Lynch
Here for the cookies and the tunes
This picture is legit in some really cool ways if you know some history. If you don't, I'll share some of it with you.
Here is the original picture from sometime in the mid 1930's:
The dude in this picture is legendary blues musician, Robert Johnson. Well known throughout much of rock as being highly influential to some of the most well known guitarists of all time (both blues and rock). He died in 1937 at the ripe old age of 27 (the ORIGINAL member of "The 27 Club", if there really was such a thing).
Robert was enshrined in the RnR Hall of Fame during it's original inauguration back in 1986 (when the hall was still legit). I'm not going to go into a bio on him, if interested, a quick web search will give you plenty of into.
Moving forward, we have Eric Clapton, who has said for 50+ years that Robert Johnson was the most important musical influence in his life. One of the most famous songs that Clapton has recorded was Crossroads, which was originally written and recorded by Johnson under the title Cross Road Blues ... a song that is supposedly about Johnson selling his soul to the devil in exchange for musical talent. Clapton even has an entire album of Robert JOhnson covers entitled Me and Mr Johnson (2005).
Moving forward yet again, Eddie Van Halen is also one of the most famous guitarists in the history of rock. His single biggest influence was Eric Clapton. I remember reading something many years ago that Eddie said when he was learning to play, he learned how to play every Cream guitar solo, note for note.
In summary, we have a virtually unknown and unsuccessful blues musician who supposedly sold his soul to the devil for talent, only to die before most people knew much of him, having only recorded 29 songs ever. Said guitarist was immortalized after death as he was cited as such a huge influence to the likes of many other guitarists, including Clapton who in turn was the leading influence in Eddie Van Halen's life.
I have no idea who did the shop-job on this photo or if they intended anything that I mentioned above, but this is just how I looked at it when I saw it. Pretty cool to have such an iconic photo of such an important figure in modern rock (era 1960's on forward) and have that X-degrees of separation with other iconic guitars and to top it off... 'shopping in one of Eddie's iconic guitars. The connection is kind of ironic and/or uncanny, intentional or otherwise.
