Hi there –
I don’t know if Steve will remember this gig or not, but here’s my story:
Back in November of 1993, my best friend John Bruno’s band got the call to open for Steve at Toad’s Place in New Haven, CT. While we were both HUGE fans, we were absolutely thrilled with the prospect of actually talking to him backstage and seeing the show from behind the scenes. A day or so before the show, we got a call from Roger (Steve’s guitar tech on the tour) who asked us to bring ALL of our Ibanez guitars to the show as there had been some sort of mix up and Steve’s gear was not all there. We agreed and brought all of our axes to the show that night. We are both Ibanez players, so we had quite a few there. We had the distinct pleasure of watching Steve try all of our guitars out (I never knew mine could sound so good). He took a strong liking to my Loch Ness Green RG550 with a snake inlay on the neck. In any case, it was prepped a la Vai and sat in the rack with the 3 white/gold JEMs that actually made it to the show. I never thought he’d go to it because he had 3 JEM’s there, but in a stroke of luck, he broke the strings on one, the strap broke on one, and when he needed a fresh guitar to play on, Roger handed him my guitar on which he played a couple of songs on. Of course, it was the end of the show and I had NO FILM LEFT!! I also don’t know of anyone who took pictures that night who actually got a photo of him playing the mysterious green guitar, but I had him sign it at the end of the night. He was thankful and took a group photo with all of us. He is a really great guy and if anyone reads this who was at the show and has pics of him playing it, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!! I had the guitar tattooed on my calf so I will always remember that night and how special it was for me.
Chuck Czajkowski
New Haven, CT