On this day · 69 years ago · 1957
69 Years Ago Today: Carlos Cavazo, the Guitarist Who Replaced Randy Rhoads in Quiet Riot, Was Born
Stepping into a dead friend's old band is a strange way to start a career-defining run. Carlos Cavazo did exactly that in Quiet Riot, and ended up on the record that broke heavy metal into the Billboard Top 10.
By Jaxon, Metal Rhythm desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Carlos Cavazo was born July 8, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia. He joined the reformed Quiet Riot in 1982, filling the lead guitar chair Randy Rhoads had vacated years earlier to join Ozzy Osbourne. Cavazo played on 1983's Metal Health, the first heavy metal album to reach number one on the Billboard 200, and later spent a decade in Ratt.
Atlanta to Anaheim
Carlos Cavazo was born July 8, 1957, in Atlanta, Georgia, to a Mexican father and an American mother, per Wikipedia's account of his life and career. His family later moved to Southern California, where in 1973 he formed the band Speed of Light with his older brother Tony in Anaheim, leaving school his senior year to chase music full time. That band evolved into Snow, which spent the late 1970s building a following on the Los Angeles club circuit.
Filling a chair that Randy Rhoads left empty
Cavazo's defining break came in 1982, when he joined the reformed Quiet Riot. The band's original lead guitarist, Randy Rhoads, had co-founded Quiet Riot in 1973 and played on its first two Japan-only albums before leaving in 1979 to join Ozzy Osbourne's solo band, a run that produced the genre-defining Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman. Rhoads died in a plane accident in March 1982. Cavazo stepped into Quiet Riot's guitar chair that same year, inheriting a band still carrying Rhoads's name and reputation but needing an entirely new sound to move forward with.
Metal Health breaks the Billboard 200 wide open
That new lineup delivered almost immediately. Quiet Riot's 1983 album Metal Health, with Cavazo on lead guitar, became the first heavy metal album ever to reach number one on the Billboard 200, unseating The Police's Synchronicity that November, per Wikipedia's entry on the record. Anchored by the Slade cover Cum on Feel the Noize and the title track, the album sold more than 10 million copies worldwide, went six-times platinum in the US, and is widely credited as the commercial breakthrough that helped open the door for the hair metal explosion of the mid-1980s. For a guitarist who'd spent the previous decade grinding through L.A. club bands, it was about as fast a validation as rock and roll offers.
A career built on other people's bands
Cavazo stayed with Quiet Riot into the 2000s, though he wasn't part of the lineup singer Kevin DuBrow reassembled for 2006's Rehab. He kept working: a stint in the Vinny Appice and Jimmy Bain supergroup 3 Legged Dogg, a decade in Ratt from 2008 to 2018, and, more recently, membership in both King Kobra and Hurricane. It's a career shape common to session-hardened '80s metal guitarists, less a single-band legacy than a long run of filling important chairs well.
Power Slinky 2220 Nickel Wound (.011–.048)
Why this one: A step up from a standard Regular Slinky, in the heavier-gauge territory early-80s metal and hard rock rhythm playing typically calls for, whatever exact set was on Cavazo's guitar in the studio that year.
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