Number 1

Edward Van Halen

I’m not sure the internet has enough memory for me to express the genius of Edward Van Halen.

I’ve spent hours and hours working on this. Hell, I wrote, rewrote, rewrote, and then rewrote the Randy Rhoads post. I kept adding to it, even in rewrites. I said to myself, “Mr. Pickles (the name the voices in my head gave me), you’re supposed to be writing a brief on why Randy Rhoads is the second greatest guitarist of all time, not his full biography.”

True. But it’s nigh impossible to separate the art from the artist, and TOTALLY impossible to separate the artist from their experiences. So, it was important to add what I did. Well, if I had that much to say about Randy Rhoads, how am I going to limit myself with Edward Van Halen, the greatest guitarist to ever live?

The answer?

Not easily.

So, bear with me if this gets winded (and let’s face it, it already has!), but there are a LOT of reasons I will give to back up my claim, and in doing so, I will touch on parts of his life that got him to that point.

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What is the first thing you think of when you think of Eddie Van Halen?

The hammer/tap/pull that made him so famous, that changed the face of rock guitar like nothing else before or since?

At the piano, blowing smoke rings as his then wife, Valerie Bertinelli smiles in a chair in the Panama video that we all watched a billion times on MTV?

His Frankenstrat, the red/white/black striped monstrosity that he created out of parts to get a sound so unique that musicians at the time were perplexed as to how he got sound out of it, much less use it to make the most groundbreaking rock album since…well…hell, I don’t know.

The “dead set in the 80s” style of clothing that was so iconic that when you see cartoons where characters are in rock bands, they wear those clothes?

Sex, drugs, and rock and roll?

All of these are correct, and more.

There was a lot more to Eddie Van Halen and what he accomplished than most people know. Some of what I will lay out here are from stories told by friends and family, and, in some cases, enemies. Some will be simple, provable facts that happened in front of others. I’ll try my best to be honest about the man, Edward Van Halen, just as I will try my best to be honest about what he brought to the table…and gave us. I’ll be as open and impartial as I can be. Here we go…

 

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I believe that, when I get to Heaven, angels' voices will sound like Edward Van Halen’s guitar.

I mean that.

When I hear his guitar, be it a screaming solo or a smoothly textured rhythm, it sounds like what I think angels sound like. I can HEAR things in his playing. And, no, I’m not on LSD.

At this moment.

“The Brown Sound”, as it was referred to by EVH, was the tone that he always worked towards. You might have heard jokes from South Park and such about “the brown sound” being the one note that makes you poop your pants. Yeah. They got that from EVH.

That is where we will start.

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The Brown Sound

Eddie Van Halen has THE most distinct tone in the history of rock and roll. Don’t believe me? I bet you Mattyman’s house that I could play you 50 guitarist’s playing the same 10 notes and you could pick out which one was EVH, even if you’re just a casual fan. And what is even more incredible, is that, through the 35 years that he was active, his tone changed dramatically, but always rooted in the same…feel? I don’t even know how to describe it.

Listen to THIS. 1978.
Now, listen to THIS. 1995.

Same guy. Can you tell? Yes, you can. Very much so.

There are a LOT of stories out there from other guitarists who idolized and met EVH personally. Many of them got to go to his 5150 Studio and even play with his guitar, through his amp, through his effects, in his studio. All of them said the same thing.

“I didn’t sound like Ed. I sounded like myself.”

I’ve seen interviews with Zakk Wylde, Steve Vai, and Dweezle Zappa all saying the same thing.

In fact, those same guys said that, when Ed played through their setup…he sounded like Eddie Van Halen! Even with different effects you could tell it was him. But when he played through his ever-evolving Brown Sound, he sounded even MORE like Eddie Van Halen. It’s wild. It’s unique. It’s been studied and copied. But there was only one Eddie Van Halen, because part of what made Eddie sound like he did (besides his techniques) was that, famously, Edward Van Halen was a tinkerer.

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The Tinkerer

The most famous, iconic guitar of all time is Eddie’s “Frankenstrat”, also known as “Frankie”. Its paint scheme is so iconic that it’s basically a visual metaphor for “rock and roll band”. You can see this type of visual shorthand all over the media through the past 40 years. More people would recognize Eddie Van Halen through that guitar than through a picture of the man.

