Bassist Rudy Sarzo has played in many influential bands throughout his career, but the one that really stands out is his tenure with Ozzy Osbourne after the frontman was fired from Black Sabbath. The honor of playing with a young Randy Rhoads, whom he knew from his time in an early incarnation of Quiet Riot, was bestowed upon him as Randy recommended his Puerto Rican friend to Ozzy and Sharon. After Randy’s tragic death, Rudy went on to play in Quiet Riot (again), Whitesnake, Blue Oyster Cult, Yngwie and Dio, as well as others.
His current project, Animetal USA, sees him collaborating with vocalist Mike Vescera (Obsession, Yngwie, Loudness), guitarist Chris Impellitteri (Impellitteri) and drummer Jon Dette (Slayer,Testament). Rudy has fully embraced his love for animation and metal by adopting an anime-influenced image, decorated with kabuki makeup and costumes combined with over the top musicianship.
You know when someone mentions that a certain band is huge in Japan? Well, Animetal USA really is, and now the band is ready to take on other parts of the world, especially the U.S.
Kelley Simms: You could play with anybody, but what drew you to the Animetal USA project?
Rudy Sarzo: What drew me to the project is I’m a huge fan of anime and a huge fan of all the musicians of it. What a great opportunity to make fantastic music with some of the most incredible musicians that I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. I’ve been touring in Japan for the last 30 years with Ozzy, Quiet Riot, Whitesnake and Dio, and every time i went there, I went in, did my metal thing with the band and then we left.
With Animetal USA, it’s our opportunity to thank the Japanese fans for all their support all these years. They are the ones who have actually kept metal alive. They were the ones who constantly supported us and embraced what we do. This is our way of saying thank you. Cause now, Animetal USA is very culturally centric to Japan because of anime, but also adopting some of the fundamental beliefs about Japan, which one of them is attention to detail. There’s so much attention to detail in our music that if you listen to our record, there’s some of the most flawless performances that I’ve ever been a part of on a record.
I know you’re into 3D animation and I’m familiar with the programs you work with. How did you get into this medium?
I was a film communications major in school in Miami. And at the time, in the early ’70s, the only industry that you could fulfill was porno. So instead of going in that direction ... there were a lot of bars where I could actually play music. That’s why I became a professional musician. But, nevertheless, I filled my interest as an individual as an art form to tell a story. All the music that I grew up listening to was music with a lot of imagery.
The Beatles really started to make an impact when they started making music with imagery like “I Am the Walrus,” “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Songs like that that really captured my imagination. When laptops (came out), they saved my life! It kept me out of the bars. I spent a lot of time at the bar because I was bored on the road. So when laptops came around I could start being productive.
When the first software was being developed; 3D Studio Max, Maya, then you had video editing software such as Adobe Premier???, Vegas and so on. I started to spend as much time doing that as I was making music. So on the road I was constantly working and learning and educating and trying to become a better visual artist and hopefully someday as good as I am as a musician.
You were responsible for creating the visuals for Dio’s stage show for the back screen. How did this come about?
It was the Holy Diver Live tour and they decided to bring out a projector for the jumbotron and it was just going to be basically Ronnie doing a little intro on a green screen. It was back in 2004-05 when I started working on that. I asked Ronnie if I could create some other animation to go on right before (we hit the stage) — morphing “Murray” (the Egyptian dog/man who’s on the album covers) into Ronnie. This was the first thing I ever did.
Your book Off the Rails is such a great read because it’s so honest and personal. You kept a very detailed journal. Obviously, you were trying to convey what a great guy Randy was, but else were you trying to achieve by writing the book?
That is a great question. In a nutshell, I wrote the book to answer the number one question I get asked around the world. Which is, “What was it like to play with Randy Rhoads?” And since I am the only guy who was fortunate enough to play with him in both Quiet Riot and Ozzy Osbourne, I got to experience the metamorphosis of Randy Rhoads from being the local guitar hero to becoming the legendary guitar icon that everybody knows him from playing with Ozzy.
