Rudy Sarzo performs in 2014.(Photo by Jeff Daly/Invision/AP)Jeff Daly/Invision/AP

Rudy Sarzo calls it “being greasy.” Playing hard and heavy rock & roll in a way that still swings. It’s mostly a lost art among modern rock bands. But one of the hallmarks of Sarzo’s bass-guitar playing, which has made him one of the most in-demand rock bassists of his time. Quiet Riot. Ozzy Osbourne. Whitesnake. Dio. Yngwie Malmsteen. Blue Oyster Cult. The Guess Who. And beyond.

In 2022, Sarzo has returned home musically. He’s back with Quiet Riot, a root to the Los Angeles band’s classic days, including 1983 album “Metal Health,” considered the first heavy-metal LP to ever top the Billboard 200 album chart. The band’s kerranging cover of 1973 Slade glam nugget “Cum On Feel The Noize” was a radio and MTV smash.

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Quiet Riot’s success was hard-earned. The band paid their Hollywood dues for years, including a late ‘70s to early ‘80s period when hard-rock/metal was considered completely passe. The blockbuster success of “Metal Health” opened doors for Motley Crue, Ratt and many other L.A. rockers who’d soon become stars during the flamboyant fun ‘80s.

Powered by frontman Kevin DuBrow’s in-your-face vocals and persona, Quiet Riot’s other hits included the “Metal Health” title track and “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” another Slade cover. (Sarzo is quick to point out Chuck Wright played bass on the song “Metal Health” and another song from that album, “Don’t Wanna Let You Go.”)

In addition to Quiet Riot recordings, music videos and a performance at 1983 US Festival, a mega concert that helped metal go mainstream in America, Sarzo turned up in several other high-profile ways that decade. As bassist with Osbourne, Sarzo can be heard on the live albums “Speak of the Devil” from 1982 and 1987′s “Tribute.” The latter, released in honor of guitar genius Randy Rhoads. Rhoads’ classically-influenced metal chops played a huge role in Osbourne becoming a solo superstar, after he’d parted ways with metal progenitors Black Sabbath. Rhoads and Sarzo had been friends and bandmates for years. Both were members of a pre-fame Quiet Riot, before Osbourne shrewdly hired them. Rhoads first, then Sarzo.

Sarzo also can be seen as part of the band in those iconic Whitesnake videos, including “Still of the Night” and “Here I Go Again.” Although he didn’t play on Whitesnake’s breakthrough self-titled 1987 album, in addition to appearing in those hit vids, he played bass on the tour supporting the LP. Sarzo also played on David Coverdale and co.’s hit 1989 follow-up LP “Slip of the Tongue,” as well as that Whitesnake tour, which featured Steve Vai and Adrian Vandenberg on guitar.

If it sounds like Sarzo’s career is book-worthy, well, he’s done that too. The tome “Off the Rails” chronicled his Osbourne experiences, including the tragic 1982 plane crash that killed Rhoads at age 25, extinguishing a generational talent on par with Eddie Van Halen.

Sarzo appears in the new documentary “Randy Rhoads: Reflections of a Guitar Icon.” He’s been in other music docs too, including 2016′s “Hired Gun” and 2014′s “Quiet Riot: Well Now You’re Here, There’s No Way Back.”

With DuDrow, Banali and Rhoads all deceased, Sarzo’s return to Quiet Riot gives rock/ metal fans a glimpse now into what made this band special. QR’s current lineup also boasts singer Jizzy Pearl (known for late ‘80s/early ‘90s cult-faves Love/Hate), longtime guitarist Alex Grossi (also Bang Tango, Steven Adler) and drummer Johnny Kelly (Danzig, Type O Negative).

Before returning to the road with Quiet Riot for a run of shows with Skid Row, Winger and Warrant, Sarzo checked in for a video call from his Los Angeles-area home. He looked fit as a cheetah. In conversation, Sarzo struck a spiritual, passionate tone. Below are edited excerpts.

Rudy, coming back to Quiet Riot and getting ready for this tour, did you have to relearn any of the material? Or is that music just embedded in your DNA?

