He reached his peak as the guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne's solo career, performing on tracks including "Crazy Train" and "Mr. Crowley" on the Blizzard of Ozz album.

He helped popularize various guitar techniques now common in heavy metal music, including two-handed tapping, vibrato bar dive bombs, and intricate scale patterns, drawing comparisons to his contemporary Eddie Van Halen.

"[8] Rhoads taught Garni how to play bass guitar, and together they formed a band called The Whore, rehearsing during the day at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, a 1970s Hollywood nightspot.

[9] Rhoads' brother states that a July 11, 1971, Alice Cooper concert at the Long Beach Auditorium that the pair attended was a defining point in the guitarist's life.

[13] Rhoads initially told Quiet Riot bandmate Rudy Sarzo that he was not really interested in auditioning, but finally agreed to go simply to get Strum off his back.

After the audition, Rhoads returned to Musonia and told Sarzo that he had never actually met Osbourne, who was drunk and remained in the studio's control room the entire time.

[14] In the years following, Osbourne has maintained that his first encounter with Rhoads and the subsequent audition took place the following day at the hotel, and it seems that, in his inebriated state, he combined the two events in his mind.

"[3] Upon returning to England, Osbourne was introduced in a pub to former Rainbow bassist Bob Daisley by a Jet Records employee named Arthur Sharpe,[16] and the pair hit it off and decided to work together.

[16] Rhoads flew to England only to return home a couple of days later, being turned away by English customs at Heathrow Airport when he didn't have the necessary work permit.

A representative from Jet Records was dispatched to clear the matter up but he never arrived, and Rhoads spent the night in a holding cell before being handcuffed and put on a plane back to the United States the next day.

"[3] AllMusic reviewer Steve Huey described Crazy Train's main guitar riff as "a classic, making use of the full minor scale in a way not seen since Ritchie Blackmore's heyday with Deep Purple.

For the US tour, ex-Black Oak Arkansas drummer Tommy Aldridge and bassist Rudy Sarzo – who had been Rhoads' bandmate in Quiet Riot – were hired.

[26] Around this time, Rhoads remarked to Osbourne, bandmates Aldridge and Sarzo, and friend Kelly Garni that he was considering leaving rock for a few years to earn a degree in classical guitar at UCLA.

Though he had a good relationship with Osbourne, the vocalist's constant drug and alcohol abuse made day-to-day life on tour difficult for the members of his band.

As the Diary of a Madman US tour progressed, Osbourne would often refuse to perform due to the lingering after-effects of the previous night's excesses, and only Sharon could talk him into taking the stage.

The proposed live album was scrapped upon the guitarist's sudden death weeks later, though the plan was quickly resurrected with the release of Speak of the Devil in November of that year.

"[29] After driving much of the night, the bus stopped at Flying Baron Estates in Leesburg, Florida, to fix a malfunctioning air conditioning unit while Osbourne remained asleep.

[33]Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake, who had recorded Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman with Rhoads and had been recently fired from Osbourne's band, were together in Houston, Texas, with Uriah Heep later that day when they got word of the accident.

[14] When close friend and future Quiet Riot drummer Frankie Banali heard the news, he quickly got in touch with Rudy Sarzo to make sure he was all right.

[14] When fellow guitarist Eddie Van Halen learned about the crash he sensed immediately that the pilot "had to have been fucked up when it happened," saying in an early 1982 radio interview, "You don't fly that low and smash into a crew bus and then hit the house.

According to witnesses, Wanda emerged from inside the bus shortly after the second flight took off and was standing in the doorway watching the plane as Aycock made his final approach.

Don Airey and Sarzo both surmise that Aycock, having suddenly seen his estranged ex-wife appear, may have intentionally made the impulsive decision to kill her by crashing the plane into the bus.

Given the struggle in the cockpit, Sarzo theorized that Rhoads' actions in the last seconds of his life prevented a direct hit with the bus, which potentially could have killed the pilot's ex-wife and everyone else on board.

He told Osbourne bandmate and close friend Rudy Sarzo that he and Sharon Arden were having a few celebratory drinks together in a hotel one night and ended up sleeping together.

[40][d] Shortly before leaving Quiet Riot in 1979, Rhoads presented hand-drawn pictures of a polka-dot Flying V-style guitar to Karl Sandoval, a California luthier.

"[43][44][45] His effects pedals included: In December 2019, Ozzy Osbourne offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of several pieces of equipment, most of it once belonging to Rhoads, stolen from the premises of Musonia music school on the night of November 28, 2019.

Rhoads's biggest influences as a guitarist were Leslie West, Ritchie Blackmore, Michael Schenker, Gary Moore, Charlie Christian, and John Williams.

[17] In the years since his death Rhoads' work has been very influential within genres such as neoclassical metal, highly regarded by such players as Dimebag Darrell of Pantera,[52] John Petrucci of Dream Theater,[53] Zakk Wylde,[54] Michael Romeo,[55] Alexi Laiho,[56] Mick Thomson of Slipknot,[57] Paul Gilbert of Mr. Big,[58] Buckethead,[59] Michael Angelo Batio,[60] Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine,[51] Mike McCready of Pearl Jam[61] and Ray Toro of My Chemical Romance.

[37] J. D. Considine of Rolling Stone Magazine was critical of his playing, referring to Rhoads in his review of Diary Of A Madman as "a junior-league Eddie Van Halen – bustling with chops but somewhat short on imagination".

In June 2012, Velocity Publishing Group announced a comprehensive Rhoads biography, written by Steven Rosen and Andrew Klein, and containing over 400 pages of material.