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"Well, trying to hire genius is like designing art by committee—damn near impossible. But I came so close you could feel the heat coming off of it, with a fellow named Jason Becker. Jason was maybe twenty, twenty-one years old. His parents had been like Haight-Ashbury hippies. So instead of growing up listening to Ed Van Halen records and duplicating that, he had grown up listening to all the old classics I had, as per his parents—Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills and Nash. What a wealth of references in his playing. He was just finding his way. You could hear the influences and name them if you were sharp. And he was a season or two away from where you couldn’t name the influences anymore. It would then be a signature sound. He would become Jason Becker the guitar player, as opposed to a guitar player.
We made the album A Little Ain’t Enough. And as we were working on the songs, he was complaining of numbness in his leg. He was having a stiff leg, he was having trouble moving around.
He had such a full, substantial, articulate sound, played through the simplest equipment—one amp head, one set of speakers, a foot pedal or two, all of it Dennis-the-Menaced together with spit and chicken wire. That kid could move air, man. And the kindest, gentlest, most flexible, absorbing, want-to-learn spirit that I’ve ever really worked with.
Big hands, like six feet tall, just poised, poised. It turns out that that little leg problem was ALS; he had Lou Gehrig’s disease. Today he’s in a wheelchair and that’s it. I cried when that verdict came in. The world was waiting to print his picture, man. And he got struck down way too fucking early in the game.
Soon as he realized that he was going to start stiffening up all the way around, instead of balling up in depression, Jason just went to work big time. As this whole voodoo situation increased, he learned to use computers and worked through other musicians and folks, developed a support system. And released a solo album."
We made the album A Little Ain’t Enough. And as we were working on the songs, he was complaining of numbness in his leg. He was having a stiff leg, he was having trouble moving around.
He had such a full, substantial, articulate sound, played through the simplest equipment—one amp head, one set of speakers, a foot pedal or two, all of it Dennis-the-Menaced together with spit and chicken wire. That kid could move air, man. And the kindest, gentlest, most flexible, absorbing, want-to-learn spirit that I’ve ever really worked with.
Big hands, like six feet tall, just poised, poised. It turns out that that little leg problem was ALS; he had Lou Gehrig’s disease. Today he’s in a wheelchair and that’s it. I cried when that verdict came in. The world was waiting to print his picture, man. And he got struck down way too fucking early in the game.
Soon as he realized that he was going to start stiffening up all the way around, instead of balling up in depression, Jason just went to work big time. As this whole voodoo situation increased, he learned to use computers and worked through other musicians and folks, developed a support system. And released a solo album."
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