The bassist who played alongside him on both Ozzy Osbourne albums says Randy Rhoads was set on leaving for a master’s degree, and would probably have come back to rock on his own terms.
Randy Rhoads had already decided he was leaving. That is the account Bob Daisley gave when asked about a rumour that has followed the guitarist for four decades.
The bassist, who played on both Blizzard Of Ozz and Diary Of A Madman and shared a stage with Rhoads throughout his time in Ozzy Osbourne‘s band, was asked by the podcast “Sticks for Stones” in July whether the story was true.
“Oh, big time! Yeah, he wanted out. He wanted to go and study in Europe, and get his master’s degree. I think he probably would have done that. I don’t think he would have given up playing rock altogether,” Daisley said (as transcribed by Ultimate Guitar).
He did not think it would have been a permanent exit from the music that made Rhoads‘ name.
“He may have for a while, but he probably would have done his own album,” he added. “I think he probably would have — maybe eventually — had the Randy Rhoads Band or whatever. But he didn’t want to stay where he was, and that much I did know.”
The ambition was not a secret to anyone who worked with him. Rhoads kept up his classical studies while touring, seeking out teachers in the towns the band passed through and spending days off on lessons rather than on the activities occupying the rest of the crew. Osbourne later said he could not understand it.
That grounding is a large part of why Rhoads sounded unlike his contemporaries. He had co-founded Quiet Riot and joined Osbourne‘s solo band in 1979, and across two albums he built a style that ran classical phrasing and structure through heavy metal in a way few guitarists had attempted. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.
Rhoads played his final show on March 18, 1982 at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum in Tennessee. The band travelled overnight towards Orlando and stopped at a property near Leesburg, Florida to have the tour bus air conditioning repaired. The site had a private airstrip.
The following morning, tour bus driver Andrew Aycock, whose pilot’s licence had expired, took a Beechcraft Bonanza up with Rhoads and Rachel Youngblood, who worked with the band, on board. The aircraft passed low over the parked bus, clipped it with a wing and came down. All three died. Rhoads was 25.
Daisley was also asked whether Osbourne‘s camp moved on too quickly. He gave a qualified answer: “Well, it’s difficult to say because I know there are certain things where there’s a contractual obligation, but a contract wouldn’t be able to argue with the death.”
He said the decision had more to do with the singer’s condition at the time: “But I think they kept the ball rolling for the sake of Ozzy because he was in bits and he’d gone through a lot, you know, and he was drinking a lot, and doing substances.”
He was blunt about what he thought stopping might have meant: “If he’d stopped, maybe he would have joined Randy, I don’t know. It seemed that way, ‘We’ve got to keep this going, keep Ozzy up and running’ sort of thing.”
The band took a fortnight off. Bernie Tormé, previously of Gillan, played seven shows between April 1 and April 10 before leaving, and Brad Gillis, later of Night Ranger, took over on April 13 and stayed through November, finishing the North American dates and recording the live album Speak Of The Devil.
Osbourne himself never described it as something he got past. He told Rolling Stone: “To this day, as I’m talking to you now, I’m back in that field looking at this f**king plane wreck and a house on fire. You never get over something like that. You’re in shock.”
Ozzy Osbourne died in July 2025 at the age of 76.
