Stephen Egerton

Stephen Patrick Raymond McGuire O'Reilly, better known as Stephen Egerton, is the guitarist for The Descendents and ALL. Stephen was raised in Utah and played drums and guitar in the seminal Salt Lake City punk rock/death rock band Massacre Guys from 1980 to 1985 alongside bassist Karl Alvarez. In 1985 Stephen moved to Virginia where he studied classical guitar and played in the band Auto Da Fe with former Iron Cross vocalist Sab Grey, prolific DC area drummer Eric Wallgren, and former Black Market Baby bass player Paul Cleary, until joining Alvarez in the Descendents in late 1986. The appearance of Egerton and Alvarez marked a turning point for the Descendents and their allied band ALL; for the first time, drummer Bill Stevenson found himself alongside players with the same manic, obsessively-correct technical virtuosity as he. Egerton's guitar playing is marked by a dexterity, precision and inventiveness rarely equalled in the pop-punk genre. This virtuosity was immediately evident on songs like Iceman, Schizophrenia and Van from the Descendants 1987 album "All". Egerton has continued to refine and develop his style in each subsequent release by consciously adopting lashings of retro-rock riffage and slurred soloing to balance the near-scientific quality of his playing. In 2006, Egerton began recording for a new project, featuring former ALL vocalist Scott Reynolds. To date, the new band have released one song, Sunny Disposition. They have performed live only once, under the moniker 40 Engine in Tulsa, Oklahoma in August 2006.