As if 2020 hasn’t been brutal enough, news arrived today that in this hellscape year, we’ve lost one of the all-time greats: Eddie Van Halen, legendary guitarist of legendary rock band Van Halen died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer. We wanted to take a moment to acknowledge one of the greatest (some would say the greatest) guitarists of all time, who influenced too many others to count and brought so much joy to millions of rock fans, with a few of our favorite memories of him. Please feel free to add your own in the comments: What’s your favorite Eddie Van Halen memory?
“Hot For Teacher”
Van Halen was the perfect hard rock gateway band for a kid like me: not as rough as Metallica, and hardly as heady as Rush. If Van Halen were going to be rock stars, they were at least going to goddamn well enjoy it. David Lee Roth was the clown, but he could be as outlandish as he wanted because he had the solid, constantly smiling Eddie Van Halen backing him up; Dave’s vocals were amazing, but they still came in second to Eddie’s soaring guitar lines. My friends and I had the first four VH albums on near-constant rotation. Diver Down was kind of a step down, with only covers as standouts, but the band rebounded in a major way with 1984, offering one classic MTV video after another (“Jump,” “Panama”). For me, Van Halen peaked with that album’s “Hot For Teacher.” Alex Van Halen leads it off with a rock-solid drumbeat, which becomes a percussive launching pad for Eddie to set sail from, in a string of almost scalelike notes so fast that they sound like they’re 64ths. The song is basically just a series of epic Eddie guitar solos, bolstered by Dave’s one-offs (I have used the line “I don’t feel tardy” too many times to count) and a chorus that sounds almost bluesy before it sends you out into the rock stratosphere again. I was once so delighted to find “Hot For Teacher” on the jukebox at Chicago’s Irish American Heritage Center, I played it three times in a row. I got some glares when round three kicked off, but I have zero regrets. When I think of Eddie, I think of him in that ugly red tux in the “Hot For Teacher” video trying to line dance with his bandmates, waving goodbye at the end in white gloves—and smiling, naturally. [Gwen Ihnat]
“Donut City”
I think I was in the sixth grade when I saw Van Halen with David Lee Roth for the first time. (I believe Kool & The Gang opened for them.) It’s one of the most memorable concerts I’ve ever seen. Although I was an 11-year-old kid still widening my taste, I was very familiar with their music, even the deep tracks considered “rare.” During the Midwest leg of their 2007-2008 tour, Eddie pulled out a very brief piece of “Donut City” for his solo. The way he seamlessly intertwined his usual line-up with this gem was mind-blowing, and I was ecstatic. Seeing Eddie play something I never thought I’d get to ever hear live was truly something. The man was an idol. [Angelica Cataldo]
“Pound Cake”
I’ll always remember the video for “Poundcake,” which is pretty silly, all things considered. Not exactly one of Van Halen’s finest songs, it was nonetheless the one that introduced me to the band on my own as a grade-school kid watching MTV in hopes of seeming cool to my almost decade-older siblings who were in high school and had no time for anything they perceived as the least bit lame. But to me, it was revelatory: The song opened with the sound of a power drill revving up, and then it actually became part of the song. To a kid who was still mostly hewing the fourth-grade line, it was the awesomest thing I had ever heard. And given that Sammy Hagar is no David Lee Roth, the thing I clocked the most besides that was how much the guitar player smiled. This was rock ’n’ roll. There’s no smiling in rock ’n’ roll! But there was Eddie Van Halen, all grins as he played guitar parts I slowly realized were too difficult for most kids I knew to be able to cover. And that’s the main takeaway I’ll always have of the musician—a guy who was so happy to be doing what he loved, he couldn’t stop smiling. Personal demons or no, Eddie made a giant impact on this kid at an age when he was just learning what it was okay to be, and what it wasn’t. He made smiling and music of a piece; that’s huge. [Alex McLevy]
“Beat It”
Van Halen was responsible for so much memorable music, but one of the things that I always found most badass (for lack of a less trite word) about Eddie was how little he cared about contributing to one of the best-selling singles of all time. It’s well-known that Van Halen provided the guitar solo on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” but he actually never asked for compensation or credit for his part—even though it was more significant than coming in and playing a written piece of music. “It was 20 minutes of my life. I didn’t want anything for doing that,” he told Billboard in 2015. “I literally thought to myself, ‘Who is possibly going to know if I play on this kid’s record?’ So I went to the studio and listened to the song twice, and I didn’t like the section they wanted me to solo over. They wanted me to solo over the breakdown. I asked [Thriller producer] Quincy Jones to edit the chords underneath the solo. Then I could play the solo in the key of E, but it was the chords underneath that made the solo interesting.” Even just referring to Jackson as “this kid.” Badass. [Patrick Gomez]
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The Michael Jackson story has me wondering at what age MJ’s acquaintances felt comfortable specifically calling him a man rather than a kid or some other diminutive name. Not sure whether Eddie is dismissing MJ as a flash in the pan, so much as someone who doesn’t come across as a grown-up.
I think you’re overthinking it.
When talking to Quincy, he was thinking of MJ from the jackson 5 time frame since he didn’t keep up with music.
Even though Off the Wall was pretty successful, I’m guessing MJ was still mostly thought of as “that kid from the Jackson 5″ before Thriller came out and he blew up into the stratosphere.
That’s pretty much how it was, actually. At least for me and my barely teenage white friends, at least.
Easy. As a seven year-old I had a mono clock radio that I kept tuned to our city’s hard rock station (96 Rock in Atlanta), and one of those schoolbox-shaped cassette recorders where you pushed down play and record at the same time. If something came on the radio that I liked, I’d get the recorder going and set it upside down on top of the little speaker so it played right into the pinhole-sized mic. Eruption is one of the very first songs I ever recorded after being blown away by the opening bars, and the segue into their cover of the Kinks’ You Really Got Me in those few minutes cemented Van Halen as my favorite band for the next decade, and me as a fan for life. I soon had posters of these guys all over my room. DLR may not have been the most naturally gifted vocalist, but he was probably the best rock n roll front man of all times. He and Michael Anthony worked together like Michael Stipe and Mike Mills – they were never the same with anyone else on bass. And as a hack high school drummer, Alex was just the man. Truly a band that was more than the sum of its parts. Thanks, Eddie.
I fucking miss 96 Rock.
Toronto’s Best Rock Q107 was my equivalent. Now a shadow of itself as Toronto’s Rock Station, (and previously Classic Rock Q107)
I feel like I can see the smoke coming from his fingers in “You Really Got Me.”
Was just thinking….my first tape I ever owned that was truly mine (not my brothers, cousins, or parents) was 1984. And it was a damn fine tape to own. I also loved 515o. It’s a damn good record, even if its not the original. Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate Michael Anthony more for what he did vocally. I agree with your assessment that he is on par with Mills. However, I remember finally seeing this band live in the early 90s, the For Unlawful Carnage Knowledge tour, and my god….I did not need a bass solo OR a drum solo. Even Eruption bored the fuck out of me at that time. Alice in Chains opened and were such the better live band at the time. Maybe it was my jaded stance at the time, but at that point they were just bloated and boring.
