Trying to compare EVH and Randy Rhoads... Get real.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fret-Shredder
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I don’t have preference, I really liked and enjoyed both and never got into the comparisons.

But if I did want to compare I think it’s hard to compare 2 albums from RR to a 45 year career from EVH. Should the comparison be VH I & II to Randy’s 2 albums or should it be Women and Children First and Fair Warning since those came out the same years?
 
hammered said:
I didn`t think it was strange. The way I remember it at the time having Randys name attached to it didn`t play into to how popular they briefly got and when Metal Health really took off I don`t remember his name coming up much. Listening to those first two Quiet Riot albums vs Metal Health and Condition Critical it sounds like a completely different band and Carlos Cavazo is one heck of a guitar player
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Yes it was a completely different band.

People forget or maybe have not paid attention but timelines are important here. QR 2 was released in 1978. Blizzard was released a year and half later and then Metal Health was released 5 years later. That's alot of time to grow as an artist which Kevin did, then throw in Carlos who often gets overlooked now and Quiet Riot was a completely different band.

Metal Health IMO is a classic and essential listening. It literally legitimized the entire LA movement that would dominant for the next decade. Which oddly enough is what all of those bands on that scene had hoped VH1 would do for them but didn't.
 
Few more thoughts on Randy.

I get his tone is now criticized but at the time, it was not. I've said this many times but growing up in that era, we just didn't analyze guitar tones like everyone would come to do. Everyone sounded different back then and that's about as deep as we got. If us kids could get a Marshall and an Ibanez Tube Screamer or Boss OD, everyone kinda built their own tone. I mean Neal Schon dominated the charts during that era and he had a vastly different guitar tone. Alex Lifeson, again vastly different. All guys that were releasing huge albums during RR's time.

Now when I listen to Randy do I wish it was better? Yep but mainly so players wouldn't make a big deal about it now, I always put it in context at the time. Not to mention all that brilliance came out of two albums recorded less that a year apart starting in 1980. And again, going back to tone in 1980, EVH's tone had not ascended to the benchmark at that time. Context in all this really matters. Zero doubt had RR lived he would have grown tonally as well.

Last thing on Randy - one of my favorite bits is the breakdown section in S.A.T.O starting at the 1:46 mark to the end of the song, especially where he catches that harmonic with the bar - all of that is just perfection to me, even his rhythm tone which slices like a knife.

Edit - one other thing, freaking Bob Daisley puts on a damn master class in bass playing on those two albums - I really couldn't imagine listening to them any different than they are now.
 
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These guys really only diverge at the Neo classical training and modal work that Randy brought in . Very similar in more ways than we all think
 
They are both great, and the world would be lesser without both of their contributions.
 
There’s no way I could pick a favorite between the two. I dig Ozzy’s music more than VH but dig Ed’s playing more than Randy’s and it kind of levels out as a result. I was born in ‘82 so I don’t have the same perception of them many here do who heard them when they came out. They’re both two groundbreaking guitarists that ushered in the kind of playing that drew me in the most once I started playing.

What I particularly dig about them is that whole ‘if you want to play like your heroes find out who their influences are” thing; Dime and Zakk are two of my biggest influences who both took influence from Randy and Ed. But GIlmour is my #1 and his #1 was Hank Marvin, who I can’t say I dig all that much.
 
One thing that is rarely mentioned and that most EVH fans (and I am a fan) either don't realize or don't recognize is that he was incapable of soloing following chord changes. Like Hendrix, his greatest legacy was the rhythm playing.
Randy was already on another level of musicality. A good example is his work on the song "Diary of a Madman."
 
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renato-rt said:
One thing that is rarely mentioned and that most EVH fans (and I am a fan) either don't realize or don't recognize is that he was incapable of soloing following chord changes. Like Hendrix, his greatest legacy was the rhythm playing.
Randy was already on another level of musicality. A good example is his work on the song "Diary of a Madman."
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No way, man. You could put Ed in any spot and he’d rise to the challenge!

 
RevDrucifer said:
No way, man. You could put Ed in any spot and he’d rise to the challenge!

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Ouch!
That video came to my mind when I was writing that he can't solo over chord changes, but I didn't want to put that here to avoid seeming too provocative LOL.
 
RevDrucifer said:
What I particularly dig about them is that whole ‘if you want to play like your heroes find out who their influences are” thing; Dime and Zakk are two of my biggest influences who both took influence from Randy and Ed. But GIlmour is my #1 and his #1 was Hank Marvin, who I can’t say I dig all that much.
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I love Hank Marvin. Apache is harder to pull off cleanly than it sounds. You can hear rats piss on cotton when Hank plays it.
 
wIsEbLooD said:
If I had to choose I would take those two Ozzy albums over all the vh albums.
And I love Van Halen.
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I went back and listened to all six of the DLR VH albums after EV's passing, and I realized as much as I love them all and have great nostalgia for them, they aren't really great albums. They're fun, quirky, interesting, captured the era in a great way, but most of them only have a handful of great songs on them. (To VH's credit, they were short, so at least filler wasn't that high.)

When I went back recently and listened to the first couple of Ozzy albums, every song is great. I agree with the others that the tone and mix isn't as great. They don't capture the band in the kind of live takes that we get on early VH, but the songs themselves are crafted. Some of this is about having something to say with them too.

I love them both and lots of others and will continue to go back and listen to both sets of albums. (I still haven't listened to any of the Hagar era VH albums and probably should. I actually like Hagar. I just never got around to the albums at the time.)
 
Hagar wrote about that ‘performance’ in his book; apparently Ed was hammered and Paul couldn’t get through to him that the song was in a different tuning, or Ed didn’t think it mattered. If I remember right, they initially ask Ed to do it, but when practicing it on the bus or backstage they realized it wasn’t going to be good and tried to politely call it off by saying there wasn’t enough time, but Ed was too gung-ho about doing it and that’s the result.

2 unique elements to that vid; A- Ed playing a Parker Fly and B- Ed playing like shit before 2004.
 
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