Living on Maui was a pretty quiet deal in the early days (daze?) if you were actually working full time, raising a family, and paying off a mortgage. It left little time for anything else. The wife and I did make a couple of trips over to Honolulu to see good concerts, but that kind of travel was expensive and we couldn't do that very often.

We did get over to see Van Halen once, and we got seats up front pretty close to the stage. During the break, Eddie came down to the edge of the stage and sat down with his feet hanging over the end of the stage and just yakked with the crowd. He had his ax with him, plugged in, and was just noodeling around on it as he yakked, until someone asked him about his classical music training he reportedly had from his mom in his younger years. He launched into some amazing classical riffs and just blew everybody away.....

Another time, someone was filming a movie on Maui called "Rainbow Bridge", with Jimi Hendrix in it. They wanted to film a "hippie concert in the woods" scene, and I heard about it from some friends. So the wife and I put on our best tie-dies and bell bottoms, grabbed some good wine and 'erb, and walked up to the movie location in the woods. They had a big gen set running in a nearby gulch, and a big stage setup in the middle of a cow pasture. There was a huge crowd of folks there dressed appropriately, like a jr version of Woodstock! Jimi and his crew came out and jammed for over an hour as the film crews cranked off a lot of footage. We were able to get up pretty close to the stage and take it all in. This was not long before Jimi died.

Just wanted to share a couple of the major guitar highlights in my life that I will never forget. I have a copy of that movie and play it every once in awhile, particularly the "concert" scenes, it brings back all kinds of great memories.......