It was an immediate change. He went from playing with Quiet Riot locally, being at the mercy of whatever the record companies were asking us to do to get a record deal. And that’s all we wanted was a record deal. When Randy joined Ozzy, Ozzy told him to just be himself. So Randy realized that he didn’t have to answer to any record companies requests. Ozzy wanted him to be true to himself as a musician and as a composer. And that’s what you hear. That was the outcome of that — what you get from listening to Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of A Madman.
The reason why I had such details for the Ozzy tour is that it was my first tour and I hadn’t made any money as a musician up until then. So my family accountant advised me to keep details of my touring expenses so I could use those as a tax write-off! (laughs). That’s why I had a journal. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have done that.
After Randy’s death, was the reason why you left Ozzy’s band was because it was hard to carry on without Randy? How difficult was dealing with that and having to finish the tour without Randy?
It was incredibly hard. My mission after Randy’s death was to finish that tour with dignity and respect to Randy’s music and friendship. Also, the reason why we continued touring was to keep Ozzy occupied, basically to keep him alive. If the tour would have been pulled and Ozzy would have got home, he would have drank himself to death.
I love Ozzy and Sharon. If it wasn’t for that day that they gave me the opportunity to be in the band, I wouldn’t have the career that I have today. They are completely responsible for giving me my career. I would have stayed in the band until they kicked me out, but it was painful for me to go on stage without Randy.
I spoke with Chris (Impellitteri) a couple of weeks ago for another publication that I write for, and he proclaimed that Animetal USA is his top priority. Since you’ve played in so many bands, do you consider Animetal USA your full-time band now?
Absolutely. It’s really anime-centric, which means that it’s not going to be as revolving. There’s a strategy to the group, where we’re taking the band. We’re being very careful with this. We don’t want to throw it out there and start touring and not have the existence that we have in Japan. So right now, our mission outside of Japan is to bring anime to the metal fans. We’re being very specific to the anime market where we drew our performances from kabuki.
As soon as the band starts taking on more than this small awareness of the band and anime outside of Japan, we will expand our touring. We just did the anime expo a few weeks ago in Los Angeles. So, we’re looking to do more touring, doing more anime expos around the world, then doing some adjoining things to those anime expo performances. This is something that is very close to our hearts, musically and culturally. We have a certain strategy in place with this.
How difficult was it to translate the lyrics from Japanese to English as well as converting the musical phrasings and melody lines from anime theme shows and combine it with your own original music and have it gel together correctly?
We have certain guidelines. One of them is tempo ... the way the guitars perform. Metal, speed metal style of guitar playing. The melody must remain consistent because one thing you have to take into consideration is that before we get the approval of the publishing company that owns the publishing rights to the original songs that we’re covering from the theme songs, have to be approved.
So we cannot deviate from the melody itself or from the essence of what the lyric is. But then again, we’re giving it our own Animetal USA speed metal treatment. It’s very challenging, and that’s why it’s so rewarding every time we actually finish a song because it’s very unique what we’re doing.
Although you have played in many different bands, what are you hoping Animetal USA achieves, most importantly outside of Japan?
We’ve been embraced by the anime community in Japan. I’m talking about the graphic artists and the musicians that create the anime theme songs. As a matter of fact, we are wanted now because of Rock Lee, which is the new spin-off of Naruto, the most popular anime series right now in Japan. We are actually the band that plays the theme song for the Rock Lee animated series.
We’re now a part of the anime music world. We have been given the mission by the anime community in Japan to actually bring the fantastic world of anime to the metal fans. There’s so much in common between anime and metal. To me, metal is the most imaginative, freedom of expression, freedom of your imagination musical art form that exists. That is exactly what anime is all about, it’s all about the fantastic, the spectacular, freedom of imagination.
There’s no limits to what you can do with anime and there’s no limits of what you can do with metal. To me, it’s the perfect marriage of both art forms, the visual and the audio.