Ozzy Osborune/Randy Rhoads (Tribute) 1987 Gatefold InteriorInner Sleeve - Side A and B Inner Sleeve - Side C and D Tribute is a Live, double album featuring
Randy Rhoads. Normally I wouldn't add Live albums to a
Poll that's asking what the
Greatest Album of All Time is, as it's usually for studio releases. But
Tribute absolutely belongs in the
Poll for 3 reasons. 1)
Randy Rhoads. That alone is enough to get it onto the list of
Greatest Of All Time. 2) It's the best Live album ever. 3) This album is the reason why
Jake E. Lee quit
Ozzy's band.
The first 2 are self explanatory. Now, about the
Jake-quitting-the-band-over-this-album story. It really depends on who is telling the story. For years it's always been quoted as fact. But I can't really say with certainty if it's actually why he quit. But the story I keep hearing over and over is that immediately after
The Ultimate Sin tour wrapped,
Ozzy and company were set to start their follow up album, only for
Ozzy to get sidetracked with putting together
Tribute, in honor of his best friend
Randy Rhoads.
Ozzy became so consumed with doing it right ,that pretty much everything else was put on hold.
Jake apparently didn't like this and got increasingly frustrated with trying to work with
Ozzy on their own material, eventually just throwing in the towel and walking away. It's unfortunate that he chose to leave, because this was the pinnacle of
Jake's career.
As for
Tribute the Live concert, it's just an amazing performance by everyone involved, including
Rudy Sarzo on Bass and
Tommy Aldridge on Drums. Like any concert release before and after, it's not "complete". This album isn't from 1 show, but taken from 3 different shows. Personally I could care less if it were from 20. It's just f*cking awesome.
And rounding out the album is a studio outtake of
Randy working on his soon to be classic song
Dee. For me this was the first time I had ever heard the man speak. So to hear him making suggestions about the song was pretty cool for me to hear.
Steal Away is for you drummers out there.
Tommy's drum solo is f*cking wicked cool. The double bass work is unparalleled. Fancy feet indeed. But the highlite for me is the extended guitar solo from
Randy on
Suicide Solution. Unf*ckingbelievable.
I mentioned before that to me the best version of
Crazy Train is found on here. One listen to this one and it's very hard to go back to the original studio version and something that still holds true for me to this day.
Fave Songs: All of 'em. Co-MVP goes to.....
Crazy Train and
Suicide Solution. Duh.
The album cover f*cking kicks ass!! The back cover kicks ass! The Gatefold kicks ass! The inner sleeves kick ass! And if you try to take this particular vinyl off my hands, be certain I will kick your f*cking ass!!
Tribute Music Videos