Man, I thought I was old-school by keeping a tape in the boom box so whenever the radio had something I’d be ready. Clearly not. What a great story.
Mark McCain on 96 Rock was the soundtrack of my teenage mornings. Ave atque vale!
I had a yellow Panasonic tape recorder and would do the same thing, just waiting for my favorite songs to come on the radio to tape them. (I also taped Monkees songs off the TV. Was too young to realize that actual albums existed.)
The amount of time it took to actually build a mix tape was measured in weeks, every song missing its first few seconds while I dashed across the room to get my janky recording setup going. But I do miss the anticipation and payoff of a favorite song being played on radio.
Even better when the DJ would announce that the song you wanted was coming up after the break, so you wouldn’t miss the first couple of notes.In the age of Spotify, nobody remembers how much of a labor of love building a mixtape was, especially before double-deck tape decks. That’s why, when you gave it away to someone, it meant something. Now, of course, it’s a meme, a hoary joke about friendless virgins or whatever. But back in the 80s high school days… you were giving away a small piece of your soul.
That was always the worst when the idiot DJ decided to talk through the fist 20 seconds of the song
Ha! I remember making mix tapes in the mid-80’s before getting my first dual-cassette recorder.I’d have a blank tape cued up and ready to go, and as soon as a good song came on the radio, I’d rush over to the stereo and slam “record.” I had some great mix tapes where every track was missing the first three seconds!Or, maybe the DJ would announce what was coming up after the break, and I’d hover next to the stereo, growing anxious as each commercial came to an end, ready to pounce when the very first note rang out.I lived in Atlanta as an adult, but during my mixtape days, I was in Connecticut listening to Z-100, WPLJ and K-Rock.I wonder what kind of things today’s kids will eventually be nostalgic for? The beat goes on.
Amen, brother.
It wasn’t well-known by me, at least, that EVH performed on “Beat It”. Time to give that a listen…
The Beat It solo simultaneously kept Van Halen’s 1984 from becoming their first Number One Album, but it also helped propel MJ to stratospheric stardom. Along with MJ’s record company and Quincy pressuring MTV to get more airplay for African American artists, rock music stations discovered Ed played the blistering solo on the tune. Sure, Steve Lukather played the rest of the song, but most folks then weren’t near as familiar with him. If at all. Not to say he didn’t kick its ass, but he was no EVH.Rock radio started to play a tune by an artist they never would have considered six months prior. All of a sudden, MJ found a brand new audience. I’m certainly not giving Ed the credit for the best selling album if all time, but his fingerprints are on the sleeve.That being said, I’d seen Halen a half a dozen times, save one, all of them left me and my buddies with mile wide grins for hours after the show. I hate that Eddie passed away today. But at least I’ve gotten to spend the night reminiscing with my long lost friends about all the great, insane and joyous times we spent at Van Halen shows.
The greatest compliment I heard of the Beat It solo was from a guitar magazine who said of it “We have no idea what time signature this is in”. And here’s the thing: it still works fantastically.
That’s the thing I always loved about Eddie’s playing: even HE doesn’t know what time signature it’s in because he can’t read music. Dude was a piano and guitar prodigy and didn’t read music. And a lot of VH songs have these parts that jump into different rhythms and time signatures because Alex and Eddie just had a way of looking at each other and knowing when to make a change. It sounds so effortless but makes a lot of their songs really hard to cover or play along to.
First time I ever saw him tuck a ciggie under the strings way way up on the neck of his guitar.
I’ve never smoked and that’s got to be one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.
Too bad smoking killed him.
No! No! It was the guitar pick! Really!
Eh, I’m not sure a definitive link has been established between smoking and throat cancer…
It could have been from eating pussy
Best part was the live vid where he has it tucked there for “Eruption” and he blows little O’s before he starts to play. So fly.
A ‘ciggie”? You’re not … Australian, are you?
Yeah mate nah woulda said durry but.
Punching darts and breaking hearts
Who the hell actually believes EVH is the greatest guitarist of all-time? lulz…Phenomenal skills and very quick hands, but come on.RIP Eddie.
Who the hell shows up here to post some lame shit like that? Bad form, dude.
+1 for Hook reference 🙂 I agree btw.
EVH influenced millions of guitarists.
That he started taking piano at what 6? That he really knew the guitar and other instruments as a professional musician and rarely played the same song the same way because he improvised brilliantly. Like the slightly shred-ier version of Wes Montgomery. I don’t have enough talent to call best or not but I will say rip Eddie you were brilliant and definitely one one of a kind.
It’s David Crosby.
Definely a top 5 rock guitarist of all time.
Show me a better, more influential rock guitarist. And I’m not talking about some classical virtuoso no one’s ever heard of. I mean someone who could just absolutely bring the heat, wrote great hooks and set the tone for a generation of players. I’ll wait.
weren’t they more of a last gasp of a certain style of 70’s guitar rock then some sort of push into the future?
Nah, mainstream guitar rock was king until post-grunge/nu metal killed it. Even most hair metal guitarists 10 years later were doing their best EVH imitations.
Nope. The first VH record was a whole new thing when it first dropped. No one was playing anything like that at the time. And pretty soon everyone was. Much like how Hendrix, Clapton, Page and Beck ushered in the era of the guitar hero, EVH and Randy Rhoads were (for better or worse depending on your tastes) at the forefront of “shredding”. It was a whole new sound at the time. It had its roots in what Tom Scholz was doing with Boston but it was a step beyond that. EVERY 80’s metal guitar player, like Hammett, Mustaine, Malmsteen, Vivian Campbell and so on, owed a direct debt to EVH.
I’ve always felt that Eddie should have pushed himself harder musically and tried his hand at surrounding himself with better musicians just to see what would come of it, but he never chose to do it. David Lee’s manic cheese aside, those first six (especially the first four) VH albums contain some of the most amazing rock guitar playing ever recorded. The tone and the style were revolutionary at the time.
They weren’t a last gasp, though, they were a re-invigoration. If you liked any guitar rock of the ‘80s, ‘90s, or ‘00s, it was most definitely influenced by EVH. Go listen to some of the guitar players who are mourning him – there are guitar sounds on that first VH album that nobody had ever heard, including other prominent guitar players. And Eddie just kept innovating, at least through the early Sammy era. One of a kind, for sure.
It was a complete redirection of how the guitar was played and recorded. Think about the big names of the classic rock era – Page, Townsend, Richards – they were blues-based musicians who had nowhere near Eddie’s dexterity or inventiveness. Maybe someone like Ritchie Blackmoor with Deep Purple could be a comp, but he (and they) never achieved anywhere near Van Halen’s prominence.
