Hammond Music

Heavy metal has a huge line of guitar players who dominated the stage and played like the demons the vocalists sung about. Here’s three of the guitar players in heavy metal that, although are gone, their influence isnt.

• Randy Rhoads. Randy Rhoads was remembered more for his work with ex Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne rather than the LA band Quiet Riot. Randy helped to write Ozzy classics such as ‘Crazy train’ and ‘Dee’. Unlike most rock players Randy had a musical grounding in Classical playing, working it into the first two albums that he played on with Ozzy. 1979’s ‘Blizzard of Oz’ album and 1981’s ‘diary of a madmen’. It is believed that Rhoades would’ve gone on to leave the band to study classical guitar at UCLA, and he would seek out classical guitar tutors on tour with Ozzy to keep up his knowledge and playing skill. The specialist Jackson guitars made for Rhoads are a popular choice amongst guitarists today. Rhoads died tragically in a plane crash in 1982, and his since been an inspiration for thousands of guitarists since.
• Chuck Schuldiner. Main songwriter, vocalist and guitarist of pioneering metal band ‘Death’. Often hailed as the ‘father of death metal’, a term that the man himself wasnt in agreement with, Chuck was a huge influence on extreme metal and metal in general. Death’s first release, ’scream bloody gore’, could be said as setting the tone for death metal, but each album featured not only different line ups, but changes in song wiriting and direction. Death release a further 4 albums with the band, ‘Human, ‘Spiritual healing’,'Symbolic’ and ‘The sound of perseverance’ before folding Death to play guitar for ‘Control denied’, which released ‘The fragile art of exsistance’ in 1999. Chuck Schulidner died in 2001 after a long standing battle with brain cancer, which had seen the metal community rally round to try and raise funds for his operations.
• Darrell Lance Abbott -’Dimebag’. Guitarist of the infamous Pantera later of Damageplan and also played guitar on the country band rebel meets rebel. Pantera was formed in 1981 as a glam metal band, but the bands first album ‘Cowboys from hell’ saw them take a much more heavier groove laden approach with the music. Their breakthrough album was 1992’s ‘A vulgar display of power’, which gave the band a whole ‘new level’ of exposure. Next album ‘Far beyond driven’ jumped to the top of the US charts on its release, proving at the time that metal was still ‘alive’. Pantera also released ‘Greater Southern Trendkill’ and ‘Re-inventing the steel’, after which Pantera split, as bassist Rex Brown and vocalist Phil Anselmo went off to do ‘Down’ and ‘Superjoint ritual’ and Dimebag and his brother and drummer Vinnie Paul created ‘Damageplan’. Dimebag was tragically shot while performing onstage with Damageplan in December 2004, which saw the metal community grieve as a collective once again.

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