Craig Goldy Talks Pre-Ozzy Jake E. Lee, "Wasn't a damn thing Eddie Van Halen could throw at him" 

I remember the Bark at the Moon tour. Jake didn’t try to replicate Randy, he brought his own unique style, and it blew me away how good he was.

Jake has ridiculous ability!!! Unforgettable playing & creativity on those 2 Ozzy albums!!! Then, the Badlands albums showed him to be more than a great metal player! Glad that I was able to hear what he brings to the table… One of the most UNDERRATED musicians! Sounds that bring me joy!!!

Craig is a very humble guy. Awesome dude.

Jake E Lee is my all time favorite player. Serious chops on ultimate sin, and Badlands was so good 🎸🤘

Craig Goldy is an amazing player. Loved him in Dio.

@full in bloom Thank you Adam! What a nice surprise to see this when I just got home! Thank you for being so cool and so supportive, encouraging and inspiring!! It means more than you know!

Craig Goldy is an amazing person and extremely kind!He gave me a shot and worked with me for a couple of years or more teaching me guitar and recording ,and how to find your own style and sound! I moved out from Colorado straight to his apartment in North Hollywood until we found me a place on my own.He helped me big time and am forever grateful for him! Little Brother on guitar Tone Raven-We Are The Black Things(Hollywood)

Guitar is not-a-competition. There is No Best (period). I can equally appreciate the speed of Guthrie Govan, the acoustic mastery of Tommy Emmanuel or the "tasty" crafted solo's & epic-tone of David Gilmour. Eddie created masterful guitar-parts and was a phenomenal songwriter & rhythm player-too.

Craig is easily one of the best guitarists of the 80's scene. Just check out Dream Evil, Master of The Moon, Magica etc from Dio. Tasty leads and killer riffs!

I've been a big Rough Cutt fan since the beginning, before i knew of the Dio connection or the Goldy connection. I haven't been able to find any audio or video of Craig with Rough Cutt. This interview is pure gold!Craig is such a phenomenal player and genuinely decent, good guy. He doesn't deserve the crap that people that can't get over Vivian leaving say about him. Just like Jake didn't deserve the slagging he got coming in after Randy. Can you imagine having to step into a band after Randy or Vivian? They both slayed it!

Somebody gave me Craig's phone number...told me to look him up if I ever was going to Ca...I called and the dude answered!! Gave me a few pointers about the music scene in Ca. Made it out there in 84 and released a record in 85...dream come true

Wow Great stuff, really brings back memories for this 66 year old man. I was 20 in 1977 living in Chula Vista Ca and played drums in a rock cover band with some high school buds called Fökker..I had heard people talk about Jake, he was Jake Williams then. In 78-79 My guitarist told me we have to go see Teaser, they were playing at a keg party. It was packed but we jammed our way up front, Van Halens debut was out and there were tons of guys crammed in up front, I assumed they were guitarists because at the time it was hard for those guys to get what Eddie was doing and the word was Jake was covering Van Halen and i guess it was an opportunity to see the techniques in person They were a great band, did a lot of VH and Tommy Bolin, they actually opened with Stiff Competition by Cheap Trick. The next year we opened for Mickey Ratt at Straita Head Sound. Jake was actually doing stage tech, he mic’d up my drums and got all the guitar and vocal mics set up

I saw Ratt at the Roxy in 1981 and Jake E Lee was playing in Ratt . He stepped on my hand when I tried to take a Ratt Frisbee off the stage! Jake also did a demo with my old singer for my band Trick Or Treat. That was about 99 ,2000 . Trick Or Treat was in 87. Anyway, Jake was definitely in Ratt! I saw Micky Ratt play at the Golden State motor hotel in about 80,maybe 81,I was still in high school. That is a lotvof info,but I was there ,my guitar teacher was Randy Rhoads, so I was in the scene early and probably a little young.

Jake is absolutely the most underrated guitar player of the era! Definitely the top three of my favorite guitar players of all time!

