A MATTER OF TIMING
seems, the great Eddie Van Halen passed away on the exact same day (October 6) that our December 2020 issue came out — an issue that features Eddie on the cover as the smiling representative of our “40 guitarists who changed our world have crossed paths since the dawn of the Eighties, when was born. Chris Gill and Brad Tolinski address the longstanding /EVH connection in stories that start on pages 30 and 54, respectively. Me? Sadly, I never got to meet Eddie, but — as I said in a Facebook post the day he died — when you work at , Eddie is this ubiquitous presence forever in the background, perhaps similar to the relationship between and J.D. Salinger from 1946 to 1965 (I actually didn’t think of the thing until just now, but it works!).