Even EVH’s guitar rock peers were guys like Mick Mars and the Young brothers, who wrote great anthems but again weren’t breaking new ground and were less talented overall. Eddie was unique.
“But but but Stanley Jordan…”- That guy
LORD. PALMERSTON.
PITT. THE. ELDER.
It’s basically EVH, Hendrix, and Chuck Berry. Those are the guys. Clapton can fuck off back to his Nazi rallies and Jimmy Page was derivative.
Co-sign. Those are the three who completely changed the way guitar was played going forward. What’s amazing about Hendrix is he did shit people STILL haven’t figured out how to replicate.
Also, Jimmy Page wasn’t a very good lead guitarist…
Not to mention the multiple advancements in guitar pickup, bridge, and amplifier technology that Eddie INVENTED on his own. He literally changed the sound of rock guitar forever with his playing AND with the modifications he made to equipment.
Dimebag Darrell is at/near the top of that list. Guy was straight fire. RIP.
Hendrix? I’ve always thought Van Halen was basically the white Hendrix.
Set aside the concept of best for a moment. I think he’s the most exciting rock guitarist ever.
oh hush your mouth, damn. He was one of the greatest electric rock guitarists of our time, and you can rot in hell if you say different.
But he deserves the title, “One of the greatest of all time.” Mostly because of an article I read of a conversation between him and the great Steve Lukather. Steve wondered how he can play triplets so fast. Eddie just laughed and said (I’m paraphrasing as I don’t remember the exact quote), “It’s only just hammering with my free hand and pulling off the string with the other.” You’d understand this better if you were a guitarist how ingeniously simple yet effective and innovative this was at the time. Now you see everybody on YouTube do it. RIP EVH.
…so basically, ripping off banjo players… Half-kidding because all props go to EVH who was exceptionally talented and creative. But innovative? Well, that technique was really just new to rock guitar, no? I mean, cellists probably do that too. It’s an essential technique to playing bluegrass and clawhammer banjo. But I’m not trying to argue or contradict because EVH definitely brought something new to rock and did it amazingly well and amazingly creatively and produced an amazing sound.
Welll yeah as teenagers we didn’t know about music history, only that EVH was a guitar god that everyone wanted to emulate. It’s like saying Larry Graham showed us how to slap and pop on the bass. Nowadays I know upright bassists have been doing it for decades, but Larry started it for the electric bass guitar.
Yep. And I’m going to pull back some on my point. No banjoist does hammer-ons/pull-offs with BOTH hands to get that cool EVH sound. So in that sense I was dead wrong.
There are only handful of musicians who completely revolutionize the way that their instrument is played. Eddie is in that group. No one sounded like him before he showed up and then everyone sounded like him.
Are we talking in the Rock field? Cause I do. More importantly, he’s one of the guitarists who changed how people played the instrument. Clapton, Hendrix, and EVH are the big three for rock guitar in what they brought to the table and how many people they influenced.
You can’t leave Jeff Beck off this list though, or Frank Zappa for that matter
I beg to differ. I’ve been playing guitar for a long time and I know a LOT of guitarists, and it’s been exceedingly rare that someone mentions those two guitarists as guys who made them want to play guitar. I’m not denying their ability, but they didn’t ‘change the game’ in the way the three guys I listed did.
Maybe so, but ask the world’s best living guitarists and they all cite Jeff Beck as the best of the best, so if it wasn’t for him, all our other great guitarists wouldn’t have had such an amazing influence to inspire them. And he’s still active ferchrissakes!
This should be great: please name the best living guitarists who cite Jeff Beck as their influence. Personally, I think he’s WAY over-rated. He’s like Clapton with limited commercial success and way more over playing. I do admire him still being active, but I’ll be honest: I just don’t get the love for the guy.
Off the top of my head David Gilmour believes Beck is the best. After all, Pink Floyd approached him to replace Syd, can you imagine what that would’ve been like?? And Waters used Beck on his Amused to Death album, not the greatest release by any means but the leads were awesome. Jimmy Page also cites him as one of the greatest. I personally think Clapton is overrated, it’s all pentatonic blues riffs. He never experimented or took any risks. Hell, he didn’t even want to get on stage after Jimi blew everyone’s minds.
I also think Clapton is 0ver-rated BUT if you look at what he brought to the table at the time he was hugely influential. I’m not a a blues fan in any sense, but at the time he exploded with the Bluesbreakers he was the next step in guitar playing. Even if I’m not a fan, I can recognize how influential he was. Same with Hendrix: I generally don’t listen to him a ton but he was the next step as well. Then again, I think Gilmour (blues bend guy) and Page (sloppy blues guy) are both over-rated so I’m still not seeing the reason Beck should be considered so great…
OK you win.
Nah. It’s cool just talking guitar to be honest. Everyone has and is entitled to their opinions. My favorite guitarists are guys who absolutely are not considered the ‘vanguard’ of playing:Bob Stinson, Chris Bell/Alex Chilton, Mick Jones and Richard Lloyd. It’s preference is all.
Haha mine would be Zappa, Trey Anastasio, David Gilmour, Hendrix, Jerry Garcia. Even Jeff Buckley, not so much as a lead guitarist obviously, but the man could play beautifully.
And whaddaya know? Richard Lloyd was a big fan of none other than Jeff Beck!
I’ve actually met Lloyd. He’s pretty weird and his all time favorite player is Hendrix. Allegedly he even claims he took lessons from Hendrix…
who said they did? sit down and shut up
Other guitarists…
Were you finally able to come after you posted this?
I remember someone once explaining to me that Mark Tremonti had reinvented “rock guitar”.A lot of people have opinions, man.
See, I read this comment, but all I hear is “Blah blah blah, I’m not enough of a dude to admit that “Ice Cream Man” is the finest song ever made.”
Thanks for the input, Joe Satriani.
The fuck? That is a bad take and you are a bad person for saying it. Not sure anyone is definitively held to be the greatest ever, but EVH is certainly in the discussion. The list of great guitarists that worship him, that see him as their idol, is virtually endless. Greatest ever? Maybe, maybe not. But he is definitely in the discussion.
name a guitarist as skilled, with their own unmistakable and uncopyable style who made as much great music as did EVH. Better technical players? Maybe. But EVH was a rock guitarist whose goal was to make good fun music. Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix are the only two other guitar players I can think of who belong in this group.
Frank Zappa, or maybe even Adrian Belew.
As a guitarist, I can’t think of a more influential player. He owned the 80s and had a million flashy, tapping impersonators, leading Frank Zappa saying they need to go to “notes anonymous.”