I used to go there and I saw Teaser and Jake play. I was a young aspiring drummer and all the drummers were great but....... I used to stand on Jake's side of the stage the whole night and watch him. He was incredible !

Jake E Lee took Ozzy to another level. Guy is prob the most underrated metal guitarist. Absolutely phenomenal 🎸🎸🎸🎸

Jake was, without question, Ozzy's deadliest gunslinger. Gotta check out the vid ALL SOLOS FROM BARK AT THE MOON. That kid playing his stuff is a complete prodigy. His technique and tone are spot on. I've been playing hair guitar since 1985 and this kid's fretboard acrobatics is mind blowing. For Jake to come up with that is just so beyond my comprehension and capabilities. Gotta check him out. He did Randy's albums, too. Every song. Perfect. Maciej Stalmach is his name. Killer player.

Eddie Van Halen , often imitated , but never duplicated . That’s why all these guitarists covered Van Halen songs .. All of us guitarists are always fans of his .

The thing that always struck me about EVH was his brilliant rhythm playing and songwriting. For me, he always stood out because of that.

I loved Craig’s playing in Stars. I got it on VHS as a kid and his playing blew me away. All of those guitar players were awesome but Craig’s parts were cool. You really made him laugh with that last question!!!! 😂

I wore out my Sacred Heart Live VHS tape out, back in the day. My parents actually had enough equipment at the house to record the audio off it onto cassette, too. Craig's playing is hypnotic on that recording.

Jake is amazing for sure!

Jake is phenomenal... His riffs and leads, no whammy bars.. still rip today.. I appreciate whoever can take the language of music, and make it personal.

one of the nicest guys in the industry.very humble and kind,and a monster player

Craig's such a great player, and he always comes off like the nicest, most level-headed guy.

Craig sounds like the most humble guitarist ever.

Dream Evil is a KILLER Dio record.

Jake said him and Warren DiMartini were competing with each other to see who could write a song or solo with the widest stretch on the fretboard, that's why there's all those impossible to play riffs on Bark At The Moon

There was a ton of anticipation when Jake came out on the BATM tour w/Ozzy. He blew doors. Nobody moved like him on stage. Phenomenal no-BS gunslinger. It wasn’t an ego trip, he was serving something higher and it showed. 😎🤟🏽

Best channel on youtube. I love these segments with Goldy. That dude worked SOO HARD! He seems humble in every segment. Stars - floored me as a kid! The new Jackson Guitars ad with Marty Friedman is an homage to that video.

Jake's a beast My Favorite Ozzy solo player IMHO...NO disrespect 2 Randy!

i first heard Jake on the ultimate sin back in the day when i was a kid and i was just blown the fuck away. To this day IMO Jake is easily Ozzys greatest guitarist and one of my all time fave guitarists hes just friggin incredible.

I have to admit, I wasn't a fan of Craig Goldie as a teenager, only because he replaced Vivian Campbell. Now the 57-year-old me realizes he's an incredible guitar player and a really good guy......

Man, what a killer nice guy Craig Goldy is!

I can’t tell you how many times I saw Rough Cutt and Y&T open for headlining arena bands, And I saw Craig Goldie with Dio.

Thank you for keeping these wonderful stories alive.. I miss the 80's sound.

San Diego was so much fun in the 80's, I was one of the long hairs in the high school parking lot and the beach, Wind and Sea in La Jolla, Pacific Beach, just chillin'. Metal was so alive back then.

What a cool, humble and down to earth guy, Craig is.

i don't know Goldy that much musically...but i absolute respect his honesty ,no Ego at all .. now i wanna listen to his stuff

Jake is an amazing guitar player. I've met him a few times, he's a super nice guy and very humble too. I hope he makes new music soon.

I wasn't expecting the interview to be that good.

Craig is always a pleasure listen to, playing wise and being interviewed.

