My ex wife dated Eddie Van Halen, since she grew up with him a few city's over. Michael Anthony is a buddy of mine's neighbor. I stopped him a few times for minor traffic violations. I never had the heart to write him a ticket, but instead we would hang out together at the hot rod shows in Glendora. He has some really nice cars!
It's amazing how big they became, but more so what a unique style Eddie created. My partner in the vintage guitar store had sold Eddie some PAF pickups, from an old Les Paul sunburst, Eddie was into experimenting. Eddie also played Charvel guitars, in Azusa at the time. Eddie and Alex were from Pasadena, as I recall. We did a lot of business with Grover Jackson, and that's a long story in itself.
Really miss David Lindley a lot. Saw and met him at Coach House in SJ Capistrano, such a cool guy. He wore the neatest shoes I've ever seen. His guitar set-up created such a full and deep resonating sound. Dave had so many unique guitars and other string instruments. Also saw him with Sonny Landreth at a short-lived music museum in Carlsbad. Those two playing together was a real treat. RIP David.
David got really p!$$ed at me once. I created a kinda scam, where I would have famous people sign guitars that we would re-sell in Tokyo, I once got $3,000 for a Japanese guitar that Ingwie Malmsteem signed...so David came over to our house in Van Nuys, and brought an early 60s strat that he had signed and wanted a lot of money for it. I wouldn't buy it, so David waited for him with his guitar in his polyester clothes...I was a huge fan of El-Rayo-X, and Bernie Larson and George Calderon used to hang out at my shop. My partner didn't want the guitar either, it was pretty butchered up and had been routed for different pickups.
Meanwhile, Jackson and David were buying up Silvertone/Danelectro guitars and testing the pickup. Some were amazing, and there rest were just ok, the lipstick pickups. Stevie Ray Vaughn also used one of them in one of his Strats. They would buy those, and the plastic National guitars that looked like the United States.
Bernie and another guitar player, Brian Ray, and me used to go out to dinner a lot. Mostly Chinese food. Brian has always had great gigs, and has been playing with Paul McCartney for the past 15 years. Most rock musicians collect vintage guitars, hence the ties to so many of them. I have many funny stories of my store, we were the player's store. One famous guy worked for me and my partner, his name is Steve Hunter, he played with Alice Cooper for about 20 years, did the Rose, and played the famous solo on an SG for Lou Reed's Sweet Jane. I thought I would play music for the rest of my life...until I denounced music for about 20 years. I was close friends with the Fowlers, who played with Zappa, as did Albert Wing (sax player, who also toured with George Benson).
I will never be a rock musician again, I can't afford to get back into vintage guitars, but I have sold hundreds of guitars to Japan in trade for light music instruments. More than any other foreigner to live in Japan. I was there for 5 years, where I met my wife.
any decent parking anywhere as we’ll be in a rental suv?
