The Guitar Player's Resource
When you pop George Muto Jr.'s CD-R into your CD player, you'd be excused for thinking you just discovered the lost Van Halen instrumental tracks (and for thinking you wouldn't mind being able to play like this!) Then you'd remember you read somewhere that Eddie pretty much said he liked the band thing too much, and was always going to work with a throat man of some kind - so it couldn't be the long lost VH tapes. So maybe we have here the instrumentals that Eddie would have recorded - if indeed he had any interest in doing so. Truthfully, his signature squeals, dive bombing, prodigious tapping, symmetrical runs, harmonic pinches, whammy dives, and even attitude are all over these four tracks - pretty cool stuff, since we're not expecting Eddie to produce the same kind of material himself, whatever his reasons.
George picked up the guitar at the age of 18 and remembers going to one guitar lesson - where he learned a scale and then promptly took it from there. Over the years he's played in a number of cover bands where he began to introduce his own original music, but it was always with a singer. In his most recent project, Muto, the instrumentals were really a happy accident. With all the drama of finding a singer, the music evolved to a point where the guitar replaced the vocal and he never looked back. Accompanying George on the bass, Joe Lanasa's melodic style of playing has been the perfect compliment to the instrumental mix. As a guitar player whose influences range from Robin Trower to Jimmy Page and Van Halen, this has definitely been an unexpectedly fulfilling experience.
Muto would like someday to acquire professional representation. As he states, "Bottom line: it's all about loving what you do and having fun."
George Muto Jr.
United States
Web site: www.myspace.com/georgemutomusic