Grover Jackson on Building Randy Rhoads a Guitar, “That is how Jackson Guitars were born”

During a brand new interview with legendary guitar builder Grover Jackson, the once–broke East Tennessee kid turned San Dimas guitar architect retraces how he helped shape the sound and image of ’80s rock and metal from the ground up. In the conversation with Mix Tapes Podcast, he opens up about his early hustle at Charvel, the birth of Jackson Guitars, and the brutally long days that put his instruments into the hands of future icons. Along the way, Jackson shares candid memories of Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, George Lynch, Dimebag Darrell, Chris Holmes, Jake E. Lee and his uniquely informed perspective on Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, offering a rare, behind‑the‑bench view of the people and pressures that defined an era.

An excerpt from the interview have been transcribed (via full in bloom) below. You can listen to the entire interview below or @ this location.

ON RANDY RHOADS:

Grover Jackson: I knew who Randy was. Again, the modesty of the situation is really hard to grasp given the size of the entertainment industry today. But Randy was just a local guy who had been in a band that could not get a record deal, even though Van Halen had done well. They (Quiet Riot) could not get a record deal. And there are some reasons for that which I would have to character‑assassinate somebody to explain, and I will not do that. Let’s just say they had been in every record company in Los Angeles, and nobody would take them.

I think on a whim, Randy went and did the audition with a drunk, drug‑addicted ex‑Black Sabbath singer who became the Prince of Darkness. And that is well documented, even in Sharon’s book. Ozzy was in rough shape. So it was not like he got a big gig, but he got the gig, and off they went to England. They recorded the first record, released it in Europe, it had not been released in the U.S., and Randy came home to spend Christmas with his mom.

On December 23rd of that year, he called out of the blue. I had already turned all the employees at that point loose for Christmas. When I say all of the employees, at that point it was probably 10 or 12 people. I am in the building by myself, and he says, “Hey, do you want me to get a guitar made?” And I said, “Sure. Come on out.” He came out at noon on the 23rd, and we sat there for 12 hours. Finally it was midnight and we said, “Oh shit, we better go.”

I would hasten to say that I just never think of Randy in terms of guitar or guitar playing. I think of him in terms of this guy that was so imminently likable, had none of the bravado and testosterone‑driven stuff that guitar players are prone to be. He did not have any of that. He was just this really warm, nice guy, and I remember my friend. I do not remember the solo in this song or that. I do not know any of that stuff. It was never important to me. It was just this guy that I knew and liked, who was imminently likable.

MIX TAPES PODCAST: So let me ask you this. You spend that 12 hours with him, and you have never really hung out with him or anything before that. He just calls up the shop.

Never met him before.

So then after that, you guys start to develop a friendship, obviously, and then you are talking about building him instruments, and I believe you built him three. Is that correct?

Well, he had a cocktail napkin with him with a sketch, and it is one of those little pieces of memorabilia that has become a holy grail. Nobody knows whatever happened to the cocktail napkin. But it had four lines on it. That was it. In that conversation during the course of the day, as it rambled to guitars, I said, “Okay, well, can we put this kind of a head on it?” He said, “Yeah, that would be great.” I said, “We are going to…” Our success at that point – it is hard to imagine it now – but the success at that point was so tenuous. We had started making a few Charvel guitars, and I thought, “Shit, this weird‑shaped guitar could kill the momentum I have with Charvel.” So I go, “What if we put a different name on it?” And he says, “Sure, let’s do that.” I said, “What do you want to call it?” And he said, “Well, you’re making it. Why don’t we put Jackson on it?” And that is how Jackson Guitars were born, in that conversation that very first day. I made the white one that Sharon paid for. Then he went out and did that first tour and came back after that tour and said people were coming up to him at shows asking if the guitar was a butchered Gibson Flying V. So he wanted something more sharp, fin‑like.

And that is where the second design, the black guitar, came from, which is the current shape of the guitar today. Three of those guitars were made, so there is a total of four: the original white one, which is a different shape, and then three that were the same shape. He got the black one at a dress rehearsal. The dress rehearsals for that tour were done at a soundstage Francis Ford Coppola had bought, part of the old Paramount lot, I think, and had named Zoetrope Studios.

That is where the dress rehearsals for the tour were done, and we took the guitar down to one of those dress rehearsals and gave him the black guitar, with the intention to finish the other two once he approved of the black one. But sadly, what, seven minutes later, he was dead. So the other two laid around, languished, for that year.

