March 26, 2002 – Randy Castillo (Ozzie Osbourne) was born on December 18th 1950 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Randolpho Francisco Castillo was born to a Spanish/French/Native American mother, Margaret, and Native American/Hispanic father Frank (Kiko). He was one of five children, and his sisters, Frances, Marilyn, Phyllis and Christine, all play music. His first band experience was at West Mesa High School, playing in the jazz band, orchestra and marching band. He wrote the high school cadence that is still being used to this day.
He played trumpet for a short time then realized his passion was the drums. He decided he wanted a drum kit instead, especially after seeing The Beatles play on The Ed Sullivan Show in early February 1964. However, his father refused to buy him one, thinking he would only lose interest, as he had already done with the trumpet.
After playing in bands such as The Tabbs, The Mudd, The Wumblies and The Offenders, he relocated to LA and joined The Motels and embarked on his first major arena tour with them in support of The Cars.
In 1984, Randy was hired to play drums for Lita Ford and was featured on her Dancin’ On The Edge album. Soon after he was hired by Ozzy Osbourne and ended up staying with the Ozzy Osbourne band for ten years, recording five albums with Ozzy during that time, The Ultimate Sin (1986), No Rest for the Wicked (1988), an EP entitled Just Say Ozzy (1990), No More Tears (1991), and a double-disc live album, Live and Loud in 1993.
In 1993, he joined Red Square Black. He drummed on several tribute albums during this time. He played with Ronnie James Dio on a cover of Alice Cooper’s “Welcome To My Nightmare” as well as the Alice Cooper tribute album Humanary Stew and performed all drumming duties on a star-studded Def Leppard tribute album titled Leppardmania.
In 1999, he took over from Tommy Lee in Mötley Crüe, Randy had already worked with Vince Neil as a touring drummer for the Vince Neil Band.
Sadly his only recording with the band, 2000’s New Tattoo, just before the supporting tour Randy became ill while performing with his mariachi side project Azul.
Randy Castillo died after a year long battle with cancer on March 26, 2002 at age 51.
