Director Andre Relis joined an interview with SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk and revealed why Ozzy Osbourne wasn’t a part of the documentary about his late guitarist Randy Rhoads.
Recently, Relis announced his new and striking documentary entitled ‘Randy Rhoads: Reflections Of A Guitar Icon,’ released on Video On Demand on Friday, May 6, 2022. L.A. Guns guitarist Tracii Guns narrated it, and Michael Bruining was the writer and editor.
Also, it includes interviews with Randy’s mother, Delores Rhoads, his brother Kelle Rhoads, Eddie Van Halen, Rudy Sarzo, Frankie Banali, and Osbourne. The director opened up about the previous projects with the guitarist and revealed that they had problems with the Osbournes about music.
Relis unveiled that Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne clearly stated that they didn’t want to be involved in the making process, so they didn’t let him use the music Rhoads and Osbourne created together. The director defined that as very challenging times because of these difficulties.
Then, he added they didn’t support him while he was trying to find footage from the early years of Rhoads as Osbourne’s guitarist, even though the Osbournes own the rights for almost all of them. Therefore Relis had to find someone else to reach some videos of Rhoads and Osbourne playing together.
Relis stated in his interview that:
“It appears that there were difficulties from the Osbourne side to license music. Beyond that, I don’t know, man. It’s a weird one. That’s what intrigued me because my specialty, as a producer, is to get stuff out that a lot of people have a hard time getting out, whether it be a feature film or a documentary or whatever it may be.
There have been quite a few projects that I’ve honed in on and got stuff done that many people before me couldn’t. Sharon and Ozzy weren’t going to give it to me, man. They made that very clear to me once they found out I was doing this documentary. That was the challenging part.”
He added:
“I had to go into this on my own without their support. I tried to get their support, but Sharon and Ozzy didn’t give it. So, yeah, every little piece of when Randy joined Ozzy was very difficult to get.
From my research, the Osbournes own all, if not 99 percent, of the live footage from that era. So I had to find a gentleman, and it took me many months, who controlled even some real basic footage of Ozzy with Randy on stage.”
You can check out the trailer below.
