Guitarist Adrian Vandenberg said in an interview with “The Metal Voice” that he was approached by Ozzy Osbourne to join his band, in order to replace late guitarist, Randy Rhoads.
Regarding this, the guitarist said during the interview:
“I did. A story that I never told before, but it was Ozzy, actually. The first time I met him during the (1983) tour, when we started, but I must say he was not quite sober, which is very unusual for Ozzy, of course. But, yeah, his tour manager introduced me to him, and he was in the lunchroom of one of the hotels.
“And he said, ‘Adrian, do you wanna join my band?’ I said, ‘Man, we’re supporting you guys. And Jake (E. Lee) is a fantastic player.’ And he mumbled something, like, ‘We’ll stay in touch or whatever.’
”But later on, some people mentioned that Don Airey and a couple of other guys in the band mentioned to Ozzy that my style of playing had a lot of resemblance with Randy Rhoads’s playing in the sense of classical influences, like Euro metal type of stuff combined with American and blues and whatever.
“So hearing that and hearing Randy’s playing, because I was not really familiar with Randy playing, because Ozzy was not popular in Europe at all at the time, he was huge in the United States. So when we got the invitation to support him, I was kind of surprised. I thought, ‘Wow, Ozzy.’ I didn’t really know he was that huge in the States.”