Eric Lybeck

Eric Lybeck :: Guitar


Eric Royal Lybeck, the jack of all trades in Rich & Royal has been playing music since he was ten years old. His early musical development was stunted by four years of piano lessons in which he did not advance past the one finger over twelve colored stickers phase. Somehow, Lybeck managed to learn a bootleg version of Bohemian Rhapsody and wrote one original song that caught the attention of this guy tuning his piano, Fred Patella. Patella, who was an accomplished pianist; was trained by Rudolf Serkin at conservatory, and built pianos from scratch. He took Eric under his wing until the young man finished high school. Though Lybeck could barely get through a page of piano score without ruining half the chords and melodies, Patella did encourage his expressionistic performance and imparted valuable compositional lessons.
Somewhere in the early high school period, at 14 years of age, Lybeck was given a gift of a Beatles fake book for piano. As he became obsessed with the music he would play Rain, I Should Have Known Better and Long, Long, Long thinking these were hit Lennon/McCartney songs not knowing any better. After staring at little dots within a small graph over every chord, he realize these were guitar annotations. He ran next door to this little girl’s house and stole her half-toy classical guitar. He painstakingly made his way through the entire Beatles book with a week or two. Soon he was playing Rocky Raccoon at the poolside and the bikini girls were singing and smiling along. Eric Royal Lybeck was thenceforth a guitar player.
A freshman in high school Eric started going over to Henry Rich’s house to mess around with songwriting and learn from the technical experience of Rich’s father, Beckman whose wealth of equipment was overwhelming to the El Degas wielding guitar wannabe. When Lybeck’s best friend C.J. Swenson picked up a Les Paul, Lybeck suggested he play bass in a band developing between Lybeck and Rich. Mostly Lybeck wanted to get his hands on the Les Paul. With an old friend Munish Bakshi on drums, The Crazy Diamonds were formed. Playing original, if odd music inspired by Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, the group frequented local New Brunswick pubs, teenage birthday parties, country clubs, and talent shows. While never quite catching on as a live act, The Crazy Diamonds recording some of the most magical and inspired teenage experimental music in Beckman Rich’s attic home studio. Here the definitive versions of Hair Like Fire, Bleeding Zebra, The Diamond Invasion, and Eye of Japetus were laid down