THERE WERE PLENTY of hotshot guitarists tearing it up on the Sunset Strip in the mid-to-late ’70s, but three undoubtedly stood out: Eddie Van Halen, then–Quiet Riot guitarist Randy Rhoads…and George Lynch.
At the time, Lynch was playing with a band called the Boyz, who had enough clout — and Lynch enough of a rep as a supreme shredder — that, in an oft-told story, Kiss’s Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley came to see them headline at the Starwood in L.A. The story ends, of course, with Simmons taking the opening band that night, Van Halen, back to New York to record a demo. The rest, as they say, is history.