“I was aggressively informed, ‘That’s Eddie’s technique; you’re not allowed to play it on the tour – or else’: Former Autograph guitar maestro Steve Lynch on theory, technique, and life as a tapping pioneer

Steve Lynch performs onstage.

By the time Steve Lynch burst onto the scene with Autograph, he was nearly 30 – a relative dinosaur compared to some of the young bucks he was up against. But no matter, Lynch’s style – which includes a dizzying array of arpeggios, triads, and intervals – stood out from the pack.

Lynch was so slick that by the time Autograph’s 1984 banger, Sign In Please, was released, his greatest foe was Eddie Van Halen, who happened to be Lynch’s brother in two-handed tapping heroics.