It’s such a multi-level question. The challenge was actually - and here’s the tricky part - I am not the same bass player. I am not the same musician. I’m not the same human being. It’s kind of like taking a photo 40 years ago and trying to mimic the expression that you have on your face for the rest of your life. No, you don’t. Every time you go into a studio, that’s a snapshot of that moment. And then in my case, 40 years later, you’re playing the same songs again. [Laughs]

I was a member of The Guess Who right before I came back to Quiet Riot and before that I had played with Blue Oyster Cult. Which is not necessarily known as ‘80s metal. I’ve played in so many genres. So all of that is part of my DNA now. Now, if I would’ve been a lifer, meaning a guy that’s only been in one band, that kind of musical path, what happens is you really don’t have as many of those outside influences, musically.

But going back to the energy and physicality involved in what we do (in Quiet Riot), I work out. I get on the treadmill, I work on my cardio and all of that just to be able to sustain a high-level show that 40 years ago you would go out and on tour, get on a tour bus and do it every night. And that was your workout. You didn’t have to go to the gym. So the more shows we do, the more we become that band that people were familiar with from watching us going on tour for months and sometimes a year and a half.

What’s different about Quiet Riot is Quiet Riot was the first band - and I’m going back to 1978 when I first joined with Randy Rhoads in the band - that every single individual, we all had the same musical tastes. We all liked the same bands. We were all influenced by the same bands. And that is a bit different. That’s what really creates a cohesive collective sound, style and a philosophy for the band I like to call a consciousness.

What were those common influences in Quiet Riot back when you originally joined?

The consciousness of Quiet Riot was purely ‘70s-based. whether it was Mott the Hoople or of course Humble Pie. You’ve got Bowie. You’ve got Queen. It was glam rock, which that consciousness wasn’t just Quiet Riot. If you look at Motley Crue, if you look at Ratt, that’s what was going on at that time on the Sunset Strip. Everybody does it a little bit different, but we all basically drank from the same well. Now, there was a Quiet Riot consciousness that started out before I joined the band, and then I joined and it’s like, “Yeah, I’m a perfect fit because we have the same consciousness.”

And so then Randy leaves the band and the band stops being Quiet Riot. It became known as DuBrow, because it was basically Kevin’s solo band. But what happened was back in ‘79, ‘80, which is that DuBrow period leading it up to ‘81, the last time that I was playing with Kevin, because I was a member of DuDrow and living with him right before I joined Ozzy. But in between that, I did other things. One of them was a band with Frankie Banali.

What I’m trying to get at is, that period was very, very tough for heavy rock musicians to survive, because new wave and punk was the flavor of the day. It was even hard to get club gigs. The clubs just wanted to book punk and new wave. And you really had to go out of town in order to play rock music.

But we were diehard. It was like, “No, this is not me.” You’d give it a go because you’ve got to eat, but then it’s like, you know, “I’m not really a new wave artist or a punk artist,” even though I appreciate the music. But you are what you are.

So going back to the whole essence of what Quiet Riot is to me, I am completely 100 percent Quiet Riot. As a matter of fact, every time I joined other bands, I always bring - in the past - a percentage of Quiet Riot with me to it. So to be back in Quiet Riot, my home group, my consciousness, my family, it’s just amazing.

What’s your secret to making heavy music still swing?

I’ll explain it to you the best I can. I’m Cuban. The first music that I was exposed to was Latin music. Latin music is not metronomic. It’s not on the beat. It swings. Especially traditional Latin music, Cuban, Afro Cuban. So for me to play rock, and this is what’s really interesting, I’ve been playing metal wrong or rock & roll wrong, according to the rules of rock & roll, the whole time until I started playing with The Guess Who.

Now, The Guess Who patterned themselves after the sound of The Beatles just like that generation did. All right on the beat. That’s where you get that da-da-da-da, that drive, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4. That is the British sound. Motown doesn’t have that. Motown has syncopation. It’s a whole different thing. R&B has the influence of the blues ‚but then to me it has a lot of Caribbean influence. It’s jazzier. And in jazz there’s a big African influence, especially with Dizzy Gillespie, when he started incorporating percussion.

So taking all these elements, I grew up with all of this and that’s the way that I feel when I play. And now I’ve become more aware of it. Especially at the time that I was playing with The Guess Who because they brought it up. It was the first time that somebody brought that up to me, and I thought, “Wow, this is really interesting.” But then again, it was the first time that I was actually playing in a band that was rooted in that generation. So the basslines are very designed to follow that sound that The Beatles made popular on the radio. That’s the way you had to sound, in order to get on the radio.

Something I’ve always wondered about Randy Rhoads. If you listen to his playing on the first two Quiet Riot albums (released in Japan only), his playing sounds a lot like (David Bowie guitarist) Mick Ronson. But the next time we hear Randy, on the first two Ozzy albums, Randy’s technique has become much more advanced. Was that magic always in his playing and Quiet Riot just wasn’t the right outlet for that style? How did that happen? How did Randy go from that to that?

