Van Halen!

No joke, I was driving around and the classic rock station, in the middle of its Van Halen tribute rock block, played "Why Can't This Be Love" and my first reaction was ugh, this is so tacky, this is supposed to be a tribute to Eddie Van Halen, why are they playing this shit? And then a second later remembered, oh yeah, this is still him.

I have a quick thread about an important thing.

So, just a short thread of appreciation, but another reason why Van Halen represented SoCal so well. They just WERE SoCal. It has to do with a guy from Sweden who ended up in LA called Carl Strom and an artist named Vaughn Kaufman. (1/x)

— Ned Raggett (@NedRaggett) October 6, 2020

ha that letterman clip is gold—with Carson in the studio!

Ned, your comment at the top of this thread, "At one point, some sorta California party dude genius apotheosis of something or other. "Jamie's Cryin'" and "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love" alone -- the Minutemen had no problem covering the latter, neither should anyone else!", would be a top ten ILX post of all time for me.

Hahah, thank you. One of my tweets today was about that very Minutemen cover.

Eddie never seemed terribly interested in improvisation or jamming. It's telling that as a guitar hero god among men, there is very little, if any, footage of him sitting in or jamming with anyone.

Never mind, of course I know ‘Jump’.

yeah it goes

I'll take you down, I'll take you down
Where no one's ever gone before
And if you want more
If you want more, more, more
Then jump

Jump up jump up and get down

Pom, do you at least know Tim Hecker's My Love Is Rotten to the Core album?

definitely a high school fav and I got the ones I missed in HS later in life. few people sounded like them, good pop instincts with flashy guitar whenever you wanted it, sleaze but they weren't glam rock.

I always loved Eddie's "Hot for Teacher" opening tapping lick, or "Baluchitherium" from Balance (killer instrumental piece), the main verse lick to "I'm the One".

also enjoyed his honesty in admitting he "cheated" (his words) on "Little Guitars" and that he can't actually fingerpick.

I do and I guess my experience of it is mostly context-free.

xp

I was an intern at Musician, starting during the aftermath of that article… the writer was one of my best friends for many years… this was 1991, right as the band was gearing up for For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge…

The implication was that not only could he not hang in a jam context —in this case, which was at a NAMM event, he didn't have the Chet Atkins vocabulary at his beck and call, as Lee and Morse did and do— but that he never challenged himself whatsoever. He never played in other contexts other than Van Halen, never tried to do anything different than to play hard rock in a band with his brother…Brian May star fleet or the odd cameo on a friend's record… or the softcore porno soundtrack notwithstanding.

The writer was a product of the guitar mag milieu of which Musician was of, but was also above… Guitar World and Guitar Player would never dare suggest that the man upon which their entire raison detre resided was not beyond reproach, but Musician could make such a claim. As a result, Ed Leffler the VH manager at the time threatened the writer, and the writer —who otherwise is an intimate friend of every single living elite guitar player (I'm not exaggerating when I say that) — was persona non grata in the VH fold afterwards. 10/6/20 is a moment of existential import for GP and GW.

According to Greg Renoff's book Van Halen Rising (which is excellent), EVH was a scholar of 70s hard rock and elite guitar playing. But when he became the apotheosis of the guitar, he quickly lost the desire to keep up with music… he would say for many years that the last record he bought and cared about was Gabriel's So …a parallel would be Michael Jackson, teenage kid/prodigies who were venerated by everyone around them and who were worshipped globally from like 1978 to 1991 for their unparalleled talent and innovation… therefore, when 1991 rolls around, FUCK and Dangerous are big budget blockbusters that show out of touch both were… and then Balance and VHIII as well as HisStory are even more misbegotten…

I've only ever written about Van Halen once, and it was a 20th anniversary piece on Van Halen III.

Honestly, it's not fair to ask anybody to hang with Steve Morris or Albert Lee, both virtuosos but neither in the sui generis, self-taught style that Van Halen is. It's like, dunno, someone like Lindsay Buckingham as well. He's an immensely gifted, easily identifiable guitarist, possibly a virtuoso, certainly some sort of genius, but also self taught and also someone you never see jamming with anybody else.

an immensely gifted, easily identifiable guitarist, possibly a virtuoso, certainly some sort of genius

This is all that matters. Carlos Santana and Derek Bailey: both brilliant guitarists. Would I want to hear them playing "together"? Fuck no.

I would.

I do and I guess my experience of it is mostly context-free.

"Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" is the main source material for the first track so it might be a good starting point.

I remember picking up a used copy of the first VH album at Cheap Thrills when G4ry (who was used to me buying improv or new music) told me the upcoming Tim Hecker album would be based on samples of the album I was buying, haha.

Xp So would I.

"they could improvise on chord changes, while all Eddie could do was repeat his bag of tricks (the “elephant” etc.).

I've heard this charge repeated often, usually in comparison to someone like Steve Vai. I think it's true that he has a limited range, but within that range he explores all the hidden nooks, teases out colors that didn't exist before. "Bag of tricks" might work as a descriptor of his more gimmicky techniques, but doesn't do justice to the way he uses them imo.

There's this really exciting chaos against or within the very controlled framework. I like that a lot of his solos and licks aren't really in any particular key. But I suspect the distance between his soloing and the song foundation is pretty important to that end- idk how effectively it would work against a looser backing.

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

That's sad. As an Iranian immigrant with Iraqi parents I think my own childhood Van Halen obsession was a way of asserting my Americanness, distancing myself from the old culture and my own foreignness. It makes perfect sense to me that immigrants made this music.

The Mac Dad'll make ya.

"Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" is the main source material for the first track so it might be a good starting point.

It's also my OPO tbh.

EVH was indeed a virtuoso at his own style, which to me is the ultimate compliment. He was really good at doing the EVH.

And his sense of melody is something that few virtuosos possess. Many, many instantly memorable riffs.

It's also my OPO tbh.

Noted. I'll check out the debut in its entirety.

Part of the appeal of VH at a time when I wanted to like actual heavy metal but didn't... was energizing metal, taking a lot of the sludge out. Their music wasn't actually heavy. They were, yeah, basically like a power pop band with this veneer of metal.

he didn't have the Chet Atkins vocabulary at his beck and call, as Lee and Morse did and do— but that he never challenged himself whatsoever. He never played in other contexts other than Van Halen, never tried to do anything different than to play hard rock in a band with his brother

sounds rad to me.

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.

He pretty much did it all himself as Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson let him to do whatever he thought was best. His interview on what happened.

I'm a casual fan myself who owns the first LP and made a personal best of from the Diamond Dave years. That's all I really listen to from Van Halen, but I also like it a hell of a lot.

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.