Ozzy is offering a $25,000 reward for the return of Randy Rhoads’ guitar

Ozzy Osbourne has offered a $25,000 reward for the return of Randy Rhoads’ first guitar, a 1960s Harmony Rocket, alongside other musical instruments owned by Rhoads and his family. Rhoads and Ozzy began working together in 1979, just three years before Rhoads’ death in 1982.

On Thanksgiving night (28 November) the Musonia School of Music, a school run by Randy Rhoads’ late mother Delores, was robbed. Rhoads also taught guitar at the school early in his career. It became, as Ozzy notes in his Facebook post about the theft, a place of pilgrimage for fans hence the stolen items include, alongside the Harmony Guitar and two amplifier heads, 40 years of fan gifts to the Rhoads family. One of the heads is a prototype of a Randy Rhoads signature Marshall head, given to the family by the Marshall Company. The other is the Peavey head that Rhoads used in the band Quiet Riot.

In the statement below, Ozzy details the reward and the stolen items, and outlines his heartbreak at the theft, saying: “as you can imagine, the items that were stolen, including Randy’s first electric guitar, are irreplaceable to the Rhoads Family. I am heartbroken that these treasured physical memories of Randy and Delores have been taken from the family.”

The news comes after the announcement of Ozzy’s 2020 tour with Marilyn Manson, as well as his first solo album in a decade, Ordinary Man, the latest single from which features a lead guitar appearance from Slash.

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