In a new interview with Thomas S. Orwat, Jr. of the Rock Interview Series, legendary rock bassist Rudy Sarzo discussed his recent admission that he utilized artificial intelligence (A.I.) during the production process of his two new solo singles, “Your Heart Is The Road” and “For The Love Of Love”. He said in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “By next year, there’s not gonna be any need [for anybody] to confess [to using A.I. in the music production process]. It’s gonna be taken as a given that some sort of a assisted A.I. has been involved with everything. Because I gotta tell you, even if you record analog and you’re doing everything with humans in the room, by the time it gets mixed, it’s gonna be A.I. assisted. All the new plugins contain that. So unless you’re using a really old-school engineer that just sticks with analog and is not gonna use any plugins, which are getting harder to find, it’s gonna be A.I. assisted. And so will be the mastering. So by a year from now, it’s not even gonna be a topic of conversation anymore. It’s like talking about MIDI. Does anybody talk about MIDI anymore? No. But back in the day, it was, like, ‘Whoa.’ Does anybody talk about loops?”
Rudy continued: “My background, as far as technology goes, if I see it coming, I do something about it. I embrace it, because you can’t stop progress or technology in general. When loops started happening around 1995, I immediately embraced the idea. As a matter of fact, I shifted from using Logic Pro, which I had the first version of it, and I already had [Digidesign] Session 8, which was the Pro Tools interface… Just going through conventions, the NAMM Show, I came across the people who were involved with Acid, which was the first loop-based software, and it was just Windows-centric, so I cannot use my Mac. So I switched over from my Quadra 650 to an HP PC. And so I was asked by them to create the first bass loop collection… They did not ask me to include samples, but I said, ‘You know what? Let me take it a step further. Let me do some sampling here.’ So I sampled every note of four-, five-, and six-string basses that I have, and they’re included. It’s called ‘Workingman’s Bass’, and that’s — what? — 31 years ago. So at the same time, there were some musicians that were going, ‘No, I cannot…’ Because I was asked to by the company Sonic Foundry, that later on became Sony, Sony Music Media Software, Sony Software, releasing Vegas and Acid, Sonic Foundry programs that they had, applications. And so I was asked by them, ‘Listen, if you have any of your buddies who are name and that would like to be part of this library that we’re building of loops.’ I approached a few, and some of them declined because they felt that their sound was gonna be stolen. So 35 years later, I have that out, and I’m still working. Nobody has stolen my sound because I’m always changing. I’m always progressing. It’s not like I have one sound. I have many sounds because, to me, it’s all about music. It’s all about what fits.”
Sarzo added: “I think of my bass, the tone of my bass, as a character in a play or a movie. It’s a character. And it has a profile. It has a history to it. That’s how I approach it. So it has to fit in within the storyline of the music. That’s how I approach music. You have the lyrics, which is the script, and then you have the soundtrack, which is the music to it. So I just wanted to say that because I wanna give background that I’m not just jumping on new technology. I’ve been jumping on new technology since the electric guitar or the electric bass existed. I’m actually older than the first Fender ever built for consumers. I’m 75. The Fender, I think it came out in ’51 — ’50, ’51.”
Asked what part of his new solo singles were created using A.I., Rudy said: “Yeah, the vocalist is A.I., the instrumentation is A.I., but I have a demo. See, it’s not just about doing that. First you have to have a demo, is what I do. I mean, some people just use A.I. — let’s say Suno, which is what I use — some people use Suno, like, ‘Yeah, my girlfriend is having a birthday, so I wanna write her a song.’ So on the prompt, which is basically you’re given the opportunity to be a producer, which you get in a room with a musician that you call up because you say, Okay, this is the song.’ First the producer gets the song. ‘I’m gonna produce this.’ Or maybe the producer has written the song already, or is producing for an artist, so he’s producing an artist, or the artist brings the songs. And the producer starts thinking… This is traditional, what I’m talking about. This is how it’s been done from the beginning. So thinking about who would be good on the drums for this song, and who would be the bass player and the keyboard player. Sometimes for the whole record you have a whole session band. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you have different people. STEELY DAN was notorious for having multiple musicians record the same song, and they would just pick… I mean, if you wanna know about that, there’s plenty of YouTube videos about that. Also, STEELY DAN, with ‘Gaucho’, the record ‘Gaucho’, they actually used the first actual drum machine, and I believe this was in the ’70s, pre-LinnDrum. Their engineer offered to build it because they thought about it. They thought about, ‘Well, how about instead of bringing all these drummers in, we just create drums ourselves in the studio?’ And I believe it cost about $100,000 to build, but that’s how they did it.”
“Your Heart Is The Road” was made available on June 24, 2026 in celebration of Rudy and his wife Rebecca‘s 42nd wedding anniversary.
As a member of Ozzy Osbourne‘s band, from March 1981 to September 1982, Rudy toured the world in support of the “Blizzard Of Ozz” and “Diary Of A Madman” records. His bass playing can be heard on Ozzy‘s multimillion-selling CD “Tribute” and “Speak Of The Devil” CD and DVD.
As a member of QUIET RIOT, from September 1982 to January 1985, Rudy recorded the multi-platinum albums “Metal Health”, the first heavy metal debut to reach No. 1 on the Billboard chart and “Condition Critical”. During this period, he headlined worldwide tours, appeared on numerous MTV videos and was voted No. 1 bassist in Circus magazine for 1983.
As a member of WHITESNAKE, from April 1987 to September 1994, Rudy recorded the multi-platinum album “Slip Of The Tongue”. During this period he also performed worldwide on headline tours in support of the multiplatinum “1987” and “Slip Of The Tongue” albums and appeared in six MTV videos.
In April 2004, Rudy became member of DIO and remained the band’s bassist until Ronnie James Dio‘s passing in 2010. During that time Rudy toured the world with DIO and recorded the “Holy Diver 25th Anniversary Live” DVD and CD and DIO‘s last studio track “Elektra”. In addition, when Rudy was not busy with DIO, he toured the world with BLUE ÖYSTER CULT until 2012. From 2013 through 2014 Rudy was a recording and touring member of Geoff Tate‘s QUEENSRŸCHE. In 2021, Rudy rejoined QUIET RIOT after an 18-year absence.
Image credit: Melvin Zoopers
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source blabbermouth.net ’
