Van Halen!

so sad...RIP
He was something else.

fuck

No!

michael anthony still lives

Like, as much as everyone knows he was a great player, he was so uniquely great. Probably the second best known great guitarist after Hendrix, and I'm not sure there's even a number three on the list. Clapton?

RIP EVH

RIP

yeah, he was the guitar-god-iest of all guitar gods. the only guy who guitar mags gushed about whose songwriting approached his chops.

RIP

oh man

Also, one of the few flash guitarists whose flash was fun and never boringly technical, imo.

was great with synths too

I'll admit that I never grew into a huge Van Halen fan, I came into music awareness around the time Van Haggar was blowing up with all their radio singles and it was years before I went back to appreciate the DLR years, but I will never forget the first time I heard "Eruption" absolutely blasting in my uncle's Camaro - I can't think of many better settings to first hear it.

RIP

Being of Indonesian-Surinamese background, seeing him and his brother succeed and become so beloved was really inspiring. Thank you, Eddie

Damn

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otm

Growing up, the VH logo was the only band graffiti I ever saw.

what a rhythm player he was -- just amazing...listen to Top Jimmy, the transition from that amazing harmonic pattern into an almost R&B/country/hard rock thing no one played like that

so many of the shredders who followed him just chugged 16th note power chords, he was so liquid and fucking crazy on rhythm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d681GuMZj6Y

My guitar teacher is also always showing me just how hard his parts are, not necessarily the speed or anything - he's always told me that the tapping part in Eruption is ironically the easiest part - but just the seemingly illogical phrasing that makes perfect sense the way he plays it. I want to say he also cites the most obvious stuff in Hot for Teacher as particularly challenging, and also ... the Beat It solo, iirc.

This breaks my heart

fuuuuck this year goddammit fuuuuck

still can't believe Robert Zemeckis went with ZZ Top for the town festival band in Back to the Future Part III, after all Eddie did for Marty in Part I

Like Page, he was one of a handful of guys I could listen to again and again, hundreds of times, and never tire of Their tone or note selection, and always noticed some little nuance every time

This story is great:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ejq8NLGXgAEkJAP.png

XPS Well, ZZ Top had the single on the BTTF3 soundtrack, and Billy Gibbons has since claimed the only reason the band appeared in the film was that they happened to visit the set that day, and Zemeckis asked if they'd do a cameo.

xpost - That's a great story, and I love picturing MJ using the phrase "blaze a solo", but I'm assuming that's Eddie's paraphrase.

As I understand it I think they had to redo a lot of Beat It, with Lukather rearranging bits, but that was partly because Van Halen nailed the solo so well they had to rearrange the song around it.

always looked like he was having the time of his life playing.

Not a towering influence on me as a player, but by far the reason I wanted to play when I was 12 years old.

i haven't listened to van halen in maybe two decades so i'm ripe to go back.

Thee local classic rock station, beholden to its corporate playlist, apologetically announced that the Van Halen block will be coming up, but first they have to play all their usual crap

I listen to their debut album about once a month. It's a perfect album.

I just told one of my daughters that when I saw the Van Halen reunion tour some dude turned to me and said that one day I will be telling my kids I saw Van Halen. And she turned to me and said, well, he was right.

No joke, just a few days ago she told me, Dad, I don't like most of your music, but I don't mind Van Halen.

I’m sure I’ve heard songs by Van Halen but I can’t think of a single one offhand. I need to check out that first album, at least.

Have you heard of a little song called Jump?

Van Halen's technical chops were phenomenal. His tremolo picking, tapping and use of harmonics along with the vibrato (whammy) bar are all just lightyear jumps in rock guitar vocabulary.

But if there is one thing that really sets his playing above nearly all other rock guitar players, and the reason SO many of the YouTube videos are just wrong, despite getting every single note right, is the phrasing. His phrasing was unbelievable. His ability to bend the beat of the song around and land on a dime before flying off in a completely different direction just as tastefully and beautifully phrased is unmatched.

As much as everyone knows that solo from Beat It, it is utterly mind-blowing and just so ... cool.

RIP, wild man. I hope you have found your rest.

Shred in peace. Van Halen overall was not my bag, but 1984 is an absolute masterpiece and EVH was obviously a genius player

Nope, Josh, it’s a quasi total blind spot for me and much of my generation, I suspect. Growing up VH was basically the most uncool band ever, and I never questioned that doxa.

"Eruption" is what "Daft Punk" was going for with Aerodynamic right? never put that together until revisiting VH now.

