Drummer Randy Castillo Recalls His Days Of Yore With Ozzy And His New Gig In Motley Crue 

"There I was, with a cast up to my knee and my leg up in the air," Randy Castillo remembers, "and I get this call at four in the morning." It was Tommy Lee and Ratt's Bobby Blotzer, calling Randy from an L.A. party in 1985. "There's somebody here who wants to talk to you," they told Randy.

It was Ozzy, who had told Tommy and Bobby he couldn't find a drummer he liked. Tommy told Ozzy, "Hey, I know the guy," and made the phone call. But Randy, who was living in Albuquerque at the time, had been learning how to ski. "It was only the second or third time I'd gone skiing in my life, and I crashed and burned!" he winces. Randy had broken his right leg, his bass drum leg.

Ozzy told Randy, "Tommy says you're a happenin' drummer, and I'd like to check you out." Randy answered, "That's great, but one thing. I got a broken leg!" To which Ozzy answered, "I'm fuckin' cursed!" But he also told Randy, "I at least want to meet you." So Randy flew to L.A. the next day, crutches, cast and all. He recalls, "The top L.A. drummers are all standing there, and I get out of the car with my broken leg and crutches! They're shaking their heads, 'No problem, he's got a broken leg!'

"I was escorted right into the room, and I met Ozzy right away. I actually tried to play, but I couldn't hit the bass drum at all. My foot was turning purple and felt like it was going to explode! But I hit it off with Ozzy. He said, 'Too bad, I need a drummer right away.' I said, 'If anything comes up in the future, let me know.' " But it just didn't happen for Randy and Ozzy right then. 

Yet the seeds had been planted. Randy had actually met Motley the year before, when he had just finished doing a record with Lita Ford called Dancing on the Edge. Lita and Nikki Sixx were a couple then. Lita's band was touring around the country and playing a gig in the L.A. area. Nikki and Tommy came out to the show. "I'd seen Motley play before, but that's when I first met them," says Randy. "Tommy and I had kind of a mutual admiration society going. He liked my playing, and I liked his. We were both show-off drummers, flashy." After that, Tommy, Vince and Randy would hang out together once in a while. And since Motley had been out with Ozzy on the Bark at the Moon tour and gotten to be close friends with him, when Ozzy was looking for a drummer, he took Tommy's word for it when Tommy said, "Hey, I know the guy."

But with Randy being injured, "at first, Ozzy's drummer was Jimmy DeGrasso, and he was around for about a month," Randy remembers. "Then they brought out Fred Coury. By this time, Ozzy was back in England. Fred was there for a little over a month or so, then he ended up in Cinderella. So I'm back in New Mexico, the cast is off, and I'm doing fine. The phone rings, and it's Ozzy again. He says, 'How's the leg?' I say, 'It's great,' and he says, 'Come out tomorrow. There'll be a ticket for you.' " So Randy made plans to join Ozzy in Scotland. "But the funny thing is, when it rains it pours," Randy laughs. "Later that day, I got a call from Steve Vai asking me to join David Lee Roth and also from David Coverdale asking me if I would be interested in joining Whitesnake! I'm thinking, 'What the hell's going on here, man?!' I went to Scotland, and that was the beginning of the Ozzy gig. I was with him up until 1992, when he did the 'retirement' thing." 
 

"It's funny. Tommy had called me about the Ozzy gig, and it was Ozzy and Sharon who called me about the Motley gig."

When that stint ended, Randy started Red Square Black, which he calls "kind of an industrial, Limp Bizkit, Korn-type band." Red Square Black made an album on the Zoo label, "a great record," Randy says, "but it kind of got lost" during the label's restructuring. Red Square Black's guitar player was Johnny 5, now with Marilyn Manson. After Red Square Black's break-up, Randy did the Ozzmosis tour with Ozzy in 1995, after Joe Holmes came into the fold. But after about a year, they went their separate ways. "The chemistry just wasn't there the way it was with me, Zakk Wylde and Mike Inez," Randy explains. "It didn't feel like a band anymore. It was hired guns." 

