Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde revealed that Randy Rhoads and Jimmy Page had an eerily similar way they would compose guitar solos. An Ozzy Osbourne Eerie Elvis Presley Similarity Was Revealed.
He told Guitar Villains, “The Saint Rhodes school of writing is where you just sit with it and compose a solo. Like ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ ‘Hotel California’… the same thing with Randy’s solos – I could literally play you some of his solos and you would know the song.
“It’s pretty crazy, but that’s how it is with Randy’s solos. It’s his writing – his and everybody’s – legacy is the writing. When you talk about Bach, Mozart, Beethoven… it’s what they wrote.
“Randy’s side of his amazing chops, and his tone, and his feel, and everything like that – it’s his composition and his writing. So you sit down with it, and I still do it to this day you, you sit, I’ll have the backing track, and then you work on something so it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And so you get something that you’re happy with.”
Is that how you attack ‘No More Tears’? You kind of sat with it?
“Yeah, and looking back, I can’t remember physically where I sat. I remember when I did ‘I Don’t Want to Change the World,’ I remember I was sitting upstairs, 8 a.m. working that out.
“We did one pass on it and I was like, ‘Oh, let me double it,’ or whatever I said, ‘Let me see if I can double it.’ And they go, ‘Nah, we doubled a bunch of solos.’ And there’s only one rhythm guitar in that as well.
“For the whole rest of that record, I’m doubling everything just so it has that tone, and it gets wide and huge. But I remember I was like, ‘Oh, let me double again!’
“They went, ‘Just leave it, sounds slamming the way it is.’ But we just left it with one guitar and one rhythm track. Yeah, that was just a one-take, I said, ‘Let’s go for it, just press record.’ And I played it and that was it.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his comments.