Well yeah, I even asked Randy about it. Because that was my impression when I first heard the (1980) “Blizzard of Ozz” record. Like, “What happened? What’s going on here?” [Laughs] I used to teach at his family’s (music) school, Musonia, and that’s the first time I ever heard Randy playing classical guitar. I didn’t even know he owned a classical guitar. Because we were very focused when it came to anything having to do with Quiet Riot. It was rehearsals or writing music to bring to the labels to see if we could get a record deal. And at that time, we were basically chasing our tails, by trying to please the record company, taking their advice: You guys should write a song like this one or this one that’s on the Billboard charts. Even though we knew what we liked, we were trying anything possible to break in so we could be ourselves later on.

So Randy went through that. I mean, he had so much deeper musical knowledge and capabilities, because he was schooled. He had a proper musical training - composition and reading and all that – because his family owned a music school. That was natural for him. So when he joined Ozzy, he asked Ozzy, “What do you want me to write?” And Ozzy said, “Just be yourself.” That’s when the real Randy showed up in the studio and started composing all those songs.

With Quiet Riot, Randy was teaching about eight hours a day and then he would come over and rehearse with us for about an hour and then go home and do it again the next day. So there wasn’t room for jamming and experimenting. It was pretty much focused on we’ve got to write a hit song, or something commercial that gets on the radio. And when you start approaching music like that, you’re not going to be digging in too deep. And you’re going to be second guessing a lot and playing it safe also.

As a singer, most people think of Kevin DuBrow as this Steve Marriott-influenced belter. Which he was. But what’s something else more nuanced about Kevin’s vocals you think some people might’ve missed?

You know, that is such a great question. I think Kevin made sure that everybody knew where he was at vocally by putting it on record. So anything you really want to know about Kevin, listen to the music. It’s all there. And he was not shy about it.

Look, I played with three different Kevin DuBrows. I played with Kevin the ringmaster that showcased Randy Rhoads every night on stage. And it makes sense. You’ve got Randy Rhoads is the band, that’s it. It really wasn’t about Kevin. It was the essence of Quiet Riot featuring Randy Rhoads.

OK, so then Randy leaves to join Ozzy. So now Kevin, that’s when he really developed his songwriting and singing-as-a-performer skills, because it was all about Kevin now, as far as his focus. And there was not even a Quiet Riot at the time. It was just DuBrow, with people coming in and out of the band, which is the reason why he named it DuBrow.

And then you have the “Metal Health” version of the band. And that’s very different. Because, again, it becomes a band. So you’ve got Kevin in a rock band, but this time with a number-one album, and that was the tricky part for anybody to survive that. Because there’s no orientation.

Once you sign a record deal, they don’t take your into a room, and give you orientation or play you a video, that tells you like, this is what you need to watch out for. Don’t let this happen to you. [Laughs] And I think they should. I think that the record industry in general did a very poor job in warning musicians about the pitfalls of being a celebrity.

What’s your most vivid memory from Quiet Riot playing the US Festival in 1983? After that festival, metal’s popularity really took off.

Our experience at the US Festival was completely different from any of the other bands that were playing there. The way that we got added on, like, two nights before the show happened was because we were on tour with the Scorpions, who were doing a very short warm-up touring leading up to the US Festival. They had been in the studio, and wanted to get their act together again before they played as one of the co-headliners. It was Van Halen, and then Scorpions right underneath them. So it was a very important slot.

And so the very last show of that tour was in Denver, where Barry Fey was the promoter of that show. He was also in charge of the lineup of the musicians for the US Festival. So they had just moved (former Eagles and James Gang guitarist/singer) Joe Walsh from that day, Metal Day, to the following day. And there was an opening. And (Fey) sees us (in Denver) and comes in running into a dressing room, right as soon as we finish playing. And he says, “Listen guys, I’ve got this show the US Festival in a couple of days, can you guys make it?” And I had no idea what the US festival was. I was too busy touring with Quiet Riot. And even if I did I couldn’t afford to go anyways, at the time.

