RIP Ralph Santolla

[CaptNasty]

Ralph Santolla formerly with Deicide, Obituary, Sebastian Bach (and a number of other groups/projects) passed away today.

Ralph and I have been friends since High School. Used to hang out and jam after we would get out of school. Great player and teacher who helped out immeasurably with my playing.

He was definitely not a “mainstream” player, but some in this forum may know of him and his work and wanted to share the sad news.

[jacksonaxes]

Sad news. I liked his playing in Iced Earth. RIP.

[toejam]

Aww, man. I was reading on Metal Injection a few days ago that it didn't look good. Sorry for your loss.

[CaptNasty]

He was a different player for his genre. We used to listen to Gary Moore, MSG, Steve Morse and other stuff that was not mainstream. He was influenced heavily by Holdsworth. He went through a period with Yes when they released the 90125 album. 90125 drove me a little nuts after a while. He was really influenced by Rhoads too. We used to play Diary of a Madman as a duet.

He really took those influences into shred and the death metal scene in a way that I always told him was unique. There was no one else on the Death Metal scene like him and that made him stand out. That and we were in the middle of Tampa’s very robust metal scene when it was just starting in the 80s.

And let me say this: his body of work still does not fully encompass everything he could do. He was incredibly versatile. It seemed he could play anything... with essentially no effort on his part. There are things I have seen him do that you could only say “dude what the fuck. Holy shit!”. He was really formative on my playing and it was a true honor. It is cool looking back now and thinking “shit, I jammed and hung with Ralph fucking Santolla”.

I was actually planning to spend some time with him soon to work on some bad habits in my sweeping technique... wish I hadn’t waited.

[toejam]

That's a bummer. I like all the bands he was in, but I'm not real familiar with his playing except for when he was in Iced Earth.

[CaptNasty]

That's a bummer. I like all the bands he was in, but I'm not real familiar with his playing except for when he was in Iced Earth.

The plan is to release his latest work with Devil’s Highway. They were well into the album and Ralph had shared some demos off the album. Some good work will be on that album. I will be getting it. Will not be Death Metal, but it is Metal... and very heavy.

[toejam]

Cool. I need to check out more of his work.

[watson503]

My condolences... I was hoping things would turn around and Ralph would pull-out of this - very sad news, indeed. I never met Ralph but the people I know who did all had great things to say about him and he will be missed. Rest in peace.

[VitaminG]

a few artists that I follow on Facebook were friends and/or had worked with him, so I saw their updates yesterday. Otherwise, I hadn't even heard that he was sick. Sorry for the loss of your friend.

[CaptNasty]

My wife found this picture over the weekend. The relevance to this thread? That is me playing Ralph’s Rhoads Student, spandex and all. I think this is circa 83-84, but not 100% sure. Borrowed his Rhoads for the gig while my Rhoads was in the shop getting new pups. Had totally forgotten about it until I saw the pic and thought “I never had a Rhoads Student hardtail”. Then I recalled the story behind this pic. Queue up the way back machine:

[xenophobe]

That sucks. Sorry for your loss. I have a number of albums he's on. I'll have to give a listen.