Gibson spoke with Randy Rhoads' brother Kelly and sister Kathy about their legendary brother to celebrate the release of a new Randy Rhoads Les Paul Custom. Here is a small excerpt from that exchange where Kelly discusses the formation of Quiet Riot:Kelly: Well there were a lot of bands before Quiet Riot if truth be told.... There was a band called the Katzenjammer Kids. They had a band called The Horror, and my brother had the tallest platform shoes I had ever seen in my life. It looked like he was half leg and half stilts. That was a very significant band, very glittered out, very glam, because that was the first band where Randy played in Hollywood. He actually got into Rodney Bingenheimer, who is a ridiculous local figure [L.A. disc jockey]. He got in and was playing at Rodney's English disco club in that band. There was also a band he was in for a short while called Mildred Pierce. So you've got three bands, actually almost four bands, and a lot of different experiments before he actually formed Quiet Riot. Randy formed Quiet Riot. He didn't come up with the idea for the name, but he did start the band that became Quiet Riot, and he did pick the people that were in it.
Gibson: Do you know what sort of the process he used to pull guys in? I assume that Kelly Garni was playing bass, right? Kelly: Kelly was kind of like my brother's sidekick, and with all those bands I just named, the two people that were the common denominator were Kelly and Randy. The rest of the people, the drummers and the singers, were on a rotating scale. So Randy and Kelly auditioned Kevin [DuBrow] right in my mom's dining room, while my mom was in the kitchen. So he came to the house and Drew, the drummer in the band, he was like a stage drummer, like a jazz drummer at Burbank High, which is one of the high schools here in our town. My brother knew of him and they asked him to join the band. That's where all the members came from. - Read the full interview here
