“I had a beat-up Strat and a Yamaha digital amp. Edgar was horrified. He said, ‘Doug, your tone is atrocious!’” Air-guitar playing AC/DC fan Doug Rappoport on how he fell into working with Edgar Winter and Paul Gilbert

Doug Rappoport wields a Les Paul onstage.

Once Doug Rappoport felt the guttural howl of Angus Young’s Gibson SG, he was hooked on rock for life. “I heard the first crushing chords of Back in Black and it just knocked me to the back of the wall,” he says.

As a result, he accidentally stepped into session work in his late teens; then, once again by happenstance, he landed a gig with Edgar Winter, which he hung onto for 20 years.