“I was aggressively informed, ‘That’s Eddie’s technique; you’re not allowed to play it on the tour – or else’”: Steve Lynch on how Van Halen’s team forbade him from two-handed tapping
“I was pissed that I couldn’t play something I had created.”
Image: Scott Dudelson / Lynn Goldsmith / Getty Images
Autograph guitar maestro Steve Lynch has spoken about how Van Halen‘s team once forbade him from using the two-handed tapping technique on tour, a move that left him veritably “pissed”.
In a new interview with Guitar World, Lynch, whose band opened for Van Halen on their 1984 tour, recounts the fateful exchange: “When our tour with Van Halen started, I was asked by their management, ‘Are you Steve Lynch, the one who wrote The Right Touch’ [A 1982 instructional book with the full title The Right Touch: The Art of Hammering Notes with the Right Hand]? I said, ‘Yes, I am,’” Lynch says.
“I was then aggressively informed, ‘That’s Eddie’s technique; you’re not allowed to play it on the tour – or else.’ I was pissed that I couldn’t play something I had created.”
According to Lynch, the issue was eventually resolved after he personally approached the late guitar legend about the supposed restrictions.
“So, later on, I confronted Eddie about it, to which he replied, ‘I had no idea they put those restrictions on you. I’ll call the dogs off.’ I graciously thanked him and played whatever I wanted for the rest of the tour,” he says.
“I’ll never know if he was telling the truth, but I don’t care; we hit it off well after that.”
Also in the chat, Lynch reveals the origins of his two-handed tapping technique, saying: “I first saw Harvey Mandel playing around with it at a soundcheck at a club in downtown Seattle in the early ’70s. That’s what first inspired me. Then I saw a local guy named Steve Buffington experimenting with it, which made me pursue it more.”
“But Emmett Chapman, the inventor of the Stick, made me immerse myself in it.”
“He did a clinic at GIT [Guitar Institute of Technology, now the Musicians Institute], and I was awestruck by the sounds he created. I immediately began to train my hand and began writing the two-hand theory, including arpeggios, triads, chord inversions, scales, intervals, and double-stops.”