As the airplane’s door opened, eleven-year-old Rudy Sarzo undoubtedly felt the city’s warm air, laden with the usual mugginess of early September. With his parents and siblings, he had just made the short, forty-five-minute flight from Havana to Miami; escaping as so many others the brutality of Castro’s Cuba.

Rudy’s amazing journey had begun.

The family was relocated to West New York, New Jersey under the Cuban Refugee Resettlement Program.  In 1967 the family returned to Miami and Sarzo enrolled at Miami High.  He fondly remembers the raucous Orange Bowl crowds, especially when the Stings played the Cavaliers in their classic rivalry games.

Even then, Rudy’s passion lay in music.  He attributes his affinity with Rock to its roots in Blues, a genre based on faith and freedom.  As he honed his talent, Rudy upgraded from his first guitar, a Sears Silvertone model, to a superior Gibson.  To pay for his new instrument, he worked at the Miami Beach Royal Palm Hotel’s Kosher kitchen, serving the snowbirds during winter months.  As he put it, “The best gig for a musician is to work in a restaurant because you never go hungry!”.

Teaming with his fellow Miami High classmates, Oscar Valdez Oroza on keyboards, Bobby Duthil on guitar and vocals, and Rafael Plascencia on drums and vocals, the band, named SYLVESTER -- “After the cat.” -- began playing at various schools and the ubiquitous “Quinces” where the group quickly realized that the more ballads they played, the better their chances of getting rehired.  Sometimes they would play ten ballads in a row just to make sure.  One of their premier gigs at the time was the 1970 Miami High Senior Prom held at the Four Ambassadors Hotel near Brickell Avenue.

Soon after graduating from Miami High, the band stepped up to their next level landing gigs at several Miami hot spots, including the Newport, Castaways, and Marco Polo hotels.  The band’s continuous practicing on the front porches of their homes led one of the group members’ dad to search the Miami Herald classified want ads for backup bands.  Happily for the parents, there was an opening for a musical group to back up Jeb Stuart, Isaac Hayes’ former partner, at the Tomboy Club in North Miami.  SYLVESTER played in several other Miami venues; the group’s last being the 79th Street Lounge.

As Disco began to flourish in Miami in the mid 70’s the closest venues for Rock artists were found in Fort Lauderdale, where the band played at The Button and several Big Daddy’s lounges.

During this era, the band members learned from the shows’ headliners that it was their job to make people dance. So they added percussionist Carlos Plana. The easiest way to do so was to add a conga to every song.  “Even Smoke on the Water was played with a conga.  It sounded like Santana was playing.”  They also learned that the pros were “in tune” that is, they had tuners, which would adjust the pitch of the instruments’ tones, matching the interval between them.

The same humidity that greeted Sarzo on his Miami arrival affected his technique.  To be a musician in South Florida one had to adapt to this environment.  The climate’s moisture caused his fingers to sweat profusely, in turn, making his bass’ strings moldy and rusty.  Not being able to afford new strings, Rudy would lick his fingers while playing to remove the debris.

When Disco fever hit Fort Lauderdale, many Rock musicians left the area, among them Rudy and his brother Robert.  They spent time in New York City are before Rudy relocated to Chicago.  In 1976, Rudy moved to Los Angeles, where two years later he joined the incomparable Randy Rhoads and Quiet Riot.

Rhoads left Quiet Riot to join Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard of Oz, recommending Rudy as Blizzard’s bassist.  In April 1981, Arzo joined Osbourne’s Blizzard of Ozz Tour.  Rudy recalls: “One day I was sleeping on the floor and the next day I was living in a Beverly Hills mansion with Ozzy.”  Always the student, Sarzo attributes the majority of his music business knowledge to Sharon Osbourne.  Sharon managed the band and was the “mother and father figure” of the group.

Randy Rhoads’ tragic death in an airplane accident led to the group’s release of the Tribute live album, which honored Rhoads’ legacy. Tribute peaked at number six on Billboard 200 chart.

In 1982, Rudy rejoined Quiet Riot.  Their album, Metal Health, was the first heavy metal debut album to reach the number one spot on the Billboard charts, achieving multi-platinum status by selling over six million albums.  Condition Critical, Quiet Riot’s next album, also achieved multi-platinum status, selling three million copies in 1984.

Four years later, Sarzo and fellow Osbourne band member Tommy Aldridge joined Whitesnake, contributing on the band’s multi-platinum album, Slip of the Tongue.

In 2004, Rudy joined former Black Sabbath vocalist, Ronnie James Dio’s namesake group, DIO.  He toured with the group until Dio’s passing in 2010, concurrently performing with Blue Öyster Cult.

Additionally, Sarzo has written a book, Off the Rails: Aboard the Crazy Train in the Blizzard of Ozz.  Amazon describes it as “A fellow musician's interesting insight into the beginning of Ozzy Osbourne s solo career and his relationship with Sharon Osbourne. This exciting biography also clears...misinformation and bogus theories circulating around the late, great, guitar virtuoso Randy Rhoads' life and death.”  His legendary career spanning five decades, Rudy’s collaborations have resulted in the sale of over 35 million copies.

Rudy Sarzo is a devoted family man and humanitarian.  He is an animal rights activist, mentors young musicians, and performs at countless charity events.  Married over thirty years, he regularly visits his parents who still live a few blocks from Miami High.

Rudy Sarzo, legendary music artist, Miami High Class of 1969:

Sting for Life

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