We had started to get tremendous excitement about the black one that he had played for 60, 70 days. So in the fall of that year, I went to Mrs. Rhoads and I said, “Look, I am getting a lot of interest in this guitar. I will not make it if you do not want me to, but if you will allow me to, I will…” She had formed an educational fund or something in Randy’s memory, and I said, “If we donate 10 percent of the profits of the guitar to that, will you bless us making the guitar with Randy’s name on it?” And she agreed to it.

So we are now in the late fall of that year, and we need a sample to take to NAMM in January. We take the second one and we finish it in white and take it to the show. That is the guitar that popped up a year or a year and a half ago for sale and was sold to somebody in Hollywood, a kid… Our momentum had gotten volcanic, okay? So we went to that show with that guitar and with a little ten‑by‑twenty booth, and we would have 300, 400 people trying to get into the booth. It was pandemonium. And Joanne, who had now become my wife, comes up to me three or four times during the show and says, “Hey, this kid’s back and he wants to buy the Randy Rhoads guitar.” And I go, “Don’t bother me right now.” Whatever. At the end of the show, she comes and says, “Kid’s back and he’s got cash.” I said, “Take the fucking money.” So she sold the guitar to this kid. We did not even know who he was, do not know what his name is. And about two days later, she said, “You know you sold Randy’s guitar?” And I went, “What?” She said, “Yeah, you told me to sell it. I sold it and got the money.” I said, “Why did you let me do that?” and she said, “You told me to.” So that kid ended up owning that guitar for a number of years. It was a guy working in a music store in Brea, California. The kid comes in and wants to trade the guitar for a guitar and an amp. And the guy in the music store realized what the guitar was, and he traded him a guitar and an amp for the guitar, and he had that guitar for a number of years and ultimately sold it a couple of years ago, whenever that was. So that was number two.

The third one was in my garage for years. The third one was the one that was supposed to be a tremolo, and Floyd Rose did not exist. That guitar was originally made to have a standard Fender‑style tremolo on it. That guitar is in Texas. There is a guy in Texas that has that guitar. He had it completely rebuilt by Mike Shannon. And that guitar, like I say, is in Texas. So that is the four guitars. The Rhoads family has the original white one, or I do not know if it went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, where it is, but the Rhoads family has it or had it. They have the black one that he played. The last two, the one that is in Texas and the white one that is in Hollywood somewhere, Randy never even saw those two guitars. They were shells. They were just wooden parts when Randy passed away, because we were waiting for his approval of the second one. So there is a total of four.

ON SHARON OSBOURNE:

Grover Jackson: Sharon is a woman in a male‑dominated industry, and she is a survivor. She is a person not to be trifled with, okay? And I appreciate the fact that she has had this incredible career and strength. And another thing: in an industry where relationships do not last, she and Ozzy were married for, what, 40 years or something? That was a relationship that survived and worked. That is a hell of an accomplishment. Intelligence. Grit. God bless her. I think the fact that Ozzy was successful – obviously, yes, finding Randy Rhoads is like lightning in a bottle. Sharon drove that train. And Ozzy did need Randy; he did need Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake at the beginning. He definitely needed Zakk when they found Zakk. I am a huge Jake E. Lee fan; I am a big fan of that era, and I think Jake kept Ozzy moving.

And just as sort of a footnote to that, we went around and saw a couple of those dress rehearsals around Christmas of that year. The one uncomfortable moment: my wife Joanne and Mike Eldred – who was my first employee and who went on to run the Fender Custom Shop and has been an important figure in the last 40 years of guitar – were at a dress rehearsal.

We were standing there talking after the dress rehearsal, and Jake Duncan, who is, I think, the only witness of the crash that has never spoken about it – I do not think anybody has ever interviewed Jake – and who was a consummate professional, walked up as we are standing there in Zoetrope Studios to give Randy his stage passes and luggage passes and stuff. And the moment got a little heated. Randy wanted to know when he was going to get paid, and it was uncomfortable to stand there and listen to this because it happened right in front of us.

I carried that memory with me for years, and then I realized the stress that Sharon had been under. She had bet the farm, okay? If that tour did not go well, she was fucked. And I have been in that position in business where the walls start to close in on you and you get tense and maybe not your best characteristics come out, but if it is survival or… you do what you do to survive.

And I think that window right there, when they were getting ready to do that big tour that he passed away on, I think she had bet the farm. They had had enough success with the first record, Blizzard, and the tour that they had an opportunity to do the second record and tour, and it was a big production with the castle and all of that crap. But she was leveraged out the yin‑yang, man.