Stephen Patrick O'Reilly (born September 2, 1964), better known as Stephen Egerton, is an American guitarist, best known for his work playing with The Descendents and All.
Egerton 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, Egerton 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 Descendents' 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 named 40Engine, featuring former All vocalist Scott Reynolds. To date, the new band has released one song, Sunny Disposition. They performed live in Tulsa, Oklahoma in August 2006 and in Colorado, January 2008.
Egerton plays guitar in an instrumental side-project called Slorder with bassist Bryan "Babyface" Gorder, and he plays drums and bass in a collaboration with guitarist Jason Crowley called Crowley/Egerton.
Egerton also appeared briefly in the 1984 movie The Philadelphia Experiment.
In 2010, Egerton released The Seven Degrees of Stephen Egerton on Paper + Plastick. The album features Egerton playing with a variety of vocalists, including Milo Aukerman, Tim McIlrath, Mike Herrera, and others.
Egerton currently runs Armstrong Studios in Tulsa, OK where he records, produces and mixes music.