84-89 was a really interesting time to be at Ibanez. So much happened so fast. We were suffering in the beginning of 85, as Ibanez guitars were basically personality-less copies of what was already out there. The exceptions were the Phil Collen guitars and a couple of other signature models. I had to come up with a plan to get Ibanez back up to the front lines. It occurred to me that all the other companies that were succeeding had a person’s name attached to them- Fender, Gibson, Kramer (OK, so Gary left way before Van Halen came in), Jackson, etc. Since there was no “Mr. Ibanez,” we needed to personify the guitars with a different approach. I had been in Mike Varney’s Spotlight column in Guitar Player Magazine, so I had a good relationship with him. We were talking about the problem of Ibanez being faceless, and Mike told me he was putting Shrapnel Records together. He said the label was looking for the next Yngwie (who Mike had discovered). We put our heads together and decided that if Mike had access to all of these up-and-coming players, that Ibanez could be the place to promote them. Out of this relationship came Vinnie Moore, Paul Gilbert, Joey Tafolla, Steve Vai and many more players. Ibanez became the place to look to check out brand new players before the rest of the planet knew who they were.
Rich Lasner
2