So we say yes. And we didn’t have a crew. Our crew was driving our truck to the next gig. Back then you didn’t have backline companies in every market that could supply a backline where you come in and play. Back in the day, you had to like take a truck and bring all your stuff from show to show. And you had a couple of guys to drive the truck and be members of the crew, which were usually family or friends at that level. If there was anything S.I.R. (Studio Instrument Rentals) provided in Los Angeles, being the only backline company at the time 40 years ago, everything else was taken by the other (US Festival) bands, because they have booked that backline way in advance. We were just added.

So we scrambled to borrow gear from friends and relatives and so on. And so yeah, we got some gear up on stage. But my bass rig did not work at all, whatsoever. So fortunately, the sound company that was running the show was the same sound company that I worked with when I was touring with Ozzy, which was a few months before that. So they came in and they helped me out, put my bass sound through monitors. And of course, it doesn’t sound like it’s coming out of a bass amp, so that wasn’t like my desirable bass tone. But hey, we survived the gig. We did it. And we flew right back out again.

We didn’t see anybody (other bands play at US Festival). We came in the night before. We did the show the following morning. We were the opening band, so we had to get out and leave our hotel at 10 o’clock because we didn’t have a helicopter. We have to go through the crowd in our van to get there. All of that. No road crew, nothing. Just plug in, play and then get out. Go back out through the crowd to go on the road, for the dates that you have booked. So that was pretty much my memory of that. Outside of that when I watch the video, yeah, it was an amazing opportunity to do that. But there were so many components, so many challenges that we’re facing, just because we were added two days before.

Amazing. The music on the Ozzy Osbourne live album “Tribute” has always been so spellbinding to me. How did it feel making this music every night, being in the middle of it?

Well, I listened to that record, and I know where that music came from. That’s a set that we would do during the “Blizzard of Ozz” tour which ended a I believe in August or September of 1981. Yeah, September. Because the following month, October, we took one day off, and then we went back out on the road again, because “Diary (of a Madman,” Osbourne’s 1981 sophomore album) was already recorded when (drummer) Tommy Aldridge and I joined the band.

There was only maybe two or three degrees of difference in every show. It was always at that level. That could have been any show anywhere, anytime, with Randy in the band. Some people claim that’s Cleveland.

The music is taken from Westwood One or King Biscuit Flower Hour, there were two major broadcasts, radio shows, but they would go out and bring a mobile unit and record the band and then play that syndicated through all the radio stations. So we did three of those with Randy. We did another one with Brad Gillis (Night Ranger guitarist who played in Osbourne’s band after Rhoads’ death) later on. But with Randy, we did three. Only two aired. OK, we do the first one in Cleveland. That was broadcast. Some people claim that’s the recording. If that’s Cleveland, that’s us like two weeks after we have been together. If it’s from Montreal, that did not get a broadcast because Ozzy did not like the way it sounded for whatever reason. And that we recorded that show in Market Square in Indianapolis, which had a theater and an arena. And in the arena (R&B group) The Jacksons were playing that night and we were playing in the theater. And that got recorded and broadcast too. So I’m not really sure. Some people claim that they take the tracks and they put them together in Pro Tools and compare … You know what? I’ve got a life. Let’s just move on and whatever it is, it is.

Well, the music on there sounds magical.

It is magical, even for me to hear it back. Because one thing is being on stage as part of this ensemble, of course you feel it, you hear. You’re part of this. But another thing is, it’s 40 or 41 years later, I’m working out in my little room and I’m listening to this music and then I hear Randy play his solos and I go, “My God he doesn’t miss a note.” Every single note is like starbursts, a creation, like The Big Bang, all the sequence of all these notes. It was amazing. Unbelievable. But I know the next level that Randy went to … Because let’s say if that is Cleveland, well, that’s about a year before he passed away. A year later he was beyond that level.

What did you enjoy most about your time in Whitesnake?

Well, it was interesting because Whitesnake was a support band for Quiet Riot in 1984. So we knew each other, we knew what we were all about and I was a huge fan of Whitesnake. I mean, pretty much the original version of the band is three guys from Deep Purple. You can’t go wrong with that. [Laughs]

So when I joined the band, I just asked David (Coverdale, Whitesnake frontman), “What do you want me to do?” And he just said, “Be yourself.” Within a blues-based rock context, that was pretty much me being Rudy from Quiet Riot. But again it was a whole different energy, different frequency. But still it was me vibrating for me fully and completely.

The “Metal Health” album known for the big hits, the homeruns. What are your favorite deep cuts off that album?