No kidding I remember being in a wicked scene queen’s apartment in 1980 and I saw the Ramones’ first album next to Van Halen’s first album next to AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, and up until then it was a time when you stood steadfastly by your musical heroes and nobody who worshiped AC/DC dared to think Van Halen was anything but a bunch of poodle heads and fuck all of you the Ramones were better than anyone’s band and screw you Mister Eddie Van Halen was a goddam guitar hero genius so who do you shit and nya nya nya nya nya and I looked at her and I said “really?” and she said “oh yeah” and I do believe it was the beginning of a hard rock come-to-Jesus movement that seems only too normal now but back then it was a startling revelation to a lot of folks including me.
Pretentious new wave kid in the 80s/secretly owned, listened to, and enjoyed all VH albums up to that point including 1984. And I know I wasn’t the only one.
I was a hard core Iron Maiden/Judas Priest metalhead, and I had all the VH albums, and some New Wave ones too.
I said this below, but I also secretly loved VH even as I got into Black Flag, The Misfits, Dead Kennedys and so forth in the mid to late 80’s. I JUST missed that early punk/hardcore wave but I did get to see the next one of bands like Agnostic Front, Biohazard and Murphy’s Law. But I’d still secretly play my VH… 🙂
Looking back almost 40 years later, it seems strange how things were categorized. I understand why VH was, for the most part, put in the heavy metal bucket but it seems silly from a distance. The rest of VH’s overall schtick isn’t all that much different from the punk schtick. Just slightly different. Covers, check, but done in a more sincere and glossy way as opposed to ironic and stripped down. Hedonism, check, but instead of heroin and BDSM, alcohol and phallocentric. At the same time, you have Billy Idol, The Cult and the Smiths showcasing virtuoso guitarists being happily accepted by the new wavers who were supposed to hate EVH and other metal guitar virtuosos. Plenty of other examples of 80s new wave, if not punk rock, musical masters: Flea, the Durutti Column, others who were closer to punk even especially in the thrash category: Suicidal Tendencies, etc. Then in the late 80s, Guns and Roses, Metallica and Jane’s Addiction came along and I felt like everyone at that point said “fuck it this is stupid” which led to grunge.
Yeah. I can relate. I remember having a similar mindset when I was young in the early 1980s, but I also remember thinking f—k it, I can’t deny that I love Steely Dan and Neil Young!
I get this. I saw “Rock n Roll HS” at a drive in as a kid and I loved them, and then I heard VH and it was like having to choose which parent to live with.You can love both (now) but at the time it felt wrong.
Harry Dean yeah, exactly!I should have mentioned the fact that there was a cover of the Kinks’ You Really Got Me on the VH album which was also a genre-bending mind-blower then but happens all the time now. But the amazing technique and expression of Eddie’s guitar sound was, in my mind, a great equalizer because no matter what type of music you liked you couldn’t help but acknowledge his virtuosity
What made the divide greater in the 80’s was how hair metal bands all used his style of playing (looking at you, Dokken and White Lion) and as I got into Thrash, Hardcore and Punk it made VH less easy to digest. And then you got Van Hagar, although I’d be lying if I didn’t LOVE the 5150 album at the time. But with Van Hagar it felt like diminishing returns every album to the point that by 1990 or so I gave up and went full on the Punk and Hardcore bandwagon. Nowadays though I love both VH (especially the early albums) and my punk obsessions like the Ramones, Clash and The Replacements.
I just can’t believe he is gone.I first discovered VH at the age of 5, and never looked back. I never met him, but I feel like I’ve lost a friend.
I’ve got to admit, his death is affecting me more than I thought it would. I’m really, truly sad about this.
Maybe it’s because he always had a smile on his face when playing. It brought joy to him and he spread it to others. That’s something that’s rare in music.The world is a lesser place without him in it.
I read super rich rock star Stewart Copeland’s autobiography, and you know what was refreshing? He was happy, and happy to admit it. Ed, too, brought the joy.
Yeah, I started playing the entire discography from track one and had to fight back some tears. Still in Women & Children First.
I spent several hours on youtube last night. Watching crappy 30-40 year old recordings of Van Halen concerts. Then I pulled out my phone and looked at all the pictures and videos I took from the last Van Halen concert I went to. It sounds stupid, but felt like I had to. Anytime I started thinking I needed to go to bed and get some sleep, I was like, “just one more video… “. It really is depressing knowing that we’ll never get to see him perform again.
Eddie yesterday. My 22-year-old cat today. It’s not been great.
I’m very sorry to hear this. I lost a cat back in Feb due to old age. She was my constant companion for years. It’s very hard. I still look for her sometimes, momentarily forgetting that she’s gone.
I blame DJT. Fact.
I blame DJT for Eddy Van Halen’s death. I *Hate* Donald ‘Jefe’ Drumpftoid with all my being. Fact.
Video for Pretty Woman was pretty awesome back in the day
I remember thinking it was so cool his wife’s character on One Day At A Time had an Eddie Van Halen poster hanging in her bedroom.My favorite Eddie memory is him playing an instrumental version of “Panama” with Paul Schaeffer on Letterman. Rumor has it it was because he’d gotten into a fight with DLR, but they’d booked Letterman and EVH didn’t want to no show. His smile just slays me.
Eddie was just cool. DLR was a hype man, Michael Anthony a party animal and Alex a beast on the kit (and kind of a goofball out from behind it), but Eddie always made being a rock star look fun and easy.Plus I knew cheerleaders who couldn’t do this:
I want those shoes he’s wearing that picture.
As if Eddie wasn’t already cool enough, he goes and marries the girl EVERY guy my age had a crush on.
https://g.co/kgs/SMqvgt
Gotta be the hamburger in “Better off Dead.”
Savage, Steve.
“Runnin’ With the Devil” was one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar. It was relatively easy, yet incredibly satisfying. I remember feeling like a total badass for half-assing my way through it, even if it wasn’t the most challenging VH song to learn. What made Eddie such a great musician was his attention to detail. Unlike many of clones he inspired, he didn’t just play fast for the sake of it. Yes, his technique was impeccable, but so was his musicality. You could tell he had spent time working out every note on evey solo and riff to make them sound exactly the way he had envisioned then in his brilliant mind.RIP.
Which is why guys like Malmsteen just bored the shit out of me. A song might be interesting for about 60 seconds, they you’re like yeah…I get it. What else do you have?
Same here. I fucking hated that wave of guitar ‘gods’ who came out in the 80’s like Yngwie, Vai, Satriani, Eric Johnson and the rest. They can fucking PLAY but they can’t write a great rock song. EVH could do that in spades.
Eric Johnson’s first two albums are full of great songs, rock and otherwise. His later stuff didn’t quite compare but it’s still pretty good.
If you say so: taste is subjective. I remember being relatively bored by it although I admit his radio hit (Wings of Dover?) had a decent melody line.
You evidently haven’t haven’t heard Satriani’s “Satch Boogie”; all the rock radio stations in KC were playing that in regular rotation when it burst on the scene. That’s a slammin’ tune!
