The long-debated notion that Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen were locked in a rivalry has resurfaced once more, and bassist Rudy Sarzo, who knew Rhoads as well as anyone, isn’t buying it. Speaking with Gastão Moreira of Brazil’s “Kazagastão“, Sarzo, who played beside Rhoads in Quiet Riot in the late 1970s and again in Ozzy Osbourne‘s band until the guitarist’s death in 1982, dismissed the whole idea as fiction.
“No, that’s… No, I think it’s a myth. A myth that people… We’re in a time in history where alternate realities are very common. People invent things to suit their own journey in life. People don’t know the difference between an opinion and a fact. So they’ll make a statement based on an opinion to somebody who has experienced what they’re talking about, because they’re so programmed to believe an opinion rather than a fact,” he explained (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Sarzo isn’t alone in that view among Rhoads‘ old circle. Earlier this year, Quiet Riot‘s original bassist Kelly Garni told the “Booked On Rock” podcast that while Van Halen and Quiet Riot were well aware of one another on the late-’70s Sunset Strip, the two bands only ever shared a bill once — on April 23, 1977 at Glendale Community College in Glendale, California.
“At some point, we became well aware of Van Halen,” Garni said at the time. “Especially when we were at the Starwood, as we were for a number of years. And we knew they were playing down the street at Gazzarri’s, which wasn’t really our type of a club. Because the Starwood was. Of course, the Whisky was the Whisky, but it had more of a punk rock scene going on there. So, we kind of avoided that place. The punkers didn’t like guys that looked like us either, so you got the jocks and the punkers wanting to kill you.”
Garni, who held down bass for Quiet Riot from 1975 to 1978 and played on the band’s first two albums, 1978’s Quiet Riot and Quiet Riot II, both released only in Japan, insisted there was “no competition” between the two guitarists, least of all on Rhoads‘ end. “And most certainly, there was no competition in Randy‘s world,” he explained. “Because Randy didn’t compete. It just wasn’t in him to try to compete. He couldn’t. The way his brain was wired, is he could not form the thought, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be better than that guy.'”
By Garni‘s account, what Rhoads actually felt was curiosity. He recalled the night Rhoads went to check out Van Halen in person:
“[Randy] went down to Gazzarri’s because people were talking about this guy, and Randy said, ‘Well, I’ll go see what the deal is.’ So he went there, him and his girlfriend Jan, and he wanted to meet him. He saw him play, and he went, ‘Yeah, okay, the guy’s good.’ And so when they got all done, Randy was trying to get backstage to meet him, and he did get back there.”
The meeting, however, didn’t quite come off. “You gotta remember, Van Halen was doing all cover tunes at this point,” Garni continued, noting that Gazzarri’s drew a more upscale crowd than the rowdy, underage regulars at the Starwood. “So he did get back there, but Eddie was acting kind of crazy and bouncing off of walls in his underwear. And Randy was, like, ‘Oh, okay. Well, not the best time to meet this guy.’ So that was his opinion. He said, ‘Yeah, he was really good. But he looked kind of nutty.'”
Still, the rivalry narrative has never fully gone away, and not everyone close to the story tells it the same way. Both men came up on the Sunset Strip at the same time and shared a similar flair, folding finger-tapping into their fast, fluid solos, though Van Halen broke through commercially first, thanks in part to landing a record deal years ahead of Quiet Riot. Osbourne himself has leaned into the rivalry framing. In a 2022 Rolling Stone interview, he said: “I heard recently that Eddie said he taught Randy all his licks … he never. To be honest, Randy didn’t have a nice thing to say about Eddie. Maybe they had a falling out or whatever, but they were rivals.”
The subject was also explored in the 2022 documentary “Randy Rhoads: Reflections Of A Guitar Icon“, which surfaced archive audio of Van Halen speaking about Rhoads in pointed terms. “He was one guitarist who was honest, anyway. Because he said everything he did he learned from me,” Van Halen is heard saying. “He was good. But I don’t really think he did anything that I haven’t done. And there ain’t nothing wrong with it. I’ve copied some other people, you know?”
Rhoads was 25 when he died on March 19, 1982, killed alongside two others when the small plane they were flying in at Flying Baron Estates in Leesburg, Florida clipped Osbourne‘s tour bus and crashed into a nearby mansion. Van Halen died in October 2020 at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 65, with his son confirming he had passed from complications related to cancer. With both guitarists gone, the “rivalry” now lives on mostly through the fans and peers who keep the debate alive — even as those who were closest, like Sarzo, insist there was never much of one to begin with.
