Jason Becker

Jason Becker emerged as a prodigiously gifted American guitarist and composer whose trajectory carried him from youthful phenomenon to a leading figure in hard rock and heavy metal, realized both through his own recordings and through the guitar duo Cacophony, which he formed with longtime associate Marty Friedman. That path eventually placed him in the lead-guitar chair once occupied by Eddie Van Halen and Steve Vai within David Lee Roth’s band during the early 1990s, where he performed on the 1991 release A Little Ain’t Enough, until amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a rare progressive neurodegenerative condition, redirected the resourceful musician toward an even steeper creative route.

A Richmond, California native raised in a musical household, Becker began playing at an exceptionally early age. By his mid-teens he already commanded a formidable fusion of blues, hard rock, heavy metal, and classical elements executed with velocity and force, demonstrated when he delivered Yngwie Malmsteen’s “Black Star” with his band at a high-school talent show. In the late ’80s, at sixteen, he launched Cacophony alongside Marty Friedman; the pair signed with Shrapnel Records, which issued their first album, Speed Metal Symphony, in 1987. The follow-up, Go Off!, appeared the next year, as did each guitarist’s initial solo outing—Dragon’s Kiss from Friedman and Perpetual Burn from Becker. Two years afterward Friedman entered Megadeth while Becker succeeded Steve Vai in David Lee Roth’s lineup, contributing to the ex–Van Halen singer’s third solo album, 1991’s A Little Ain’t Enough. During those sessions Becker received his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease. He nevertheless finished a second solo collection, Perspective, issued on his own imprint in 1996; Raspberry Jams, a set of demos, followed in 1999. Through Eddie Van Halen’s assistance, Perspective received a Warner Bros. release in 2001.

Subsequent years brought steady physical decline that physicians had predicted would prove fatal within three to five years, stripping Becker of the capacity to play, walk, and speak. Even after paralysis confined him to a wheelchair he persisted in composing by means of software that translated motions of his head and eyes. The 2012 documentary Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet included conversations with Marty Friedman, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Richie Kotzen, and Steve Hunter, among others. In 2018, twenty-nine years after the ALS diagnosis, Becker issued Triumphant Hearts, an album consisting entirely of new original material.