Oh I have my friend…I have. I stand by my statement.
he’s an all around disappointment ever hear the bootleg with him and jeff beck?no one has. it doesn’t exist what about that solo record of only instrumentals that he never released but a copy got out there and finally he relented and did a quiet premiere DOESN’T EXISThe sucks. he knew how to play enough to make moneythat’s it.
he really WILL NOT be missed…sad but true
There are so many cool things to like about EVH, but my favorite has to be from the 90’s. VH1 did this all star garage band jam with Paul Shaffer as the band leader. EVH, Steve Winwood, Richie Sambora, Sheryl Crow, and Bryan Adams with some more I can’t remember were part of it. During one song Richie and EVH are going back and forth with solos. I remember Sheryl Crow nudging Bryan Adams to get him to join in. With a very serious face Bryan shook his head ‘no’. A few moments later, as if he knew, EVH went off on another blistering solo while pointing his guitar at Adams, acting like he was shooting him with a machine gun with that big ole smile on his face. Goddamn, it brings a smile to my face just thinking about it.
Bryan Adams made a career out of staying in his lane. He might have never recovered if he tried to jump in with those two.Reminds me of Prince playing While My Guitar Gently Weeps with Petty, Jeff Lynne, Steve Winwood and a bunch of other top guys, and laying into an epic solo while shooting those guys “you getting all this? Good.” looks.
The George Harrison tribute at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. That was a great moment.
That’s the one. His little side-eye is sublime
Oh man, that rendition of “While my Guitar Gently Weeps” is like a slog of boring ass classic rock, but then Prince comes in and just slays everyone and everything in his path.
It’s a nice moment for a bunch of old pros who are completely comfortable in their skins, having a loose jam together. The Prince says “fuck this” and goes off, complete with just flinging his guitar over his head when he’s done. Even better than a mic drop.
And best part is after his initial burst, Petty and Dhani Harrison start nodding to encourage him like “Keep going! This is good shit!”
Well Adams is Canadian, so…
Bryan Adams started off as a pretty hard-core rocker, before he broke big in the States. His first album was self titled, and his second album, You Want It, You Got It, has a ripping title track. I heard an interview with him, and he said he wanted to call the second album: Bryan Adams Hasn’t Heard of You, Either.Then Cuts Like a Knife came out and charted in the States, and he switched over to power ballads and then just ballads, and I stopped listening to him. But when he was young the guy could rock.
He also co-wrote one of KISS’s best and hardest-rocking songs, “War Machine.”
Is there footage of that on YouTube or anywhere? Now I’m curious to see it.
Here you go, dude.
I love the formality of that video’s title: “Edward Van Halen.”
today is the day we do not say anything bad about Van Halen, RIP
I’d long wondered if that was really an EVH guitar solo, or some off-brand guitar shredding b/c EVH would have been too expensive. It wasn’t until his passing that I decided to google it, and apparently it is. According to Eddie, he just recorded “some noise” for them to use.It’s also become apparent in what I’ve read since his death that getting EVH to appear in your project probably wasn’t expensive at all, as all the stories about his “Beat It” solo indicate he was happy to do it for very little in return.
I was going to say that guitar solo from Hot for Teacher, so…I guess I don’t have much to add here. It was truly the first guitar solo I saw as a kid that made me want to play the guitar, which is something.
I remember 15(20?) years ago seeing Ween and them encoring with a totally straight, balls-rocking Hot For Teacher. It fucking ruled, Dean just tearing it up on guitar knowing what he had to live up to and somehow doing it. We all lost our shit. I never saw Van Halen live but I’ll take what I got.
Ween is so great. One of the 20th century’s most special and interesting bands, IMO. It’s hard to walk that line between humor and genuinely good music, so many novelty or comedy songs are musically lazy but they’re very special.
Absolutely. Their parodies are made to stand with what they’re goofing on.
I think I saw that video when I was 11, and my mind was forever shattered. I’ll just say it prompted multiple awakenings in my adolescent mind.
Solo? Hell, even the intro
I remember MTV played three live Van Halen videos over and over again pretty much up until Jump came out. I also remember that the video for “Unchained” was pretty amazing. If an alien came down and asked what music was, you could just play them this video as a way of describing it
Or you could pretend to be an alien to scare your dad and use a EVH solo to prove it…
Accidentally stole RobGrizzly’s idea down the page…
Imagine how truly amazing VH would have been if Dave could sing worth a shit. He was a dynamic and incredible frontman with very limited vocal skills. Regardless, I am a VH Roth-era man.
Dude could jump off of drum risers while doing a split. That’s all you need in a front man
I was 10 when the first record came out, but fortunately, I have a guitar playing brother who is four years older. He turned me on to it, and that record blew my mind.
Even now, 40+ years later, the first two (or three) records still get played in a row during the first really warm day here in NW Ohio. And they get played LOUD.
The initial visual that comes to mind is of Eddie walking down the tabletops towards the camera while pretending to play his guitar in the Hot For Teacher video. He looks like he’s having a blast.
He was always having a blast. That’s what I liked about him, there was no posing or looking unaffected…he was genuinely having a good time. The only other guitarist that I’ve noticed (I’m sure there are many others) do the same thing was Billy Zoom of X. When I first saw them play, I thought he was smiling to be ironic because it was almost over the top. But no…dude was genuinely happy to be playing his music.
The way he throws the book aside too. Aw, it was the best.
I refuse to mourn a cis white man.
In my early teens I was (and remain) a big AC/DC fan and thought Angus Young was the be-all end-all of rock guitarists. I had a few friends at school who felt the same about Eddie and we used to argue endlessly about it. Thing is, I’d only heard a few of their radio tracks at that point (and some, like “Dance the Night Away” I didn’t even know was theirs). One day, my friend Rick brought me to his place after school and said, “just listen to this” and put on VHOne and I was just totally enthralled. Like, it actually blew me away. It sounds otherwordly, or at least it did then, and there’s not a clinker on it.Been listening for 35 years and (while I still prefer DC) those first six albums still blow me away!
I had been a fan of theirs for awhile but was too young to go see them play.
Before 1984 came out, they played the US Festival but I was only a sophomore in high school. My parents didn’t allow me to go and I missed out on not only Van Halen but U2, the Clash etc. I’m still bitter about this.
When 1984 came out, my friends were planning on going so I asked them to get me a ticket. Turns out, I wasn’t getting a very good grade in math and my parents didn’t let me go. I’m still bitter about this.Then in 1985, Van Halen parted ways with DLR and brought on Sammy Hagar. I’m still bitter about this. Even though in retrospect, they did some pretty good work together.Long story short…My boss had an extra ticket to see them on the tour when Kool and the Gang opened for them (2012?), and offered it to me. Floor seats at Staples Center. They opened with Unchained, my favorite VH song and 25 years later, it’s like all of that bitterness finally went away! I’m so sad that he’s gone. Blues guitarists only get better with age, he should’ve had another 20 years.
