What is most striking about this book—once past the fact that it's a huge hardcover coffee-table book about Randy freakin' Rhoads—is the pictures. They show an innocent California and an innocent young man who had no idea he was about to take the metal world by storm with his guitar work. I've been accused of fetishizing both California and the '70s to a bit of an extreme, so maybe it's just me, but these are some powerful pictures. And there's approximately a zillion of them in this book, every page a delight of photos to look over as we watch Rhoads go from hapless quiet guitar guy to Ozzy freakin' Osbourne's guitar guy in a shockingly fast fashion. Unfortunately, design-wise, the book is a bit of a train wreck, to say the least. While the myriad fonts and design styles are fun to look through, they become a headache soon enough; some consistency would be nice. And the editing could have been a bit tighter: the intros felt like they went on forever and all said the same things, in the same words, and the verbatim interviews through the book are painful to read, although the insights, once found, are fun and interesting. So, basically, what this comes down to, again, is the pictures. They tell the story, and it's a story of a time, of an era, and of a life, and what a good time, era, and life it was indeed. This is one cool coffee-table book, definitely worth adding to the collection.
