In a new interview with The Music Zoo owner Tommy Colletti, legendary Dokken guitarist George Lynch recalled seeing Van Halen perform in Southern California clubs in the mid-1970s.
He said (as transcribed by blabbermouth.net), “I saw UFO play with Van Halen at the Golden West Ballroom in Norwalk, California, near where we lived. We played there a lot. It was somewhat dramatic, because I don’t know if UFO knew what they were in for. And I love UFO — we all love UFO — but they got their ass kicked. I mean, they came up, and I don’t think they were ready for that.”
Lynch went on to say that Van Halen revolutionized rock in the late 1970s by introducing virtuosic, high-energy technical guitar playing — like two-handed tapping — to the Sunset Strip scene.
“There was a paradigm shift in the music universe,” the guitarist explained. “Well, to see it up close and personal as it was happening, in [his pre-Van Halen band] Mammoth and also early Van Halen, it was mind bending to see that in person. It was just insane. I mean, I’d just go to my studio or go home and just get on my guitar for eight hours and go, ‘I gotta step up. This is insane.'”
Reflecting on some of the earliest Eddie Van Halen live performances he witnessed, Lynch said, “I’d seen him when he was playing with a Les Paul through a Bandmaster or Bassman. And then the Music Man and all that period. And he was still amazing. He didn’t have the tapping. He didn’t have the bar. And it’s still insane. And different. It wasn’t Van Halen like you think of him now. It was a different thing, ’cause he had more of the [Eric] Clapton influence. It was a little more meat and potatoes, but it was still — I think, in a way, even cooler because we’re so used to Eddie and what he does. But not very many people have heard that. And that, to me, is even more interesting, from a guitar player’s perspective.”
Lynch went on to credit Terry Kilgore, Eddie Van Halen‘s friend and inspiration in the 1970s, with influencing him during Van Halen‘s early days.
“[Terry] was in Reddi Killowat,” Lynch recalled. “It was a three-piece band that was… They didn’t have [a great frontman like] David Lee Roth, they didn’t have the image, they didn’t have the looks, they didn’t have the songs, but Terry was, I thought, maybe even better than Eddie. I think Eddie kind of took a lot of the stuff — well, not a lot, but some of the things Terry was doing, obviously, because they were friends.”