Van Halen!

It's also my OPO tbh.

otm

Some of the things above - not things said by ILXers directly but things others have said that are repeated above - remind me of when I was reading the letter section of some guitar magazine. In it someone wrote a pissy-sounding letter that said EVH was a hack and how if he tried to do his tapping with the fat gauge strings that (insert some old guard guitar player who evidently used fat strings) he would break his fingers. Even when I read this (and I was really young at the time - the magazine was in my school library) I was thinking, man, what a boring old fart.

He was so highly venerated at the time that it makes sense to me that people (especially ones who write for Musician) would want to evaluate his musicianship. I do think "can he jam?" or "can he play other styles?" are more valid questions than "could he tap on .13s?", though.

Van Halen were the entry point to nonsensical glam metal & also the safe midway point between rock & glam metal, DLR’s assless chaps notwithstanding.

Rockdudes who hated glam could usually agree on VH, and glam lovers who hated normcore rock could usually agree on VH

Van Halen: bringing people together since 1978

He was so highly venerated at the time that it makes sense to me that people (especially ones who write for Musician) would want to evaluate his musicianship. I do think "can he jam?" or "can he play other styles?" are more valid questions than "could he tap on .13s?", though.

― The nexus of the crisis and the origin of storms (Sund4r), Tuesday, October 6, 2020 10:42 PM (twenty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i guess? did he ever claim he was some kind of virtuoso? i really don't know, my sense is that he was doing his thing and a lot of stuff was projected onto him.

I don't really see it as any different or any worse than these magazines making "best guitarists/best drummers/..." lists every year (or Pitchfork ranking albums): these all involve some kind of evaluation; at least the Musician writer was making their criteria explicit.

I don't know of EVH himself making Malmsteem-like claims to his own virtuosity, no.

This is a powerful goddamn minute.

At an interview conducted at the Smithsonian in 2015, Eddie van Halen answered a child’s question about his first day of school in America. pic.twitter.com/bRj5aefFk8

— Jeff Nichols (@backwards_river) October 6, 2020

If anything, I think that recognizing that he doesn't have those kinds of schooled session-dude chops helps with appreciating how original and idiosyncratic his playing actually was - he really was talked about like some kind of technical virtuoso, which might have done him a disservice.xp

But he was a technical virtuoso! Just not as technical as many of the virtuosos he inspired, which is a good thing, because fuck those guys, I'd rather listen to dial-up internet noise.

If anything, I think that recognizing that he doesn't have those kinds of schooled session-dude chops helps with appreciating how original and idiosyncratic his playing actually was - he really was talked about like some kind of technical virtuoso, which might have done him a disservice.xp

― The nexus of the crisis and the origin of storms (Sund4r), Tuesday, October 6, 2020 11:23 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah, this makes total sense, it was just funny to me that someone would be like "that guy can't jam!" when he pretty clearly was not interested in jamming.

Well, apparently not with playing Chet Atkins licks or jamming with Steve Morse. Obv a virtuoso with his own style (one that I don't and can't play), so much so that he redefined the lead guitar vocabulary. xp

I mean, "jamming" is just one standard by which many musicians are judged. But as we all have been talking about, that's not really a standard that applies to him. He was Eddie Van Halen, the band was named after him, and expecting him to be anything other than the best guitarist a band named Van Halen could ever have is silly.

Btw "Finish What Ya Started" is packed with Chet Atkins licks that most guitarists couldn't pull off.

Ha, that's among the first VH songs I knew since it came out right when I started paying attention to radio. "Feels So Good" too.

you can tell the story of electric guitar without Steve Morse and Albert Lee, you cannot tell that story without Eddie Van Halen

also xpost - thanks for that Musician mag post veronica

I completely agree tbc (although Morse is really good on the new Deep Purple)!xp

Morse is great! love Dixie Dregs

but you know, like some people make music and play in a way that has an impact, and that's why Eddie is both very much a part of but also somewhat outside the guitar mag world imo

I put him much more with Hendrix and Page and Iommi

"EVH can't jam" is right up there with "he only catches touchdowns"

I like the first album and 1984 but I'm not an expert on EVH's playing btw; was just riffing, thinking about the quotes upthread, which seemed interesting and actually did help with thinking about how quirky and idiosyncratic his playing was.