I won’t bore you with the technical stats and whatnot, but to sum it up, Frankie is an attempt to combine the sound of a classic Gibson guitar with the tremolo bar functionality of a Fender Stratocaster. Ed, the most copied guitarist of all time, had only one working pickup in the guitar. There were three in all that were observable, but only one worked. He did that so people trying to copy his sound would never get it right. Sort of like putting three locks on the door and only locking one. Any thief would simply lock the unlocked locks in an attempt to unlock them all. Same mentality. 

Ed lied a lot about his equipment until he was established internationally. As mentioned in my previous post, Number 2 Greatest Guitarist, Randy Rhoads, Ed did not share his secrets at all when he was trying to break through. Rhoads saw Van Halen at a concert for the first time. Afterwards Randy asked Eddie how his guitar stayed in tune while using the tremolo so often. Eddie said “That’s my secret to keep.”

Rhoads, a teacher who shared everything, was dumbfounded and insulted that Edward would not share that information. What Randy didn’t know is that the guitar didn’t go out of tune because Edward had modified it HIMSELF. He had tinkered and labored for a very long time figuring out how to do this, apparently something that no other guitarist had ever done. He invented a different peghead to keep guitar string tension. He had to create it because his playing required it, and, instead of changing how he played, he invented a way to alter the guitar.

Ed guarded his tone like it was his child. In many ways, it was. Lots of people wanted to steal it. Ed would have his amps set up in a way that some of them had wires sticking out of them to look like he changed them, and others that were changed but showed no signs. He made his own amps, just like he made Frankie.

In spite of the fact that Frankie was one-of-a-kind, Eddie’s son, Wolfgang, told a story about how he and a friend were hanging out at his house. They asked him if he knew where something was and he said “It’s in the closet. I’ll get it.” He started throwing things out of the closet to get to it, and Frankie…THE Frankie…was near the bottom. Ed grabbed it and tossed it across the room onto the couch. Wolfie and his friend freaked out!

“Dad!,” Wolfgang said, “ That’s the most famous guitar in the world! You can’t just throw it around!”  

To which Ed replied “Why not? It’s just a guitar.”

It wasn’t the only alteration Ed contributed to guitars and amps. Edward has 3 U.S. patents, but that just scratches the surface.

“It was like a whole new bag of tricks and all this other stuff that nobody thought was possible. And the way he changed amplifiers and everything like that...not only with his playing technique, but down to pickups, tremolo bars with the Floyd Rose, the way amps are designed, with more high gain and everything like that.

I mean, he changed EVERYTHING, across the board. Not just because of him doing taps and everything like that. Even the way guitars are made and amps are made. He changed it all.”

• Zakk Wylde, Ozzy Osbourne guitarist

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The Technique

Literally…how do you describe the indescribable? Ed’s technique rocked the guitar world and is a singularity in rock music like no other guitarist before or since.

“I thought that Edward was really the game changer. There have been two game changers so far: And a lot of really great guitar players that have contributed. But as far as ‘What the fuck?!’ There was Hendrix and there was Edward. To me, there hasn’t been a third.

There’s guys, as you know, that make me sound old, slow, and sloppy. And even Edward! You know, they make him sound slow. But, there’s a craftsmanship and artistry to the whole picture that he had. It was in the, not one hit, not twenty hits, not one record that sold 10 million, but multiple.

Just like a brutal kind of whacking off of the head of everything that came before.”

• Steve Vai, Guitar god

Let’s face it, the first thing you think of when thinking of Eddie Van Halen is finger tapping. If not, then you know nothing, Jon Snow.

Ed didn’t invent the finger tapping thing. He never claimed to. He DID come up with it himself, but he didn’t invent it.

“Uhh, what does that mean, Vannyboy?” 

Well, Edward is self-taught on guitar. He did take piano lessons as a kid. His father was a famous Dutch brass musician. He wasn’t a stranger to music and theory and all of that. But, in the days before the internet or anything like that, people would listen to records or go watch a show to see how other musicians did things. According to Ed, he saw Jimmy Page do what is called a “hammer-on" in guitar: where you have your index finger on a string and use your ring finger to “hammer” down on a string, often followed by pulling it off again. It had been done for a very long time, but Eddie saw Page do it and was inspired. So, like he often did, he made it better.

