Where were you when you first heard Randy?

[petedz]

I always thought Ozzy was an idiot, and it wasn't until I heard my roommate working on the solo for Mr. Crowley in '85. I finally gave the albums a listen....after I made him teach me the licks.

[HeWhoIs]

It 93', I was 13 driving around with my older brother who put a tape of Blizzard on the stereo. A week later I started begging my Mom for a guitar.

[pagemalicious]

I must of been about 13 or 14 years old and I had just bought Ozzy's Blizzard Of Oz album and I listened to it on my Dads car stereo. That's when I first heard him but I didn't fully appreciate his playing untill I was about 15/16 years old.

[sakeido]

I think I heard that song for the first time in about 1990 when I was four years old. I liked it more for Ozzy's little vocal intro thing, and didn't recognize Randy's awesomeness until I was about fifteen.

[mercyful-fate]

The first time I heard of him, I was about 6, my sister was a huge ozzy fan, and my uncle made the polka dot flying V for him (Karl Sandoval). so I was hooked pretty young

[Snoogans]

Back in '81-'82, there was a local teenage discotheque in town that had a "Metal" night every Friday. I was a huge Dio-Sabbath fan, but didn't care for Ozzy much (Still don't), so I'd never bothered with the Blizzard album. However this one fateful night, they played this HUGE riff that completely flattened me. Of course, that was Crazy Train and the rest is history....

[xenophobe]

Shortly after Blizzard came out... several months after.

What was I doing? I dunno, I was too fucked up all the time back then to remember.

[VitaminG]

I must've been about 14 or 15. I was round a friend's place when he throws a brand new tape on - Ozzy's Tribute. To be honest, it didn't do much for me. I hated the rawness/looseness of live albums back then (even Live After Death didn't grab me like the studio albums, especially since Dave flubs a note during Flight Of Icarus ), although now I'm a live recording junkie. And I was already listening to Maiden, Megadeth, Gary Moore, Malmsteen, etc so Randy's playing didn't really "pop" for me. But hey, I felt the same when the same friend introduced me to VH...guitar & metal had evolved a lot since those guys first made their impact (obviously directly due to their influence) and I was a couple of years too young.

It was probably a year later when I saw the Tribute video for Crazy Train on a late night music program. The combination of that brilliant riff, the polka dot V flying down the train tracks, the montage of concert pics of Randy, that wicked fill in the first verse, that solo! - it's like a switch was thrown in my head. Suddenly I got it.

And I immediately regretted not having known about the man & his music while he was still alive.

[69buickman]

I was naked in a shower.....does it really matter?

[Jackson-Charvel]

Probably around 81 sometime heard it on 95.5 WPLJ (New York station). I was 10 or 11 and I used to stay up late to hopefully get it on tape. Back then I wasn't allowed to buy records/tapes/cd's or watch MTV at that age. I used to get pissed wondering why the heaviest stuff I was ever going to hear on the radio was Judas Priest's "You've Got Another Thing Coming" or maybe if I was lucky Paranoid/Sweet Leaf or Iron Man. It wasn't until a few years later when I discovered WSOU and they played Metal on Friday nights.

[JC_Denton]

I was about 7 years old , and my father bought live ozzy cd form finland and i remember listening crazy train over and over again rocking around my living room like crazy. I really liked his riffing , i fell in love to his soloing when i was 16 trying to learn MR. Crowley's solo ( still my favorite song of his along with diary of a madman).

[Twisteramps]

Summer of '80 or '81, at Bell's Amusement Park in Tulsa. Heard Crazy Train being cranked on the Himalaya while I was riding the bumper cars. I was a sitting duck, because I didn't move a whole lot during the song - I wasn't a guitar player or a guitar fan, but the song just entranced me.

Pete

[Drake S.]

I was 11 & my Mom & Uncle dragged me & my Brother to a concert at the old Miami Baseball stadium, where Ozzy was playing . It was over right there & then. 5 years later I bought my first guitar.

[Vass]

Used to tape Headbanger's Ball off MTV...I don't even know why. I think it had to do with the fact that I couldn't stand any music that was on MTV (All Billy Jean, All The Time it seemed like). I would watch it the next day. I had started playing guitar for reasons I don't recall but I did think that Money for Nothing was a pretty cool song.

Popped in the tape, heard crowd noise & saw a black & white train rail & who I later learned was Tommy Aldridge clicking off the beat and then the opening chord hit and a boot stepped on the train rail (Ozzy, obviously). Then this polka dot V guitar started flying down the tracks over a sound that to me at the time and even now seemed primal- like someone was tearing apart a huge piece of wood or something....it didn't even sound like a guitar.

It was like nothing I ever experienced. I remember sitting on the floor of my parent's living room just destroyed. Not to be overly dramatic, but it changed everything for me, that one video. I did not know that music could be that powerful.

I had an inkling that perhaps this person was dead, and when I found out he was and had been for 5 years I was crushed.

When I got the tape & heard all the parts they edited out of the video it was like a gift.

That one day, that one video. Would I have discovered all this wonderful music without it? I suppose so. But that is the day that I crossed over to the Dark Side, forever.

It was only years and years later that I realized that Mark Knopfler really was a kick ass guitarist, too

I never found the studio version of Crazy Train to stand up to the live version. I know it's great, and I enjoy it, but the raw power of the live version & that massive guitar towering over everything just blows it away. Every time I hear some sports star come out to the original I just think, "Man, Tribute version would be so much better"



Vass

[wakeUPdead]

I believe I was 10 years old and I bought my first Ozzy album - The Ozzman Cometh. This is also my frist metal album and I still have it dude! Scratched all to hell but I still got it .

Oh yeah, Crazy Train and Paranoid. I can vividly remember hanging the portable cd player at the edge of my bed falling asleep with headphones on just in awe about it all.