I saw them on this same tour – I won third-row tickets for their show at the SAP Center from the local classic rock station merely for being the 34th caller (the day of the giveaway was the 34th anniversary of their first album’s release). Still wish I could have seen them in their prime, but Eddie was in great form that night.
My favorite memory was finding out that his name is actually short for Edible Van Halen.
It’s pretty hard to single out any one tune. I’d have to point to albums. The first VH album (the album that changed rock guitar), then 1984 (their peak of technical brilliance, firing on all cylinders), and then 5150 (focusing more on songwriting only VH could come up with).For me, those three represented the band. The other albums did well, but these three albums were just so defining. You knew exactly what the band was capable of.
Sitting on my friends porch, trying to impress some girls two houses down by playing a mixtape that included Eric Clapton’s Cocaine, Rush’s Tom Sawyer, a few other songs. It ended with what we thought was the pièce de resistance: Eruption/You Really Got Me. It was kind of a short mix, so we played it on repeat. We were convinced they were grooving to it, mainly because they didn’t leave. After the 4th time run through, with EVH’s amazing YRGM coda fading, the girls yelled over “Don’t you have anything else to play?”. *Then* they left. Crushed.
How cool we thought we were in the 80’s, playing rock songs on the front porch for the girls walking by until my mom came out and said to turn it down.
oddly enough, back in the early/ mid 80s, i remember going with my small private high school to see a laser light show with van halen tunes. i have no idea why we went to that one in particular, but it sticks in my head since i think that is the only laser light show i ever went to. those were a thing… 🙂
The live version of Best of Both Worlds (Live Without a Net) is so good I have a hard time listening to the album version.
Alex is right. His smile while playing was great. It let you enjoy the music all the more.
I am lucky enough to have seen all 3 versions of this band (yes, even Gary Charone) live. Even when I saw the DLR version a few years ago (DLR was well past his prime), Eddie was still the same shot out of cannon amazing like he was back in 95 when I first saw them with Haggar.
The first time I heard him I said “Wow, his guitar matches his pants!” and “Why does he play so many fucking notes?”
While I’ve known this all along, Eddie’s death and the tributes remind me that Van Halen was the soundtrack for most of my life.
It started in Music Appreciation in middle school. After a class of classics and show tunes, the teacher would let us listen to whatever we wanted to. One of my classmates had a cassette of Van Halen, and we’d listen to Eruption over and over. To this day when I hear Eddie switch pickups between the end of the solo and the beginning of You Really Got Me, my mind’s eye goes back to that practice room in middle school.It goes on from there. While I’ve never stopped listening to VH, they’ve sort of faded to the back of my mind the last decade or so, apart from watching the occasional clip on YouTube or listening to Unchained. I can tie back almost every good memory from before I turned 30 to a Van Halen song, and a few after that.
Deep Tracks on SiriusXM is doing its name proud right now. As I’m typing this they’re playing Once from Van Halen III – a terrible album and a waste of Gary Cherone – that I don’t recall listening to more than, well, once.
Mtv Classic is playing a slew of Van Halen videos this morning. What a blast! Those videos (from 1984 especially) played such a big role in my life as a kid. They taught me everything about what a band should be. I had very little concept of anything other than how much fun rock and roll was. I didn’t know anything about egos or attitudes. Who’s just four guys having a blast smiling and jumping around on the stage.
I’m by no means a Van Halen fan, I like a few songs, but as a budding teenage guitarist in the early 2000s, there were always interviews and articles about the guy’s obsessive pursuit of better gear and guitars that did what he wanted them to. I think it was pretty recent for me but at some point it just clicked into place that he’s one of those few guitarists who utterly changed the game. Even if you’re not into his brand of shred or rock, if you play guitar, you owe EVH a debt whether you’re aware of it or not. He pushed the instrument as a vehicle for the music he did, and that’s pretty cool.
I was never into 80s party-hard cock rock like VH, so I’ve never really appreciated him. But I just watched 13 minutes of him soloing on stage and couldn’t take my eyes away.
I was 4 or 5 when the “Jump” video came out. My very first introduction to Eddie was of him smiling at me. All of these years later, if I think of or hear the name Eddie Van Halen, I immediately picture that smile.
i was not prepared. shoulda known this flopping wet douchebag of a year isn’t done with us yet. i had never heard of Van Halen when in, geez, 1978? 79? maybe even 77, lotta loud guitars and and drugs of all amplitudes ago at any rate, i began my life-long adoration of Eddie and the band. i was kickin it in downtown st paul minny-soda when i noticed a hand-written sign taped to the door of the civic center theatre. not the huge new arena, but the quaint theatre it meant to replace. FROM SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA VAN HALEN $5.00 TONIGHT! okay that was rather a lot of cash for me but what the hell, i had a finn in my jeans and music was my life so in i went. i was not prepared. i emerged several hours later, ears bleeding and smiling possibly laughing out loud and gibbering with pure joy i dunno but i had had my skull torn open and jammed with pixie dust and exploded rainbows and candy and puppies and so many SOUNDS which i, still a teenager but nontheless a grizzled concert veteran, did not know were possible except maybe well ya know, jimi, but he existed at that moment only on recordings so wasn’t umm quite…real, maybe? i had never ever felt music like this, and the band just seemed so happy and loving what they were putting out there and the audience was picking it up and it was a vibe i will never experience again. we were all just having fun together. it was love. i still have the rose that dlr threw from the stage. punk rock found me and i remained an unabated Van Halen fangirl which was not punk nonono the opposite man the very essence of greedy manufactured corporate rock i might as well have just taken a seat on the board of GM or Bell Telephone. it alright. they were not there that divine night and if you can listen to ‘Eruption’ or ‘Cathedral’ and not appreciate the the awesome beauty of eddie and his magic, you may be punk but you ain’t no rocker. apologies. this was a tangent i did not anticipate. so when i heard the news baby something died in me also, the last gasp of youth maybe. a giddy girl grinning on a hot midwestern night with that guitar ringing in my happy head…i weep for us all. fuck 2020. thank you, eddie. i love you. see ya on the other side.
My friends and I had this shitty noise band for a while, and one of our signature tracks would be to make horrendous David Lee Roth impersonations while someone else in the band did Eddie guitar noises with their mouth.
We all unironically loved Van Halen, of course, because Van Halen is fucking awesome. It is a sad day, today.
In case anyone is interested, Sirius/XM’s channel 27 in now a Van Halen tribute channel for a few days.