You know, they’re all so close to me, because I would say most of the material with the exception of “Metal Health” and “Don’t Wanna Let You Go,” those songs were brought into Quiet Riot before it was even Quiet Riot, it was still DuBrow, by (post-Rhoads guitarist in Quiet Riot) Carlos Cavazo, from his old band. The original title of “Metal Health” was “No More Booze.” [Sings, to “Metal Health” chorus melody] “No more booze!” And what happened was Randy I, we’re on a break from Ozzy and always as soon as we get to the airport and landed, let’s go get Kevin. Let’s go to the Rainbow and keep him up to date with what’s going on. Because at the time, there was no social media. So things were really slow and gloomy as far as heavy rock in L.A. Meanwhile, this new wave of metal was happening, and we were a part of that with Ozzy. You had Motorhead, you had Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Saxon, all these guys and many more. So it was like let’s go hang with Kevin and give him some support. Because we knew how much he was struggling. So we were basically reporting this was going on. Stick with what you’re doing because eventually something is going to come this way.

And so we told him, “Wow, you’re not gonna believe this. The fans in England are so crazy, that they go to the front of the stage, and they bang their heads on the stage.” They did. And so we were telling Kevin about that. Because a lot of punk made a transition into metal. There was a gray line of punk and metal going on. And so a lot of the punk, everything with the music was so fast, the speed of it. So, these guys used to take like “uppers” and go out to a concert and just be kids, I guess. And you know how it is when kids are just challenging each other, taking one to the next level. “OK, well then I’m going to bang my head on the stage and show you something cooler.” And then moshing came out of that later. But it was getting that energy out. So we’re telling Kevin about headbanging and then I guess he heard the song “No More Booze,” and he wasn’t much of a drinker back then. At all. So I guess he couldn’t connect with the booze thing, so he came up with (the “Metal Health” lyrics) “bang your head.”Anyway, so going back to those two songs – and then you have “Cum On Feel The Noize” being a Slade cover – everything else was from the DuBrow period or one song that made it from the Randy Rhoads era, which Kevin wrote, “Slick Black Cadillac.”

“Slick Black Cadillac,” that’s a good one.

Yeah! So I was very, very familiar with the music. And each song basically has a story, like say (the song), “Love’s a Bitch.” I’m living with Kevin, and he’s got this chord pattern, and just like we would do, he would ask me, “What do you think?” And I said, “Yeah, try [sings] ‘Love’s a bitch.’” I just go about my business. He writes a whole song around that and then we started playing that song during DuBrow, that was one of the songs that we played.

That (“Metal Health”) record for me came together really quickly. I went in to record one song, “Thunderbird,” Kevin wrote that song when Randy left to join Ozzy, and I had played that song in DuBrow. I had my bassline to that song and that’s what you hear on the record. So they go, “Wow, we’ve got time on the session here. Do you remember ‘Slick Black Cadillac’?” And I go over it a couple of times, and this time with Frankie playing drums, which I have been playing with him for 10 years prior to that! We came to L.A. together, so it was very familiar ,musically, rhythm section, all of that it, so it came together pretty quick. And by the time that I left that session, I had recorded at least four songs.

I was still a member of Ozzy when I did that. I left the next day. I went to New York to start working on “Speak of the Devil.” Then I came back (to Quiet Riot), when I officially joined the band and left Ozzy, I recorded about three more songs, one of them being “Cum On Feel The Noize.” And I believe “Breathless” was another one.

On this 2022 Quiet Riot tour, your back with the band doing these classic songs. What do you hope the people who come to these shows get from them?

That’s an interesting perception. Because for me, is not what they get, is what I’m capable of giving. Because they’re not gonna get anything unless we give as a band, we present something for them. And my mission, when I go on stage, or even when we have the conversation like this, is to actually celebrate the memory of Frankie Banali, Kevin DuBrow and Randy Rhoads. And to celebrate the musical legacy of Quiet Riot, what we were able to accomplish and touch people’s lives with our music and how they touched us. You know, it’s all collective. You can’t have the success Quiet Riot has experienced without a loving audience. We love the audience, the audience loves us back, which to me is the ultimate experience of being in a band. And you’ve really got to appreciate it and realize the blessing that it is to be able to do this, for so many reasons.

Quiet Riot will perform May 21 at Sand Mountain Amphitheater, address 700 S.M.P.A. Blvd. in Albertville, with Skid Row and Winger also on the bill. Showtime is 7 p.m. Tickets start at $40 plus fees via etix.com. Get a 50 percent discount by using the code “LIVE.” More info at quietriot.band and sandmountainamphitheater.com.

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