Craig is being very humble in making comparisons between Jake, George and himself. The fact of the matter is from day one, Craig has always been a powerhouse and absolutely belongs among the circle of great players. He won't say it but his accomplishments say it for him. There, I said it... Cheers brother, J

👍👍 loved that interview.

Goldie is a beast, truly underrated.

I loved this interview! Goldy talking about the Hear'n Aid - Stars recording was such a fantastic time for bringing together all the artists that shaped the early/mid 80's. Even hearing Zack W. talking about the 80's guitar sound, its all about EVH, Jake and George Lynch. Didnt even know that Craig was in Rough Cut - what a cool dude!!

Loved all Craig's solos in Dream Evil

After a Red Dragon Cartel show in Houston, I personally told Jake that he and Eddie were my favorite SoCAL guitarists, full stop. I take Greg Chaisson's word for it to, when he said the greatest improv jam he ever saw was when Jake was in Rough Cutt, for a show where it was Jake and whoever the Rough Cutt drummer was at that time. Jake himself said he was in Ratt in LA briefly, after they dropped the Mickey

Goldy’s laugh at the end is hilarious 🤣

Damn I love your interviews. You are a fan of the music and it shows. Giuffria, I haven't heard that name since 1984 when I owned the cassette.

buck dharma s solo on stars was super melodic and a stand out from the pack

Teaser i imagine after Tommy Bolin album

great interview here. thanks

Great interview, man!

Saw Craig play twice with Budgie. Amazing player.

That last question was gold!!! Great interviewer!

What a great interview. I'm right there with you when you say that you're interested in the timelines of how these bands developed. There's so much history there that needs to be preserved. Please keep up the great work!

Jake does a stellar impersonation of EVH

Craig was always my favorite guitarist in the Dio band. Its like Vivian who? Seemed to know exactly ( more or less lol ) what Ronnie wanted and played exactly that. Team player all the way. Awesome to hear his take on Jake. Randy gets all the accolades but Jake was Ozzy's best guitarist. The first Badlands lp is the finest rock/metal lp of the 80s. Just a fret or two above the first Blue Murder lp.

Dream Evil is my favorite Dio album

i saw craig with dio, he was fantastic. very fluid and smooth. kinda pretty leads like steve morse.

Yes I was there in San Diego in the late 70's watching Teaser with Jake E. Lee and I was blown away by Jakes playing of Van Halen and everything about his playing! Was amazing! And Opening up for him, when I saw Teaser, was Randy Hansen(way before Hendrix tribute band) and Randy was shredding some Van Halen too and I can still remember him playing "In A Simple Rhyme" and ripping on it and nailed the solo. Amazing times back then! Aslo regular saw Rough Cutt, Mickey Ratt(Ratt before Ratt), Sarge(?), and some awesome band(named Warrior?) with a guitarist named Tommy Asakawa who was a shredder and tasteful guitarist. I forget the band Warren De Martini was in but I still remember seeing his band at some club for 18 year olds(but they didn't id anyone so wtf lmao) and Warren was absolutely killing it on guitar and everyone in San Diego was talking about this 16 year old kid(heck I was only 17 at the time lol). For now that's what I can remember but I'm sure more will come back to me...maybe 😂😂

Jake is my favorite player of all time and a huge influence on my playing.

Thanks for the great history. This channel is the best

Great interview !!

Love Goldie. So underrated. So humble. Great guy!

Jake was unstoppable. He had it all

Yet another great interview, gave a few insights on Rough Cutt & Project:Driver too. This channel is awesome, keep up the great work brother!

Jake is mindblowing. Still knocks me out today.

He still is one of the best. Such a nice dude too. Been fortunate enough to work with him a couple of times.

Jake was very unique in his own way with his chord voicing, his vibrato. He sounds like he even has a whammy bar without having a whammy bar.