Ha, I almost posted that exact thing already.

i'm listening to the bloated dinosaur VH that I 100% scorned at the time and it is SO GOOD. the way he duets with himself on "the best of both worlds"... the slinky-ass riff on "black and blue" where he basically winks at malcolm young continuously while never playing the riff the same way twice...

His session guitarist gigs are crazy. Ennio Morricone and Nicolette Larson? I never knew.

Ha, maybe he did have session chops.

I didn't know about the Morricone one. The Nicolette Larson one happened before the first VH album even came out (but wasn't released until after). Ted Templeman invited (dragged?) him into her session.

What a Long Great Trip It’s Been.. pic.twitter.com/M5pmkVi7hW

— David Lee Roth (@DavidLeeRoth) October 7, 2020

Not a band I had a very strong personal connection to but, like I mentioned, I like a couple of albums, their hits were impossible to not know growing up and ofc his sound was so distinctive and innovative. This feels like an epochal loss. The tones he gets on the first album are fantastic. I do think of him as marking a dividing line in rock lead guitar playing (for me, a line between things I could try to play, hack out, or fake vs a vocabulary I never learned).

xps

"Beat It" was kind of the ultimate session gig, right?

That's a great solo, yeah.

it’s funny, I have loved them for a really long time but for a decade or longer have been v much over their bullshit & esp bummed by Eddie just being such a crazy prick for so long

after the news today it sort of took me a minute to reset ... but i spent some time tonight just listening to those early albums & getting back to how i used to think of them, before i knew anything. and just, being sad about his passing, w no qualifiers. i dunno, it was nice to just appreciate his output?
if that makes sense

Last solo apparently?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_jhOAJXWhg

I urge everyone reading this thread to listen to "How Many Say I" from VHIII.

A guy who was an editor at Guitar World for many years and who thus interviewed him many times told me last year that EVH felt insecure w/r/t to Clapton, like Clapton had the kind of respectability that he craved… that he could have felt this for an instant after like 1980 was baffling and fairly tragic…

The one story I always think about re EVH is that he gave one of his guitars to be buried with Dimebag Darrell when he was murdered.

https://www.vhnd.com/2014/12/08/dime-was-an-original-he-deserves-the-original-eddie-van-halen-on-dimebag-darrell/

I'm 48 and growing up I wasn't a massive VH fan, but from like 82-87 they were so huge and omnipresent that you just breathed them in like oxygen. So I knew their hits and probably had friends play full albums for me all the time and I saw them a ton on MTV. For the longest time, I only had their first album and at some point when my tastes turned to alternative/indie/etc. music and VH became a bit of a joke, I stopped paying attention. Then about 10-15 years ago I started going back to some "classic rock" type music I had left behind and I got back into VH, big time.

I would put them in a rare grouping of maybe 3 other bands ever (the Beach Boys voices and I can't think of any others right now) where their pure sound is so distinctive and defining. One note and you instantly know who they were and are living in their sonic world for 5 or 30 minutes. That beefy but bouncy rhythm section and overdriven, juicy, luscious, creamy guitar is just pure joy and fun for me. Even their throwaway tracks, and they have a fair number through even their early albums, sound so good they breeze by and you can forgive their laziness and, like, party on. That's why even not being from SoCal I totally identify with Ned's post at the top of the thread and his tweets after learning the news - they ARE sunny California to me.

true dat… VH is the late 70s/early 80s SoCal of halter tops, keggers, ludes and Fast Times as Beach Boys are to the early 60s…

They also rarely confused gross with fun. They're generally not that macho and default silly over sexist (which is probably a credit to DLR, ultimately). Though of course sexism is there too, in spades, but it's nothing compared to, say, AC/DC or, later, all the hair metal bands they partly helped spawn.

