Smashing Pumpkins then Eric Johnson ... perfect follow up. The same friend that introduced me to SP, introduced me to EJ.
I had a few musician friends, but at this time my inner circle of guitarists centered around me and four others. It was a really good circle because
one friend was into the shredder scene: Vai, Satch, Becker, etc.
one was into finding bands like Smashing Pumpkins and Eric Johnson (less metal / shredder centric)
one was into thrash
one was into RHCP, Johnny Marr, etc
I was into all of it, but brought in more prog (then): Queensryche, Fates, Savatage
So it was a good mix that allowed for quickly finding out about many guitar centric genres
Cliffs of Dover was what finally made me go from a copy of the friends tape to buying the two Johnson CDs and instructional video. But the song that made me a long term EJ fan was Trademark. That song is just so perfect.