Craig Goldy is under-rated and under appreciated. Great songwriter and amazing player. Time To Burn from Dio is such a great example. Seems like a cool guy. I would love to shake his hand and say hello

proud to be for San Diego. These players are all about 10 years older than me...but so cool to know they are were here in my hometown which back then seemed much smaller...Matt Cameron and Eddie Vedder, Dave Mustaine, Tom Waits...we've got some pretty cool people who grew up here. I saw Craig with Dio 2 times and he was GREAT!!

I remember hearing Dream Evil for the first time and thinking damn it, this is the guitar tone i have been chasing but never came close to catching! Love his playing on that record!

Used to go to Naval Training Center San Diego to see RC when they played at the Crows Nest. The big show was when Dio showed up and did a few tunes with them. Good times.

Only guy I ever heard play Ritchie Blackmore note for note.

Craig is a seriously underrated guitarist and I think he wasn't taken too seriously because of his time in Giuffria.

JAke was heavily underrated. He was blowing away VH in donington 1984, to me he shines when he is playing live and can play freely as Ozzy restricted him on the albums. He has some great rhythms. He even did great things with Badlands.

Lee is badass but so is Goldy!

great stuff as always....await your Jake e lee interview!

Thank you so much for posting this interview. Craig is one of the biggest sweethearts of the metal scene. We were very fortunate to be able to chat with him after the Dio / Doro / Malmsteen show in a 4000 capacity club and he made a real life-long impression. In this day and age, it might sound strange to say, but we need to get back to being more human. Craig was open with us when we started talking about beliefs and motivations. That takes a real man to be that vulnerable, warm and embracing. You can't fake that, and we'll never forget the conversation. The show in and of itself was a mind bender and a half. Talk about a killer bill. It was mind blowing how short Doro was when she went walking through the lobby while everyone was chatting. Not sure who was taller, her or Ronnie, but you definitely would not want to cross the metal queen in a back alley. lol She was awesome. A true lady. It was so crazy at the time how all of these heavy metal heroes were so kind, gentle, warm, appreciative and we could tell geniunely cared about us fans. It was truly one of the things that made the whole 80s/early 90s metal scenes such a special time. It was really awesome to hear Craig talk about the Hear N Aid sessions. Have told so many people through the decades to check out that tape. It's like an encyclopedia how-to on every guitar trick you didn't know you needed to learn but never knew existed. Always told people Craig's playing was like a computer simulation expanding then imploding into itself. Absolutely amazing. It is really cool too to also hear him comment on G Lynch's playing. Here we thought we were the only ones that all these years later, we still cannot figure out what George did with that nose dive that made the entire crew in the booth start cheering and wooping it up. To hear a legend like Craig say it sent him back to the shed is truly heartwarming. Have to say, though, at the risk of some donkey rears making some butt ugly troll comments, have said since that show, Malmsteen was so d@#n good, even after seeing hundreds of performances from A LOT of legends, STILL cannot figure out how that guy was able to keep things going with how many times he whirled that guitar around his waist, across his back and flying around his neck back to playing position without skipping a beat. The interview with Beato that surfaced online recently with Yngwie is truly another heartwarmer. We are all really blessed Craig and these guys are out talking to folks like this interview and keeping the dream alive. With gas prices, the wars, inflation, etc. everything going on, some of us are hoping for another party scene like we got in the 80s when we had the same conditions with the same stuff as the 70s. With so many people's kids getting into their parents' record collections, and posts out here saying they wished they were born in the 80s, it would be really cool if we got resurgence of an 80s metal scene 2.0. Our heroes like Craig, Yngwie, George Lynch, Dokken, Ratt, Winger, Def Lep hitting the road like the old days' concert scenes with new supporting talent like Deraps, Bloody Heels, Adam and the Metal Hawks, etc. so that the new generation of budding guitarists, drummers, songwriters, metal diehards would be able to go to shows with their parents like we did when almost every weekend there was a concert somewhere and we had the time of our lives seeing people like Craig tearing it up standing 10' away from the front of the stage having their mind blown like we did. Hearing Craig laugh about Guiffria is genuine, and gotta love him for it, but that album stands up, to the test of time, as does the band, and he deserves a lot of credit for it. Lanny Cordola following in Craig's footsteps and then all the players that followed both of them through the House Of Lords era, well, we were all just really lucky for all of it. Kinda hope that at some point, people putting comments out here start to realize tearing people down and negative posts really don't do anybody any good. And possibly, may bring an end to someone's motivation. Sometimes we forget that these heroes are people too. Every time someone shoots off a negative post about Guiffria, Dokken, etc., you never know when it gets back to the person or the band, someone like Gregg G was kind of thinking about doing something new, an album, a reunion show, a mini tour, and enough negative feedback got to the them they decided not to. We know it happens because we've had a few bands respond to our comments out here directly when we brought it up to a post that wasn't cool. Maybe we'll get lucky and there will be a shot some of the legends get together and do some tours, maybe even some supergroups like Don Dokken's Up From The Ashes band/album if we show these guys enough love and support. It was a great metal scene, these guys have kept a lot of it going, here's to hoping they get enough support from the rest of us who love them for all they've done for us that some people call Craig and other's that are itching to lay down some tracks in someone's home studio, hit the road, and sign some t shirts for us adoring fans that would give good money to see em live again. Thanks for everything you've done for all of us in the metal community, Craig! You're the man!! (ps Thanks for signing our Hidden In Plain Sight disc after the show! It's a memory we cherish.)