Not to get back to this "jamming" goofiness - we're just jamming here - but that's really just a dumb way of saying how well someone understands their instrument to a ridiculous degree, with no judgement of talent or taste assigned. Van Halen was a different kind of player, with his parts ingeniously worked out and through-composed. That's why I brought up Lindsey Buckingham. Buckingham is similarly self-taught and doesn't know much if any musical theory, but his playing is impeccable and original. And yet still rarely if ever part of anyone else's projects but his own, because that is really not his thing. He's Lindsey fucking Buckingham and he is one of a kind, just as EVH was one of a kind on an even bigger, more influential scale. (I'd cite someone like Adrian Belew as the cultier equivalent.)

From reading Sammy's book, it sounds like Eddie's insecurities were also largely on the songwriting end of things. One reason Sammy was brought in as a replacement was supposedly because he could also play guitar and write songs, which Eddie really needed at that point. He had tons of ideas sitting around on tapes but little more than that, and needed someone else to whip them into shape (or bring in something else). And hell, it worked! Or at least it did commercially. It was somewhat telling that when they reunited with Dave for that album they were still going back once again to '70s demos for ideas. Hell, "House of Pain" on "1984" was iirc on their first demo, the one that Gene Simmons produced. None if this is bad. Songwriting is hard, and hit songwriting is even harder, and no matter where the band landed, or how Eddie was faring, he never sounded anything other than himself, which is to say, awesome.

I think it is fair to criticize EVH for being musically incurious on some level. There was an interview someone posted a few years ago here where EVH basically said he stopped listening to almost any music other than his own in the last 20 years, which seems to me different than most musicians who ime eat drink and sleep music and get really jazzed hearing others play.

I think the 2012 record is also impacted by the fact that EVH agreeing to be around DLR for extended amounts of time was a fragile thing, and the process of collaborating with him for entirely new tunes would have jeopardized the entire enterprise, and as it had in 1996 and 2001… the lyrics of those songs were likely to have been revised by Roth at that time…

Huh:

http://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2019/12/steve-winwood-all-star-garage-band-city.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk8uCsI0FdM

during the 2012 or 2015 tour, there was an interview with Klosterman I think for Esquire where EVH sneered at DLR for his interest in EDM and current iterations of music, "three guys want to play rock music, and Roth wants to play disco," or somesuch… whenever VH did a stylistic detour, that was because of Roth, whose interest in all kinds of music (as well as omnivorous interests in all kinds of non-musical shit) is one of the best qualities in a person who for sure frequently seems to be annoying… Roth said in the 80s that the brothers were only into hard rock and super chops shit, Sabbath, Cream etc etc… when they were in the clubs playing top 40 or soul, EVH apparently hated it…

fyi per my post: "The concert itself is hosted by Paul Shaffer and features: Don Henley, Steve Winwood, Bryan Adams, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, John Mellencamp, Eddie Van Halen, Me'shell Ndegeocello, Bobby Keys, Tony Rich, Richie Sambora, Jim Price, Narada Michael Walden, and Max Weinberg."

"Speaking of guitar soloing, one interesting thing about the main "All-Star Garage Band" show is Eddie Van Halen's guitar playing. Personally, I'm not a really big fan of the band Van Halen, although I do enjoy their well known songs. But I gather it's been very rare for Eddie Van Halen to play lead guitar outside of that band (unlike, say, Eric Clapton, who has played on zillions of other musician's projects). Yet Van Halen is all over this. He plays his easily identifiable style of soloing on a bunch of songs (unfortunately not giving guitarist Richie Sambora much of a chance to shine)."

Someone (maybe me) posted this at some point. It's a 1975 house party show that was mostly covers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gMGh0RmOxw

. Buckingham is similarly self-taught and doesn't know much if any musical theory, but his playing is impeccable and original. And yet still rarely if ever part of anyone else's projects but his own, because that is really not his thing. He's Lindsey fucking Buckingham and he is one of a kind, just as EVH was one of a kind on an even bigger, more influential scale. (I'd cite someone like Adrian Belew as the cultier equivalent.)

