Randy Rhoads’ opinion on Eddie Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen changed the course of guitar playing and to this day is considered the most influential guitarist to emerge after Jimi Hendrix. When he passed away in 2020 at the age of 65 countless artists shared their condolences revealing how vast his influence was extending beyond Rock and Roll into many other genres.

During the early years of his career, he was compared with many other incredible guitarists, including the late Randy Rhoads. Although the former Ozzy Osbourne and Quiet Riot member sadly had a short career, he did share his opinion on Eddie Van Halen.

What was Randy Rhoads’ opinion on Eddie Van Halen

Randy Rhoads greatly respected Eddie Van Halen as a guitar player but was not happy with people comparing the two, as he believed they had different styles. “Everything happens so fast that I haven’t had enough time to think about what I want to do. I have my own personality on the guitar but as of yet I don’t think I have my own style. For instance, I do a solo guitar thing in concert. 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.”

“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,” Randy Rhoads told Guitar World in 1982. Although Ozzy Osbourne said there was some kind of rivalry, Rhoads’ brother and sister did not see it that way.

He said:

“I heard recently that Eddie (Van Halen) 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 Black Sabbath frontman said.

Randy’s siblings Kelle and Kathy Rhoads told Full in Bloom in 2023, that there was a mutual respect between them. “I guess you could say that, in some way (That Eddie influenced Randy). Randy thought he was good,” his brother said. Then his sister chimed in, saying: “Randy thought they had really different styles, so he never liked being compared to him. He thought that was not good, like ‘we have our own styles, we’re different’. Randy had more classical influences in his playing, Eddie was more flash.”

“(They got along), they didn’t hang out or anything but I think there was a mutual respect. But I’ve heard things that Eddie said that Randy had copied him and I don’t think that’s true at all. If he have had the chance to continue playing, I mean, you can imagine (what he could have done),” she said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Randy Rhoads reportedly saw Eddie Van Halen buying a copy of Ozzy’s “Diary of a Madman”

Randy Rhoads was the driving force behind Ozzy Osbourne’s first two solo albums, “Blizzard of Ozz” (1980) and “Diary of a Madman”” (1981). Curiously, according to Randy Rhoads biographer Andrew Klein, during a tour break while he was in his hometown, Randy went to a music shop and saw Eddie Van Halen in the same store buying a copy of “Diary of a Madman”.

“When Randy was home on break from the Ozzy tour, he decided to drive to his local music store to buy some classical albums. Randy said that when he walked into the record store, Eddie Van Halen was standing on line at the register purchasing the ‘Diary of a Madman’ album. Imagine that scene. Can you imagine walking into a record store on any given day and seeing both Eddie and Randy there at the same time?” the biographer said as reported by VNHD in 2013. That ended up being Randy’s final album and had incredible songs like “Over the Mountain”, “Flying High Again”.

Randy’s wah-wah pedal had a Van Halen photo so he could stomp on it during the shows

It was Randy Rhoads’ former guitar tech Brian Reason who had the idea because he knew Randy didn’t like to be compared with Eddie. “There was a little crosstown rivalry there between Quiet Riot and Van Halen. So Van Halen were playing at the Whiskey, Gazaris and all those places. Everybody was comparing Eddie Van Halen to Randy Rhoads.”

“I would take a picture of Eddie, just to kind of piss off Randy. I would put it on his wah-wah pedal, which he wasn’t very excited about. But it was in the perfect place because every time he stomped on his wah-wah pedal he stomped on it as if he wanted to crush it,” Brian Reason said in the documentary “Randy Rhoads: Reflections of a Guitar Icon” (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Another interesting fact which was told by Lori Hollen, Quiet Riot’s Fan Club President, is that Randy never went to a Van Halen show but Eddie and David Lee Roth went to see them play multiple times. “I know that at some of the shows we would see David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen there, which was always interesting to me, because I know Randy never went to see them play, but they would always come to see Quiet Riot and Randy play,” she said in the documentary.

Randy Rhoads had to learn Van Halen songs in order to teach his students

Randy Rhoads was also a music teacher, and at one point he had more than 50 students. They would often bring tapes of their favorite bands and show him the songs they wanted to learn. In the early 1980s, Van Halen was, of course, one of the biggest bands around, so he eventually had to learn some of their songs at his students’ request. In the documentary “Randy Rhoads: Reflections of a Guitar Icon“, a rare recording shows him playing a snippet of “Runnin’ With the Devil”.

Randy’s guitar student, Peter M. Margolis, recalled that he was one of the people who asked him. “I had started to listen to Van Halen, so I said: ‘Well, I really kind of like this’. So I would bring a cassette and I’d play it for him. I didn’t realize at the time that there was this relationship between the two of them. Had I known about that, I probably wouldn’t have asked. But Randy graciously offered to learn the song. I’m sure it killed him to have to take that cassette home and learn how to play songs of his nemesis,” he said.

Curiously, they once played on the same bill at the Glendale College auditorium. Randy’s friend Kim McNair recalled that they could not agree on who would be the opening act. It was only shortly before the show that they finally agreed Van Halen would be the headliner, since they had recently secured a record deal.

Eddie’s son said his father was a terrible guitar teacher

Comparing Eddie and Randy in that aspect, Randy was quite different from Eddie, since his son Wolfgang Van Halen already revealed that his late father was a terrible guitar teacher. Eddie actually asked Mr. Big’s Paul Gilbert to give a few lessons to Wolfie. “My dad was a great guitarist but a terrible guitar teacher. He’d tell you that himself. He even called Paul Gilbert one time and asked him if he would give me a lesson, and he laughed his ass off,” he told Guitar in 2025.

Wolfgang ended up becoming a really talented musician who can really do it all. He plays the guitar just like his father, the drums and many other instruments besides singing. Curiously, in 2024 when Ozzy Osbourne was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame he was the one who played “Crazy Train” on guitar with a lot of special guests.

Van Halen’s comments on Randy Rhoads

In an interview with Jas Obrecht in 1982, shortly after Randy’s tragic death at the age of 25, Eddie Van Halen talked about him. “Yeah (I knew him), God damn, f*cking poor guy. He was one guitarist who was honest anyway. I read some interviews that he did and he said that everything he did he learned from me.”

“He was good and God damn, way a fucking way to go, you know. I mean, obviously they must have been fucked up, jerking around with the plane, you know. That wasn’t an accident, it was an accident but they were definitely fucked up when it happened. They had to have been. You don’t fly that low and smash into a crew bus and then hit the house. They were (playing with the plane). That’s just plain stupidity. I feel sorry for him. I mean, you never know man. He might be up there jamming with (John) Bonham and everyone else who kicked the bucket,” he said.

Although Eddie praised him, he also told Jas that he didn’t believe Rhoads “topped his techinique”. “I don’t really think he did anything that I haven’t done. Anyone else that does the things that I do obviously gonna sound a little different. I can tell when someone is topping my technique and there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, I learned from other people too. There ain’t nothing wrong with it, I copied other people,” Eddie Van Halen said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).