In a recent interview with Jeremy White, Rudy Sarzo clarified whether or not Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads had bad blood.
“Never heard him talk really. We never had a conversation about Eddie Van Halen,” Sarzo explained.
When the interviewer asked if Rhoads ever said ‘Eddie is playing my riffs,’ the rocker clarified: “I mean I know that he stayed away from his lane. He didn’t go into areas where Eddie was known for. He didn’t have to he had all this classical music knowledge.”
“I know that Eddie and Alex are school musicians. They knew what they were playing it wasn’t like again somebody trying just to make things up. They had instruction in theory and harmony but they made a choice in which direction to go musically whereas Randy decided to go more classical,” he added.
Ozzy Osbourne once shared that his guitarist, Randy Rhoads, didn’t have a high opinion of Eddie’s playing. In a 1982 Guitar Player interview, EVH even claimed that Rhoads had credited him for his technique.
In 2022, Osbourne dismissed this, saying, “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.”
However, Rhoads later clarified that it wasn’t about rivalry. “I have my own personality on the guitar, but as of yet, I don’t think I have my own style,” he explained to Guitar World in 1982. “For instance, I do a solo guitar thing in concert, and I do a lot of the same licks as Eddie Van Halen. Eddie is a great player, but it kills me that I do that.”
He added: “For me, it’s just flash that impresses the kids. I’m trying to make a name for myself as fast as I can. I wish I could take time and come up with something that nobody else has done. But that’s gonna take a few years yet.”
Though it gets clearer each day that they weren’t rivals, fans of both guitarists still continue to discuss who was a better guitarist.