Ed said that one night he was messing around with the hammer-on technique and wondered what it would sound like to “tap” a fret on that same string, a fret maybe five frets away. So he did. He tapped..then hammer-on with his ring finger, pulled it off, then pulled his index finger off. Thus…the Eddie Van Halen fingering technique was born.

It was a revelation.

He just figured it out for himself, and in the process he started playing like no one else. It made his playing so unique, which seems impossible because, by the mid-80s, you simply didn’t have a rock guitarist that didn’t use some, if not all, of Ed’s techniques.

The Solo of solos

Eruption. It’s THE most influential guitar solo of all time. Period.

Ironically, it’s not really Eddie’s best solo (in my opinion that’s either Hot For Teacher or 5150), but it is, without question, the GREATEST solo of all time. It birthed a hundred million guitarists.

HERE is a live version of Eruption, one that contains many of Ed’s signature sounds and techniques.

Eruption is a culmination of techniques and speed that very few outside of Southern California had heard, and those only heard it from watching Mammoth, who changed their name to Van Halen. It’s just a true slap at your senses. Even today, when Gen Z hears it for the first time their faces melt. It’s a lot of fun to watch these kids. That must have been exactly what my face was when I first heard it. And also, that thousandth time.

As I said, Edward had better solos. Solos that fit within a song, but none, not by him, not by anyone else, have had the effect of Eruption.

The Second Solo of solos

Edward got a call one night from Quincy Jones.

He hung up.

He called back, “Ed this IS Quincy Jones.”

“Yeah, right,” said Eddie. “Fuck you.” And hung up.

Toto guitarist, Steve Lukather, who Ed knew, called him and said, “Hey, it’s really him, Ed.”

So, when Quincy Jones called back, Ed answered for real.

You see, Quincy was working with a kid on a solo project. The kid wanted to cross over. He was kind of famous for dance tunes and just wanted to bring some rock to his songs. He was young, black, and the music industry was pretty segregated. 

Ed went over to the studio and met with Quincy and his client, Michael Jackson. Michael had written a song called “Beat It” with Lukather. They wanted to lay down a killer solo. Lukather suggested Edward.

Eddie listened to the song. He said, “Sure, I’ll do it three times and you can pick the one you like best, okay?”

He did. They did. And then Michael and Quincy went to lunch. While they were gone Ed asked Lukather if he could mess around with the mix. So Eddie changed where some of the spots were. When Michael came back he was blown away. 

That is one of the biggest songs of all time and helped send Michael Jackson through the roof. Thriller, the album it is on, is the highest selling album of all time. It probably always will be.

Ed was uncredited and unpaid. See, he and Van Halen were on a break between tours. They had a standing agreement that they wouldn’t do solo projects. But, Ed didn’t figure that this would count. After all, as Ed once told Larry King, “I thought, ‘who’s going to hear me on this black kid’s record anyway’?”

Nearly everyone alive, Ed.

After it came out, Ed was in a record shop looking around for new music. Billie Jean was playing on the speakers.He heard some kids near him, with their backs to him, say, “Hey, that HAS to be Eddie Van Halen.” The other kid said “Nah. He wouldn’t be on this album.”

Edward said “Yeah. It’s me.” and walked away.

He laughed while telling the story because the kids were obviously shocked.

That uncredited solo helped elevate Thriller, Jackson, and MTV. Not bad for about 10 minutes of work. 

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Innovative Rhythm Playing

Of course, besides the tapping, besides the tone, besides the technical hardware, Edward also had other very innovative techniques. He always claimed that he never set out to write songs that were different just to be different. He just dicked around with the guitar and when something would click he would add it to his repertoire, often writing sections of songs around it.

For example, Cathedral. He achieved that effect by adding a “delay” and “chorus” pedal, which does exactly what it says: he strikes a note and it repeats a bit as well as sounds like it’s in a large room. Then he would strike the notes as he rapidly rhythmically turned the volume knob up and down on his guitar. If I didn’t just tell you how he did it, it would take you a hundred years to figure it out.

On the same album (Diver Down, Ed’s least favorite album Van Halen, you have the masterpiece called "Little Guitars”. It has an opening section where Edward makes it sound like a Spanish acoustic guitar. He doesn’t use the multi-finger approach that a classical guitarist would. He uses speed picking and hammer-ons…Edward style! And in the full song he uses harmonics in the verse. It’s just incredible song writing and kudos to David Lee Roth on being able to write songs to that.