Randy has been left with some incredible memories of his Ozzy days, like of the Moscow Music Peace Festival, when Motley, Bon Jovi, Scorpions, Skid Row, Cinderella and Jason Bonham were all taking the same plane to Russia. "We flew to New York, then to London and Moscow," Randy recalls. "We're at the airport in New York, and there's a bomb threat! They had to go through the whole plane from top to bottom. Meanwhile, word got out that there'd be no alcohol on the plane. So everybody bolted for the duty-free shop! Everybody bought WAY more than they could use, just in case. Jason bought a bottle of Jack and a bottle of Stoli, and so did I. Needless to say, when we got back on the plane after two hours, it turned into a massive free-for-all party! It was a blast, and we had a great time." He recalls, "We got taken to the KGB headquarters and all over Moscow, all for a couple of packs of Marlboros. They're really valuable over there. And the actual gig was amazing. We played two days, and there were 100,000 people each day. There were a billion people who watched it on TV worldwide." 

Randy says that Ozzy's like a kid who's always ready to try something new. "He's the biggest practical joker of all time," Randy insists. "He's the stink bomb king, and he's never without them. He'll wing 'em onstage when other bands are playing. Everyone's looking around saying, 'What the hell is that smell?' And there's Ozzy jumping around, laughing like crazy!"

When Randy finally hooked up with Motley, the tables turned. "It's funny," says Randy. "Tommy had called me about the Ozzy gig, and it was Ozzy and Sharon who called me about the Motley gig. This was on May 3rd of 1999, my mom's birthday. They said, 'Hey, Randy, here's Nikki's number. Call him.' I had never talked to Nikki much before that, since I was mainly friends with Tommy and Vince. I called Nikki and we ended up on the phone for an hour, shooting the breeze about everything from what kind of music we're into, to giving me the whole lowdown on the band. At the end of the conversation, he said, 'As far as I'm concerned, you're the guy.' I said, 'Don't you even want to see me play?' And he said, 'I've seen you play many times. I KNOW you can play your ass off!' He said, 'Let me talk to Vince and Mick about it,' and called me back 10 minutes later. He said, 'Dude, you want the gig, it's yours.' I hung up the phone, put on my tennis shoes and took off running! We had six weeks to start the last leg of the Maximum Rock tour with the Scorpions, and we toured all over the States and Japan." 

So how's it different playing with Motley than with Ozzy? "The girls!" Randy laughs. "There's a lot more women at Motley shows, a major visible difference. The percentage of women goes up 25 to 50 percent!"

And artistically? "It's every bit as physical. It's two different types of the same heavy music. I get just as much of a workout with Motley as I do with Ozzy, maybe even more so, because there's a lot more fast music with Motley."
 

"(Ozzy) is the biggest practical joker of all time. He's the stink bomb king, and he's never without them. He'll wing 'em onstage when other bands are playing. Everyone's looking around saying, 'What the hell is that smell?' And there's Ozzy jumping around, laughing like crazy!"

Randy says that when he took the stage with Motley for the first time, he just had to pinch himself. "I can't believe I'm here with Motley, one of my favorite bands in the world," he said to himself on that fateful day. "Wow, this is too cool!" 

"With Motley, I'm in a BAND again," Randy emphasizes. "It's what I've always wanted. The sideman thing is fine and dandy; it's good to have the work. But to be in a band, there's nothing like it. It's like being in a gang, and we got our own little gang going."

After Randy's first tour with Motley was over, "we walked right in the studio," he says. "Within five days, we came out with five new songs." Randy is no stranger to songwriting, as the co-writer of such Ozzy classics as "No More Tears" and the Grammy-winning "I Don't Want To Change The World," among other songs. Randy also worked on a new song off the new record, called "Time Bomb," which was available here at KNAC.COM as an exclusive download. The album is called New Tattoo and will be released June 20 on Motley Crue/Beyond Records. And once Motley's album is out, "we're gonna go out and conquer the world!" Randy promises. "That's the plan. What else is there?"