How I Wrote..."Round and Round"

Warren DeMartini reveals how he spun a riff into Ratt's pop-metal smash.

- JOE BOSSO

IT WAS LATE in 1982 when Jake E. Lee tendered his resignation from the band Ratt after snagging the plum guitar spot with Ozzy Osborne. Rather than leave his ex-bandmates high and dry, he brought in his pal Warren DeMartini as his replacement. DeMartini, all of 19 at the time, drove from San Diego to Los Angeles with little more than a guitar, an amp and a cheap tape deck on which he had recorded a few rough song ideas he was messing around with.

"I had chord patterns and riffs, but I didn't know how to connect any of the parts," DeMartini says. "Writing songs was a process I was still trying to figure out. Once I joined the band, I got better at it."

One of DeMartini's chord patterns eventually became "Round and Round," the ear-candy pop-metal smash that exploded on radio and MTV in 1984, propelling Ratt to instant stardom. "One minute, nobody knew us. The next, we were everywhere," DeMartini says, "and all of it from one song."

SEALING THE DEAL