Greg Leon
| Greg Leon | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Gregory Jay Leon |
| Born |
5 May 1958 Glendale, California, USA |
| Genres | Heavy metal, glam metal, hard rock |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, songwriter, music teacher, sound engineer, record producer |
| Instruments | Guitar, vocals |
| Years active | 1977 - present |
| Associated acts | Suite 19, Greg Leon Invasion, Quiet Riot, Dokken, Vyper, Wishing Well |
Gregory Jay Leon (born May 5, 1958) is a Los Angeles hard rock guitarist notable for his stints in Quiet Riot and Dokken. He was also in a band called Suite 19 with Gary Holland, who was later replaced by Tommy Lee.
Leon is considered an influential and important musical personality in the Hollywood Hard Rock/Heavy Metal scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, playing an integral part in the successive fortunes of the acts he was associated with.
Greg Leon was born in 1958 and grew up in Glendale, California, a foothills community of Los Angeles, and immediately made an impact on the blossoming live hard rock scene of Hollywood's Sunset Strip in the late 1970s. Primarily playing guitar and handling vocals, the acts that he fronted were Suite 19, with future Great White/Dokken drummer Gary Holland and then future Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, and the Greg Leon Invasion, with bassist Joey Vera (later of Armored Saint, Fate's Warning and Anthrax) and drummer Carl Elizondo (later of Jag Wire, and playing under the stage name Carl James). The Invasion would release the "Every Time" b/w "Stay With Me Tonite" 7" single with Vera on bass who was fired when it was discovered by Leon that he had been moonlighting with Armored Saint. Vera's replacement, Chuck Stevenson and Elizondo played with Leon on the Greg Leon Invasion picture disc released by Azra/R2R in 1983. He took the place of Randy Rhoads in Quiet Riot, and as the pre-George Lynch guitarist in Dokken (Don Dokken has since made the group's first EP, which graces Leon on the cover, available for download to the public). During this period Leon also had a considerable local reputation as a guitar teacher, working at Rhoads' mother's guitar studio in Burbank.
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