, Violet Fox were together about 4 to 5 months. Randy was in various other bands, such as "The Katzenjammer Kids" and "Mildred Pierce", playing parties in the Burbank area before he formed Quiet Riot in 1976 with longtime friend and bassist Kelly Garni.
In the latter part of 1979, at the request of a friend (Dana Strum), Randy went to audition for a band being put together by former Black Sabbath lead singer, Ozzy Osbourne. As the story goes: Ozzy had auditioned just about every guitarist in Los Angeles and was about to go home to England, the hopes of a new band washed away. Enter Randy Rhoads. Randy wasn’t completely interested in auditioning, he was happy with his current band and thought that this "audition" wouldn’t amount to much.
Randy was whisked off to England shortly before Thanksgiving of 1979 where, at Ozzy's home in England, they began to write the "Blizzard of Ozz" album and audition drummers. While the band rehearsed at "John Henry’s", a rehearsal hall in London, the earliest public performances of Randy Rhoads and Ozzy Osbourne came after they’d complete a song then go to a local pub to play the song for whoever was there. One such song, Crazy Train, appeared to get the audience moving, leading them to believe that they "had something". With ex-Uriah Heap members: Lee Kerslake (drums) and Bob Daisley (bass), the Ozzy Osbourne Band entered Ridge Farm Studios in Surrey, England on March 22 of 1980 and began recording for almost a month.
With the release of the Ozzy Osbourne Band's second album, "Diary of a Madman"on October 31st, 1981, Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhoads (the only original member of Ozzy’s band) along with Rudy Sarzo and Tommy Aldrige traveled to Europe to begin their tour that started in Essen, Germany on November 1st, 1981. The begining of November saw the band playing an opening set for Saxon all around Germany just before the start of their headling sets - to begin in Bristol, England on November 29th. The U.K. tour ended as quickly as it had started. After only two to three shows, the tour had to be cancelled as Ozzy had apparently collapsed from both mental and physical exhaustion. The entire band went back to the United States so that Ozzy could rest. They would come back a little over a month later with a four month United States tour to start December 30, 1981 at the Cow Palace in San Francisco and a single (Flying High Again) that was making it's way up the charts.
Traveling with a crew of approximately 25 Las Vegas and Broadway technicians, Randy Rhoads went from selling out Los Angeles area clubs with Quiet Riot to selling out the biggest arenas in the United States on one of the most elaborate stage sets with Ozzy Osbourne. When the "Diary of a Madman" tour began, their first album, "Blizzard of Ozz", was selling at the rate of 6,000 records each week. Backstage opening night in San Francisco, Randy was awarded with Guitar Player Magazine’s Best New Talent Award. (He also won best new guitarist in England’s "Sounds" magazine.) With that, the band began an exhausting yet memorable tour that seemed to be plagued with problems. Their concerts were boycotted by many cities while others were attended by local S.P.C.A. officials due to claims of animal abuse. Meanwhile "Diary of a Madman" was well on it’s way to platinum status.
With all of this going on around him, Randy Rhoads’ interest for classical guitar was consuming him more each day. Often times Randy would have a classical guitar tutor in each city the band played. It became common knowledge that Randy wanted to quit rock and roll temporarily so that he could attend school to get his masters in classical guitar. Randy also wanted to take advantage of some of the studio session offers he was recieving.
March 18, 1982, the Ozzy Osbourne band played what would be their last show with Randy Rhoads at the Civic Coliseum in Knoxville, Tennessee. From Knoxville, the band was headed to Orlando, Florida for Saturday’s "Rock Super Bowl XIV" with Foreigner, Bryan Adams and UFO. On the way to Orlando they were to pass by the home of bus driver Andrew C. Aycock, who lived in Leesburg, Florida, at Flying Baron Estates. Flying Baron Estates consisted of 3 houses with an aircraft hanger and a landing strip (pictured at right), owned by Jerry Calhoun, who along with being a country & western musician in his earlier days, leased tour buses and kept them at the Estate. They needed some spare parts for the bus and Andrew Aycock, who had picked up his ex-wife at one of the bands shows, was going to drop her off in Florida.
The bus arrived at Flying Baron Estates in Leesburg at about 8:00 a.m. on the 19th and parked approximately 90 yards away from the landing strip and approximately 15 yards in front of the house that would later serve as the accident site. On the bus were: Ozzy Osbourne, Sharon Arden, Rudy Sarzo, Tommy Aldrige, Don Airey, Wanda Aycock, Andrew Aycock, Rachel Youngblood, Randy Rhoads and the bands tour manager. Andrew Aycock and his ex-wife, Wanda, went into Jerry Calhoun’s house to make some coffee while some members of Ozzy Osbourne’s band slept in the bus and others got out and "stretched". Being stored inside of the aircraft hanger at Flying Baron Estates, was a red and white 1955 Beechcraft Bonanza F-35 (registration #: N567LT) that belonged to Mike Partin of Kissimmee, Florida. Andrew Aycock, who had driven the groups bus all night from Knoxville and who had a pilots license, apparently took the plane without permission and took keyboardist Don Airey and the bands tour manager up in the plane for a few minutes, at times flying low to the ground. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, Andrew Aycock’s Pilot License(3rd class) had expired, thus making his pilots license not valid.
Approximately 9:00 a.m. on the morning of March 19th, Andrew Aycock took Rachel Youngblood and Randy Rhoads up for a few minutes. During this trip the plane began to fly low to the ground, at times below tree level, and "buzzed" the bands tour bus three times. On the fourth pass (banking to the left in a south-west direction) the planes left wing struck the left side of the bands tour bus (parked facing east) puncturing it in two places approximately half way down on the right side of the bus. The plane, with the exception of the left wing, was thrown over the bus, hit a nearby pine tree, severing it approximately 10 feet up from the bottom, before it crashed into the garage on the west side of the home owned by Jerry Calhoun. The plane was an estimated 10 feet off the ground traveling at approximately 120 - 150 knots during impact. The house was almost immediately engulfed in flames and destroyed by the crash and ensuing fire, as was the garage and the two vehicles inside, an Oldsmobile and a Ford Granada. Jesse Herndon, who was inside the house during the impact, escaped with no injuries. The largest piece of the plane that was left was a wing section about 6 to 7 feet long. The very wing that caught the side of the tour bus, was deposited just to the north of the bus. The severed pine tree stood between the bus and the house.
Randy was laid to rest in San Bernardino, California. His awesome guitar style and his legacy will live forever!
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