In the 80s there were two kinds of music I loved – hip-hop and hair metal. Since I had a record player and did not have a guitar, I most often tried my hand at being a low rent DJ Scott La Rock by ruining my record player and my limited record collection with some terrible scratching. My parents wouldn’t let me touch their records though, so I had to go hit up yard sales for things I wouldn’t feel bad about ruining. Up until then, the only Van Halen song I knew was “Jump”, which was not my cup of tea, so when I found a copy of Women and Children First at a yard sale, I figured it was perfect – a cheap used record by a band I don’t like. I got home, put it on to figure out where the best scratching spot would be and got blasted in the face by “And the Cradle Will Rock…” and “Everybody Wants Some!!” and thus began my love of Van Halen.I know the DLR classics get most of the love, but I think a lot of his most interesting guitar work came during the Van Hagar years. 5150 especially contains some insane playing that I still marvel at to this day.
It’s funny you mention that he had some great licks/solos later – I was listening to A Different Kind of Truth a couple weeks ago just marveling at some of the rhythm work.
That album is so good. It’ll be interesting to see if Wolfgang is able to dig up more older material and remaster/produce it into a posthumous album, but if A Different Kind of Truth is the album they go out on, it’s a great capper to Eddie & the band’s legacy.
remember that show where eddie and stevie ray vaughn jammed all night?it didn’t happen.how bout that secret solo record that ed made “just for kicks”but got bootlegged, then he talked for years about releasing it officially but never didyeah, that doesn’t exist either he sucks.he was only good enough to make himself money and nothing else
look, he wasn’t that goodand he was a whiner to boot he didn’t invent tapping and paul gilbert is more influential that ed wan halen ed was just a drunk little boy who’s father resented him and that’s what his music sounds like
eddie was a WASTE of talentwhen he was 27, he was a god when he was 37, he had GIVEN UP he wasted the talent he had drinking and never playing with people other than his brother he’s not on the “A” levelhe’s a “B” with Gary Moore or Rory Gallagher
Despite being an old Gen Xer, the first time I saw Van Halen was for their “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” tour. During “Why Can’t This Be Love”, Sammy walked around with the mic and let the other members of the band sing a few lines. When he got to Eddie, I was stunned and surprised at how good his voice was! Then it dawned on me that of course he could sing! The background vocals for ALL the Van Halen songs were done by Eddie, Alex and Michael. There was so much focus on Eddie’s guitar playing that it’s easy to forget what a talented multi-instrumentalist he was.
The “Everybody Wants Some” scene in Better Off Dead.
I had kind of skipped over Van Halen. I was born in the 80’s, but grew up in the 90’s which meant that the Van Halen that was on the radio and MTV was Van Hagar. By the time I was 11, there was already Nirvana, Metallica and others playing rock and I didn’t care. Sometime in high school I was introduced (or maybe understood) John Cusack’s filmography, mainly Better Off Dead, thanks to High Fidelity. There was a truly bizarre scene with a claymation scene that’s backed up with a “Eveybody Wants Some” and the crazy divebombs that Eddie play in that song singlehandedly got someone who was “too cool” (note I have never been cool) to go back and listen to a shit ton of Van Halen. Wish I could have seen them at least once, but by that point every incarnation of the band seemed…off?
My introductory Van Halen album was Diver Down, nobody’s idea of a superior VH album. But I’ll go to bat for the originals on there – especially “Hang ‘Em High” and “The Full Bug” – as the best they ever did. Absolute scorchers for a kid who was otherwise starting out with Huey Lewis & The News.Tough to pin down my favourite playing from him. Face-melters with a drunken elegance all over the place, but even schmaltz like “Can’t Stop Loving You” has lovely, tasteful playing.
Diver Down is a fantastic album and fuck anyone who doesn’t think so. Diversity, versatility, humor, musicianship, showmanship, Ed & Al’s dad … that record had it all. I can’t imagine how miserable a person you would have to be to dislike Diver Down.
My cousins are a pair of guitar virtuosos who come from a wealthy family. When they were in their teens in the late 80s, their parents popped for them to attend a very exclusive and very expensive three-day guitar camp with EVH. They were so excited it made Christmas day look like peanuts. Turns out, Eddie only showed up on the last day for like 20 minutes to wish them well and pat them on the back. They didn’t give a shit – it was still the greatest moment of their lives. (The parents were MASSIVELY pissed though.)
That’s a really funny story.
This is like the real life version of that sitcom trope where the kids get sent off to a branded summer camp only to have some miserably underpaid counselor wheel out an A/V cart and shove a VHS in with a prerecorded bit from the celebrity endorser and then the kids go on to have a miserable two weeks.
Your cousins got Kamp Krustied. Incredible.
Probably when he and the guys played Jeff Spicoli’s birthday party.Seriously though, Van Halen is easily my first favorite band. I have now been listening to them since I was four years old. My dad, the then 30 year old classic-rock purist Boomer, bought their debut album because a teenage neighbor turned him onto them. My favorite memory has to be seeing Eddie play Eruption live for the first time. It wasn’t until the Van Hagar years, so I had heard the record version countless times. I knew he could and would still play it, but that moment still felt so damn special. Saw them again many years later when they went on tour after reuniting with Diamond Dave and got to hear it again.
~1984, Shawnee, KS. I was in the 2nd grade. My mom sent me to school with flowers from her garden to bring to my teacher (she did this often). Mustered in the cafeteria first thing in the morning, waiting to be released to class, a group of older boys clocked me and started singing “Hot For Teacher” in unison. I shrank in humiliation. I had never heard the song before, so I assumed they had written it especially for this occasion.
I graduated high school in ‘03, so I spent most of my youth with the dying days of post-grunge and nu-metal. Reality quickly became depressing thanks to stress from college, so I didn’t need my music adding to it. That’s how I discovered Van Halen; it was always high energy and always got me moving.
I went through every VH album chronologically (VH3 was rough, woof), and what really stood out to me was “Hear About It Later” on Fair Warning. It was slinky, sinister, had a stomp during the breakdown few other Van Halen songs had. Such an underrated jam.
I have all of Van Halen’s studio albums except A Different Kind of Truth. I listen to the DLR-era albums quite a bit, and the Van Hagar albums every now and then. But it has been close to decades since I’ve listened to VH3. Sometimes I think to myself, “Maybe I should give this a spin, maybe it wasn’t as bad as I remember…. Nah, forget it. It is!”
And it hits you with how bad it is right away, doesn’t it? You get amped up for “Without You” and you’re like “The fuck is this?” when the song finally starts. The verses don’t blend with the chorus musically or lyrically, there’s nine different segments and/or tempo changes, Gary’s vocals sound like they’re struggling to match the key the song is in. Critics at the time called that the only good song on the record, and I wonder what the hell they were listening to because it’s one of the worst rock singles I’ve ever heard.
“Fire in the Hole” is a bit better, but it sounds like a second-tier re-write of “Poundcake”.
Boy, does it ever. This was what it took to displace Fair Warning as Van Halen’s least commercially successful album – and Fair Warning is worlds better than VH3.
As far as I know, A Different Kind of Truth didn’t go Gold while VH3 did, so I think that may inch out for lowest seller.
