If Eddie Van Halen made me a rock guitarist in high school, Billy Joel brought me back to make room for piano and voice late in my college years. See, my college was on Long Island, a place as closely…

Simply put, I would not be a guitarist if it weren't for Eddie Van Halen, may his memory be a blessing. As a pre-teen in the early days of MTV, my first encounters with the name Van Halen was seeing…