Quiet Riot member Rudy Sarzo recently spoke about the name change his band went through in the ’80s and revealed the story of Randy Rhoads giving his blessings to Kevin DuBrow.
Quiet Riot is one of the greatest bands in rock and roll, and their music had a significant impact on the hard rock genre. However, currently, the band doesn’t have any original members, and throughout its years, they had a dramatic relationship with each other that led to several lineup changes and breakups.
In the late 70s, the band’s lineup included Randy Rhoads, Kelly Garni, Drew Forsyth, and Kevin DuBrow. DuBrow and Garni were involved in a life-threatening dispute which led to the firing of Garni. These disputes bored Rhoads, and he eventually left the band to join Ozzy Osbourne‘s touring band.
However, the band didn’t disband; instead, it was renamed as DuBrow. However, Kevin DuBrow later wanted to switch the band’s name back to Quiet Riot. According to the recent interview of Rudy Sarzo, Kevin asked if Sarzo and Rhoads would mind changing the band’s name to Quiet Riot again. Sarzo stated that he and Randy gave Kevin their blessings to use Quiet Riot’s name.
Here is how Sarzo explained:
“Yes. But I don’t know if people know this, but during the last break that Randy and I had from Ozzy, we were hanging with Kevin, as we always did when we came back to L.A., and he said, ‘Listen, do you guys mind if at some point I rename DuBrow as Quiet Riot?’ And of course, Randy said yes, gave him his blessings. And so did I. So it was kind of in the works about a new version of Quiet Riot, even when Randy was still with us.”
Their most commercially successful lineup consisted of Kevin DuBrow, Carlos Cavazo, Rudy Sarzo, and Frankie Banali. With this lineup, the band became the first band to top the Billboard chart with a heavy metal album after ‘Metal Health.’
