Book/DVD Review: Randy Rhoads – The Quiet Riot Years
Red Match Productions
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Ron Sobol’s access was unlimited. Having befriended Kevin
DuBrow, after the two bonded over a shared interest in photography and Humble
Pie, Sobol eventually became part of the Quiet Riot family – as the band’s personal
shutterbug, as its lighting director, and simply as somebody they would pal
around with. Along for the ride, through all the ups and downs, Sobol watched the
early version of Quiet Riot, featuring a young Randy Rhoads on guitar, tear up
the Sunset Strip and garner a following rivaled locally only by Van Halen.
This was long before Metal
Health made Quiet Riot a worldwide phenomenon, however. Back in the late
1970s, Rhoads and Quiet Riot – despite their colorful stage garb and charismatic
live shows – couldn’t get any American record label to take a chance on them.
The showcases they performed for label executives led to nothing but false
promises. Even the well-publicized demonstrations they organized outside record
companies in Los Angeles, where supporters pleaded for them to sign the band
with well-meaning placards and chants even as the police tried to silence them,
fell on deaf ears. Sobol had his camera trained on Quiet Riot, and the circus surrounding
them, the whole time.
For years, Sobol, the ultimate band insider, has been
sitting on a mountain of hundreds of behind-the-scenes still photos and
mountains of super 8mm concert footage he compiled while running with DuBrow
and the rest of the Quiet Riot pack. And it’s all here in “Randy Rhoads – The
Quiet Riot Years,” undoubtedly the most comprehensive and candid biography of
that period in Quiet Riot’s history that’s ever been compiled. Packaged
together as a vividly illustrated coffee table book plus an illuminating DVD, Sobol’s collective
work – he directed the DVD and authored the book – revisits the halcyon days
when Quiet Riot ruled The Starwood and other Hollywood hot spots, such as the
Whisky A-Go-Go and The Troubadour, while also performing before thousands of
people who showed up to bask in their pre-glam metal glow at local colleges and
festivals. And yet, that major American record label deal eluded them.
The frustration was palpable, as Sobol’s documentary
illustrates in such heartbreaking fashion. Everybody associated with Quiet Riot
were pulling their hair out trying to figure out how to break this band. Fan club
president Lori Hollen did her part, hauling a boatload of friends to go see Quiet
Riot, and Jodi “Raskin” Vigier, the one-time girlfriend of both Rhoads and
DuBrow, and Laurie MacAdam worked on livening up the band’s image – MacAdam’s fashion
sketches for the band’s dazzling, completely over-the-top stage clothes are shown in both
the film and the book. Then, along came Ozzy Osbourne, and the party was over,
as he took Rhoads to be his new guitarist and his musical salvation.
Unfortunately, that meant the original Quiet Riot, fronted by the indomitable DuBrow
and Rhoads, his very close friend, would never hit the big time together, as
they’d hoped they would.
Watching and reading “Randy Rhoads – The Quiet Riot Years,” it’s
impossible not to get a full sense of the abject disappointment everyone
associated with this version of Quiet Riot felt when their career stalled. In a
DVD full of wide-ranging, completely open interviews, drummer Drew Forsyth – with some
bitterness – relates how a disinterested producer torpedoed the band’s first
album, 1977’s Quiet Riot, and details
how management failed them on numerous occasions. And there was drama within
Quiet Riot, as DuBrow knocked heads with bassist Kelly Garni, which caused tension
between DuBrow and Rhoads, who’d been friends with Garni since childhood. Garni’s time in the band ended rather abruptly, however, when in a drunken rage he
pulled out a gun during an argument with Rhoads, an incident thoroughly hashed
out in a film that captures the youthful joie de vivre and DIY spirit of Quiet
Riot and its closest allies. At the same time, it deals with the crushing
disillusionment that comes with seeing one’s dreams go unfulfilled, this despite scintillating footage of a swaggering Quiet Riot knocking them dead in exciting live performances. Big issues, such as Rhoads feeling stifled creatively by DuBrow, drive the story and make it a gripping yarn, but there are other individual moments of
greatness, including a thorough dissection of the
mind-blowing solo Rhoads used to play at Quiet Riot gigs from his guitar tech
Brian Reason. And this is just half the story.
Edited and laid out skillfully, with particular attention
paid to attaching bite-sized pieces of text with compelling graphics, the book
is jam packed with beautifully shot color and black and white images, augmented
by scraps of memorabilia as well as moving tributes from its senior editor –
and one of Rhoads’ guitar students – Peter M. Margolis and DuBrow’s mother.
Among the treasures from Sobol’s archives are mesmerizing portraits of Rhoads,
leftover pictures of the band taken during a football locker room photo shoot
for the Quiet Riot II cover, stolen
scenes of backstage high jinks – including one section with the boys parading
around in dresses – and an endless stream of highly visceral, electrifying
close-ups of the band’s two lightning rods, Rhoads and DuBrow, giving it their
all onstage. Accompanied by an informative, if somewhat skeletal narrative, the
photography jumps off the page, and it’s not just because there is so damn much of it
to sift through. The product of inspired intuition, fly-on-the-wall
observations and a true cause – namely, the advancement of Quiet Riot – Sobol’s
images catch members of the band and their entourage at their leisure,
having a fantastic, carefree time in sunny Southern California before they lost their innocence.
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