Sometime in 1978…
Recordings and photos exist somewhere. Please e-mail us if you have any info.
I felt completely inferior at Berklee. I would just marvel at the way some of these guys were playing the guitar. I very rarely would play around them, but every morning all the monsters would gather around a huge table in the cafeteria and just blaze. It was uncanny how some of these guys played. One in particular was the most astonishing guitar player I ever saw or heard.
His name was Lorn Leber. A really kooky funny guy, Lorn was a genius. He could make up a synthetic scale and know it all over the entire neck of the guitar in an hour, complete with every chord inversion possible and impossible. His style was very fusion (sort of Mahavishnu John McLaughlin). To this day he is without a doubt the fastest guitar player I have ever seen (yes, even faster than Yngwie).
All these shredders would sit at the table and try to keep up with Lorn. He would motor along and they would feverishly try to keep pace. Then Lorn would look at me, wink and smile, and then blast into infinity and beyond. Everyone would shudder in disbelief, throw their pick on the table and back away. We would watch this guy play and just laugh.
He was in this incredible fusion band called Battle-Axe. Marty Weintraub was a young composer at the school and out together this concert where Winter, his band with me in it, would play with Battle-Axe. it was a good show and it gave me a chance to show off to my future wife Pia, who was in the audience.