There’s parts of that record I feel are a return to form, but it’s hindered by quite a few things:
Everything’s over-produced so it doesn’t have the spontaneity of the early Roth records. It’s clearly Eddie’s show and Dave has to place nice to stick around. You know Roth recorded vocals far on the other side of the state so they didn’t kill each other in the studio. Michael Anthony’s backing vocals are dearly missed, and makes you wonder what voodoo they had to do for the harmonies because Eddie and Wolfgang are nowhere near the singer Mike was. And “Tattoo” was a terrible choice as a lead single.
Oh yeah – back when I was in bands: Me and a buddy waited all day for Women and Children First to drop at the “record store” and when we got it we put it on in my room, cranked it, and then went to the living room to ingest all manner of substances. What came out, at top volume, was, of course, the banging keyboard/guitar mix opening of …And The Cradle Will Rock. Our jaws literally dropped open in a true WTF moment of sheer EVH joy. We played that record over and over until the neighbor complained. It is still a standout moment in my life.I saw them later when they toured for that album but it wasn’t a great show. The Baltimore Civic Center had the worst sound and they seemed pretty drunk at the show. It was hard to make out Edward’s solo. However, Alex’s drums caught fire nicely with DLR putting them out with the extinguisher.
Those, indeed, were the days my friend…
Have you seen Junior’s grades?
BTW: what the hell is up with this Kinja commenting and accounts. I’ve had a AV Club account for years and this is third time I’ve had to re-jigger this account to get it to work, and it still won’t load my profile pic.Sheesh.
I grew up in a small town in Ohio and as a kid mostly had no real musical taste of my own. I listened to whatever was on the radio or country or Christian music. One night when I was 13 I was getting a ride out to a friends house in the country. We were driving alone on this straight road and there was a tornado warning out for the area. I looked out the passenger window and it was this beautiful orange sunset. I looked out the driver side window and it was a pitch black sky. I’m sure this wasn’t the case but in my memory it seemed like the sky transitioned from orange to black directly on that road. The guy driving the car had the radio turned to the classic rock station and right as I saw that orange-to-black sky with the tornado warning, Runnin’ with the Devil came on the radio. I’d never heard it before. The hair stood up on my neck and it was one of those moments where you realize your life had been one way and now it was another. Van Halen literally changed my life by opening me up to a whole world of music I never knew existed.
Years later I got to see them on their 2007 reunion tour with DLR. I was so excited to get to the show that I got pulled over for speeding. When the cop asked me why I was going so fast I told him I was on my way to see Van Halen with David Lee Roth. The cop let me off with a warning.
For me it’s gotta be the opening, tuned down riff from “Unchained.” That was some magic shit right there…
My high school, a few years before I was there. Apparently, VH was signed the week previously so probably their last high school gig ever.
I went back to college in 1978. The first day of school, I pulled into the school parking lot BLASTING “Runnin’ With The Devil”. I remember I was pounding out the beat on the steering wheel. This really cute girl spotted me and came over to my car laughing. My first college friend and we’re still friends 42 years later!
It’s been 30 years and I still can’t figure out why Sammy Hagar wore his pajamas for that Poundcake video.
I was about 15 or 16 when one of my friends from school called me and told me to get over to his house, quick! All he told me was that his older brother brought home an album by a new band that blew away anything he had heard to that point. Sure enough, that debut record by Van Halen was as awesome as my friend built it up to be. To be honest, I wasn’t all that impressed with the leadoff track (Runnin’ With The Devil). But the back-to-back punch of “Eruption/You Really Got Me” was jaw-dropping guitar shredding of the highest order. From that moment I became a huge Van Halen fan.
First time I heard him was from “Beat It” when I was living in London where my dad was stationed for work. the song was OK, but it was the guitar solo that got me. I didn’t know it was EVH till much later on. Similar thing with SRV and him playing the guitar on David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”. A few years later I fell into SRV and then one day I heard Let’s Dance and thought, that really sounds like SRV and I did research and found out it was fact.
I brought his death up to a couple people who I know also listen to ‘classic rock,’ and all of them expressed surprise that Eddie Van Halen and David Lee Roth, were not, in fact, the same person (because they all remarked, ‘love his guitar, but I could never really get into the band because I was never crazy about his voice’). Damn misconception that all bands named after a member are named after the lead singer/lead guitarist.
Finish What You Started: Not the flashiest guitar work he ever did, but it showed his range.
Mine wasn’t a musical one, but the ‘no brown M&M’s’ story. I had heard variations of it for years as the ultimate diva story. When it finally came out that they had only included that demand as a test to see which venues had actually read the technical clauses that were sent to them – failure to do so potentially resulting in the whole show being blown, or worse, someone being seriously hurt – it flipped the whole urban legend on its ear, and credit to them for remaining mum all those years to keep it going, even if it made them look like childish assholes rather than savvy professionals.
For me it was convincing my mom to buy me 1984 when I was 9, even though my older brother already had it, cuz he wouldn’t let me borrow it, then playing it on my Playskool record player with my best friend, 1984, Jump, Panama, then skipping to Hot For Teacher. Loved that album!
Roth’s Van Halen is a panther. Sleek, well-built, pretty as hell, maybe not as smart as you, but smarter than you think and could easily kick your ass. Van Hagar is a big, dumb, friendly Labrador who tries to lick you to death every time you walk in the room. It’s too stupid to survive in the wild, but how could you not love it?
Fair Warning was one of my first concerts. Oakland coliseum early, early 80s. Remember cutting school and getting in big trouble to go see that show across the bay. I saw them every tour from there on till OU812. I’m sure it was Eddie that influenced me to pick up the guitar. There was before Eruption and the there was after eruption. That solo pretty much changed the landscape for all guitarists. Frickin cool.There was a cool story back in the day in Guitar player magazine where Eddie was hanging out with Brian May and they decided to swap guitars. Eddie’s famous striped guitar with Brian’s Red Special. They plugged in and question would be did their signature sound fallow the guitar or the player. Well as it was told Eddie sounded like Eddie and Brian like Brian, regardless of guitar.
https://www.themightyvanhalen.net/1984/02/04/1984-roanoke-va-roanoke-civic-center/1984 – I was 14 years old – my first concert with my friends and no parents to chaperone. Reminds me of simpler times when I used to enjoy my life. Damn that was fun! RIP.
I was young, like 6-7 maybe and my older sister had a vhs tape that she had recorded a bunch of music videos on and also contained the charlie brown Halloween special. The music video for Jump was on the tape and it sparked a life long love of Van Halen that continues to this day. Van Halen is my driving music, it’s my party music, it’s my cheer myself up music. There is no time in my life where no matter what is going on I can’t put on Van Halen and smile. I didn’t get the chance to see Van Halen live with Roth until their reunion a few years ago and despite being an aged version of themselves it’s still one of the happiest moments I’ve had experiencing live music.
I know my worst Eddie Van Halen memory: David Lee Roth.
It’s just gotta be Crystal Pepsi.