Belew seems v different from this, unless I'm misunderstanding? He has an original style but his career was built on playing on other people's projects. You don't play in Zappa's band and just play whatever you want. Whatever theory he might have lacked he would have surely picked up there.

veronica that might be true, but.. jump's big iconic riff is a synth, and it's EVH playing it!

and according to the wikipedia page for 'i'll wait' which i was reading the other day (see upthread where i forgot it had any guitar on it at all) - it was EVH who insisted it be on the album and DLR who didn't want it

I get a kick out of Buckingham's observations on EVH.

Well, I’ll tell you I am certainly a fan of Eddie Van Halen. He’s extraordinary, there’s just no doubt about it. What I think he had a bit of a problem with was making what he did work in the context of the band he was in. It’s hard to work (shredding) into the fabric of a song all the time, so I think in a way what he did might have worked even better in a slightly more sophisticated format. Maybe a fusion thing like John McLaughlin or Larry Coryell, where his skill was brought to bear with other people who could play against it more. In many ways, it always seemed like he was forced to play on top of whatever Van Halen recorded.

"I've always believed that you play to highlight the song, not to highlight the player," Buckingham says modestly. "The song is all that matters. There are two ways you can choose to go: You can try to be someone like Eddie Van Halen, who is a great guitar player, a virtuoso. Yet he doesn't make good records because what he plays is totally lost in the context of his band's music.

There was an interview someone posted a few years ago here where EVH basically said he stopped listening to almost any music other than his own in the last 20 years

Heard the same about Prince.

xpost It's a digression, but I don't know about that. There are a few dudes who played in Zappa's band who famously couldn't read music or not well but did the best they could, which was still pretty great, like I want to say a freak like Bozzio. Anyway, I guess my broader point is that Adrian Belew sounds like no one else and plays like no one else, and even when he's playing in other people's projects he is doing his expected idiosyncratic Belew stuff, and otherwise (in Talking Heads and Bowie) often with another guitarist handling the "normal" stuff. Belew is not someone I would just drop into any band, any band he is in has to make room for his presence, because he really doesn't do anything other than that. I've mentioned before some (filmed) interview with Belew where the interviewer keeps pressing him on his influences, and eventually pries out Hendrix (which is who Fripp typically cites as well). And then the interviewer, as I remember it, keeps trying to get an example of how Hendrix influenced Belew's playing, and eventually, with incredible reluctance, Belew plays a quick Hendrix lick, and I remember thinking, huh, that might be the only time I've heard him play anything other than his own stuff. I don't like Zappa, but I could have sworn I've seen a clip or two of Belew in his band (wearing a dress?) and it definitely seemed like Belew still kinda being Belew.

At the other extreme, and speaking of Zappa, the rhetorical question I've always had about stunt guitarists like Steve Vai is whether he is even capable of playing dumb, or if he is compelled to make it fancy. I dunno, it doesn't ultimately matter, because you don't go to Vai for something anyone can do. One of the reasons Paul Gilbert seems like such a cool dude to me is that he afaict has no problem playing just whatever, even simple stuff, free from flash, just for the fun of it.

I've mentioned my Van Halen conspiracy theory before. "Diver Down" is without a doubt the DLR-era's nadir, with the best stuff being covers (and those not being particularly good, imo). The band seemed kind of worn out, if not washed up. And then what comes next? Bam, a perfect pop juggernaut with lots of hits. And yet "I'll Wait" is conspicuous for its high-profile co-writer, Michael McDonald, who did not get credited on the first printing of the album but whose name was added back in for future pressings. So my (totally otherwise unfounded) conspiracy theory is that the band had some other ghost writers as well, a (baseless) theory borne out by Eddie kicking out DLR, struggling to come up with new stuff and ultimately bringing in Hagar (according to Hagar) for his songwriting abilities as well as his pipes.

xxpost lol I recently heard a podcast that included an interview with Susan Rogers, and she said once Prince was at the piano playing this melody, and he turned to her and said something like "this is really good, did I write that?"