Songfacts®:

• This song is a tribute to original Quiet Riot guitarist Randy Rhoads, who died in a plane crash in 1982. Rhoads released two albums with Quiet Riot before leaving to join Ozzy Osbourne's band, helping Ozzy launch a solo career that landed him in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. The song was written by QR lead singer Kevin DuBrow.
• "Thunderbird" gets played at a lot of Quiet Riot concerts, honoring Rhoads' legacy. Kevin DuBrow would often introduce it by telling a story along these lines about how he and Randy met:
  
  "This song was written about the guy that started our little rock and roll band. In 1975 I came home from a concert of one of my favorite bands, Humble Pie, and I got a phone message from a guitar player in Burbank, California who was forming a rock and roll band and was auditioning lead singers. So I met up with him later that week and he came over to my mom's house - we were both living with our moms. I was 18 he was 17. He had long blonde hair and a really long thumbnail. Even for 1975 he was a strange looking cat. When I met him, I thought, This should be funny. He plugs the guitar into a little fender practice amp, and I tell you what, he played some of the best guitar I've ever heard to this day. People, don't ever forget the name of this guy. He was Randy Rhoads."
• The flying theme in this song seems a little out of touch considering Rhoads died in a plane crash, but Kevin DuBrow started writing it when Rhoads was still alive.
• The song is part of Quiet Riot's breakthrough album, Metal Health, which includes their hit cover of "Cum On Feel The Noize." The album went to #1 in America, the first heavy metal album to do so.
  
  The band fell on hard times in the aftermath, and DuBrow got kicked out in 1987. The group folded, but DuBrow revived it in 1990, fronting every lineup until his death by drug overdose in 2007. A few years later, drummer Frankie Banali rebooted the group.