Yep. I started playing the year before Van Halen came out. It was all Kiss, Thin Lizzy, Queen etc... I just wanted to play rhythms. EVH blows up, Journey blows up, and I'm still just focusing on rhythm.
Then Rhoads hit and game over. Was the first time I heard something and went, yep that's it, that's exactly how I want to play. Totally committed myself to advancing my playing. Then it was just an onslaught of incredible players from the 80's like Vivian, Lynch, Sykes.
What's crazy and to tie this back to Kiss, it was Revenge that ushered in the next big shift in my playing. Kulick was just a monster on that album - most of the flash was gone and his playing was more guttural. That album allowed me to take another step, to stay contemporary with the times and put the shred in the background and I fully embraced stuff like AIC and that movement. I stayed pretty contemporary in my music and playing up until about 10-12 years ago. And then it just stopped, there was really nothing new that I wanted to hear anymore.
For years I couldn't listen to all the stuff I grew up on, I avoided it as much as I could and now...with age lol, I'm back to my roots. Scott Gorham, Gary Moore (not that blues crap), Neal Schon, early Ace, EVH and of course most of those guys that hit in the early 80's like Vivian and Sykes.