This is a bummer though. we should eventually do a singles poll or something. they had some jams for sure.

personal favorite:

https://youtu.be/-sKxFrTHwhI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sKxFrTHwhI&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1AHf7XcZSPZa5dJhaawyDZ7t-kH5bvVbl4tQUT9M8ECUblCVU92D23-q0

Drop Dead Legs is the example I thought of re: his phrasing. Just fooling around with the blues like a cat with a mouse.

yeah i fucking love "drop dead legs"

Also cool how few guitar overdubs are going on on those first few albums at least. When he shifts from rhythm to lead, there's no net. Just the rhythm section pounding away, and him speeding through his stuff with no room for error.

always looked like he was having the time of his life playing.

Yeah, I just wrote a little thing on FB about this, how all his chops and innovations always seemed to be at the service of joy. He loved playing guitar.

Henry Rollins on seeing Van Halen open for and blow Ted Nugent off the stage

http://www.vhnd.com/2011/03/02/henry-rollins-on-classic-van-halen/

a tale of EVH (1/2 dutch-indo, 1/2 dutch) as related by Pat Smear (1/2 black, 1/2 cherokee):

Pat: Can I tell you my Eddie Van Halen story? I actually met him. He was backstage at the final Nirvana concert at the Forum, which for me, was
like,"Oh my God, I'm playing on the SAME stage as [Queen's] Brian May!" I was dying. Anyway, Eddie Van Halen comes backstage drunk out of his fucking mind, and he started begging Kurt to let him play with us. It was so disgusting. He was like, "I'm all washed up; you are what's happening now." It was horrible! He was a horrible racist pig!

Jeff: I heard he was running Mennen Speed Stick deodorant all over his face. Is that true?

Pat: Yeah [laughs]. Kurt had this deodorant, and he sniffed it or something like that, and it got on his face. It looked like he had cocaine under his nose.

Jennifer: I heard he was asking Kurt to let him come on stage and play "Eruption," but Kurt said, "no," and Eddie said, "C'mon, let me play the Mexican's guitar," referring to you.

Pat: I told Krist [Novoselic], I thought we should let him play with us. But he said no because we'd never get him off the stage. When I walked up to Eddie, he was talking to Krist. I just saw the back of his head so I didn't know who he was. And Krist goes, "Oh Eddie, you haven't met Pat. He's our new guitar player." Eddie turns around and sees me, but he doesn't say hello or anything. He just say's, "Oh no, not a dark one."

At first I thought he was kidding. But he kept asking me, "What are you? Are you like a Raji or something? Are you Mexican?" Then he kept saying to Kurt," C'mon let me play the Mexican's guitar." I was horrified!

Jeff: Is he the El Duce of Metal?

Pat: [Laughs] Eddie Van Halen is the perfect example for me of not wanting to meet your heroes 'cause you'll be disappointed. I hear he's sober now. I blame that incident totally on the alcohol. I've done a lot of bad things when I was drunk, too.

Jeff: I don't think you're coming from a judgmental place at all.

Pat: I was just shocked. I was thinking, "God, Eddie Van Halen hates me."

______________________________________________________________________

Dave Markey's take:

The difference between sobriety and intoxication was never more clearly illustrated than on December 30, when Nirvana played a show at the Great Western Forum near Los Angeles. Filmmaker Dave Markey was videotaping that night and observed a display of inebriation so extreme, he turned his camera off in pity. And it wasn't Kurt who was a mess - it was Eddie Van Halen. The famed guitar player was backstage on his knees drunk, begging Krist to let him jam. Kurt arrived only to see his one-time hero collapsing toward him with his lips puckered, like a toasted Dean Martin in a bad Rat-Pack skit. "No, you can't play with us", Kurt flatly announced, "we don't have any extra guitars."

Van Halen didn't grasp this obvious lie and pointed to Pat Smear (Nirvana's then-rhythm guitarist), shouting, "Well, then let me play the Mexican's guitar. What is he, is he mexican? is he black?" Kurt couldn't believe his ears. "Eddie went into this racist, homophobic banter, typical redneck," observed Dave Markey. "It was surreal." Kurt was furious, but finally came up with a worthy verbal response:
"Actually you can jam" he promised. "You can go onstage after our encore. Just go up there and solo by yourself!" Kurt stormed off

The world mourns

I changed my twitter trending topics to Japanese as so not to have piffle showing and click on it and get furious. The only thing I understand on there right now is 'Van Halen'.

— Ian Wade (@WadeyWade) October 6, 2020

Imagine having a frontman as great as David Lee Roth but the guitarist is so original that the band gets named after him instead?

— 3 Feet High and Crying™ (@TimDuffy) October 6, 2020

The guy practically lived on cigarettes and alcohol, but I'd heard so many tales of his struggles with the latter that I never considered the toll the former was taking on him, even when he first started fighting off cancer. I don't know if Alex or Michael or even Dave have said anything yet, but Sammy posted something sweet. And yet Sammy's take on EVH in his book was very unflattering.