Award-winning producer/songwriter/guitarist John Shanks clearly recalls the first time he heard Van Halen. “I was 12 years old, doing my homework, and I put their first album on,” he says. “All of a sudden, ‘Eruption’ comes on and you’re like, ‘What?’ No one had ever heard that. It freaked us all out. To me, it was Hendrix, Beck, Page, Gilmour and Clapton. That was it — the big five. And of course The Beatles. And then, one day, Van Halen.”