So many great guitar players, and yeah, Jake E. Lee is great in his own right. Saw him with Ozzy back in 1984 and he really lit up the place with his long solo break. Really impressed me a great deal, plus he was doing all the Randy stuff from songs on the first two albums. Felt like Jake fit well with Ozzy and I was shocked when Jake was suddenly fired roughly 3 years later. Never got to see Goldy play live, but have watched many of his works with Dio and he's kick ass too. Loved his Warlock's and eventually I bought my Warlock in large part to emulatle him, haha.

I got screwed - was supposed to see Ultimate Sin/Master of Puppets. Postponed...then cancelled. I was 15 and beyond devastated. Still am. But I did see Lee in 1992 with Badlands. Deafening in a club. So good. Never saw Goldy. Good player, seems like a great guy! I never really connected to that stuff he did with Dio though.

I saw Rough Cutt open for Dio when I was in high school. I loved that band and I even met a few of them at NAMM. They should have been bigger, I think.

Always love this guy and thought he was soooo underrated!!! He has some solos with Dio on RU-vid really worth checking out and learning from...

Craig seems like a really nice guy. It's always interesting to hear him talk about his time in the music industry. Probably my favorite Dio guitarist as well. Sure, Viv is iconic (and a fantastic player of course) but there was something about Craig that felt more interesting to me.

What a COOL interview!!!

Jake is my personal No.1.

Craig must be one of the nicest guys in Metal and I'm surprised more people in the comments don't agree with him about Jake. I remember watching the Ultimate Sin concert in the 80's on Mtv and was completely blown away by Jake.

Craig sounds like a down to earth guy. His laugh at the interviewer's quip about "waiting to get out of Giuffria" made me laugh along with him. Sounds like a fun guy to just have a chat with.

Brilliant !!

Anyone remember BAM magazine

Jake is an amazing artist. He can play with anyone. I wouldn’t want to cut heads with Jake.

"Take her" is an awesome track

Jake done it all with no whammy, phenomenal player. Phenomenal man.

More great stuff about the San Diego scene.

I love Jake so this is not a knock on him. But it's not about whether you can "handle everything Ed could throw at you." It's the fact that Edward wrote the shit in the 1st place. No one touches Edward in composition & total body of work. Find me another band that has 6 albums out of the gate as good as VH - except Led Zeppelin.

Craig is an awesome player and humble! 🤘

1 month ago, and a quarter of a million views. Considering it’s Jake E. Lee, I’m happy because so often he’s overlooked.

I knew the drummer of Teaser. Rip. Tim Hayes. I have a cassette of one of their shows. They killed some Robin Trower