And, of course, there is the opening to Mean Street from the album of the same name. The opening part is done using his fingers like drumsticks and the fretboard like drums. It’s just nuts. I know many great guitar players that can’t play it, and some that can and it really took a lot of work. And that was KNOWING how to play it. Ed just made it up!

For the layman, Ed’s fills and solos are what stand out. But to us guitar players, it’s his rhythm playing. I once told a friend who asked me about his rhythm work and I said “what sounds hard is usually fairly easy, but what sounds fairly easy is brutally hard”. Of course, some of what sounded hard was also brutally hard, but you get my meaning.

Ed never wrote songs to be a guitar god. He was a guitar god that wrote songs. Amazing songs. Songs that have lasted. Songs that have made Van Halen nothing short of one of the most influential and copied bands of all time.

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5150 Studios

The first five albums by Van Halen were recorded locally in California. Recording was expensive and you paid by the hour. Also, you had limited time. If you’re The Beatles in 1967…take your time. If you’re Van Halen pre-1984 it was “be ready to record everything”. So Ed was. 

His wild solos were snappy and tight. When Ed sat down to play a solo, he had already played it, cleaned it up, added, subtracted, and then relearned it. When they hit “record”, he didn’t need too many takes.

The upside of this is that he really had to have solos worked out before he got there, so he gave them lots of thought. The downside of this method is that he didn’t have the opportunity to experiment solos and songs on the spot. It was just too expensive.

Another problem with using someone else’s studio is that the producer has near complete and total control. Ed was often getting vetoed in his own band by Roth and producer Ted Templeman. And, Roth being a dance fan, always pushed for covers. Probably because he didn’t really have to do any work.

By the time they forced out Diver Down, Ed was D-O-N-E doing covers and writing for others.

“David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C’mon…Van Halen doing “Dancing In The Streets”? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else’s music.”

• Edward Van Halen 

So, between Diver Down and what would eventually become 1984, Edward built 5150 Studio in his home, where it didn’t matter how much time he took and, also, no one would tell him what to do. Edward was not above input from others. He was open to ideas and often made changes…if they were GOOD changes. He just wanted to have more control, more time.

The upside of having his own recording studio with unlimited time was that…he got a LOT better. A lot better at songwriting. A lot better at guitar. I mean, he was already Eddie Van Halen! But, by the end of the 1984 album the Edward Van Halen that made Van Halen 1 couldn’t have played the music on 1984.

Ed would write the songs and not worry about the solos. When he got to the part where the solos would fit he would just riff multiple times and take out the pieces he liked and put them together. His solos got a hell of a lot harder, I can tell you. He was constantly pushing himself, and therefore, pushing everyone else too. Eddie Van Halen had leveled up.

Another thing having his own studio did was it allowed Edward to use his keyboard. Edward was a very incredible pianist, but, being a guitar god, no one in the band or record company wanted him to play it! Roth literally told him “You’re the best guitar player in the world. Nobody wants to hear you play keyboard.”

Well, the only reason Jump, Van Halen’s first keyboard-heavy song, didn’t reach number one on the charts was because of the industry breaking Thriller album. It made it to number 2. So, Diamond Dave didn’t know what he was talking about. And the other keyboard heavy song on the album, “I’ll Wait” was also a big, big hit. [Editor’s Note: I’ll Wait was co-written by Michael McDonald, who was uncredited on the original print of the album. The record company thought is would make VH look bad…as if Gen-X didn’t love Michael McDonald or something.]

To be honest, it wasn’t that people were ready for Van Halen to have keyboard music…it’s that Eddie was just great at writing amazing songs. The songs were good, guitar or keyboard.

The DOWNSIDE of Ed having 5150 Studio was that, and this is just subjective, their music began to have a “more produced” sound. Not the same “raw to the bone” sound they had on the previous five albums. And the next five albums would have even more of a produced feel. Again, this is subjective. Some “fans” jumped off when Hagar joined because they didn’t like that produced sound. Me? I love Van Halen.

Diamond Dave And Sammy Hagar

Not only did Edward Van Halen reinvent the way the guitar was approached and even played, he did it using two different lead singers. With David Lee Roth from 1975-1985, and Sammy Hagar from 1985-1996. Both singers also contributed to reunion tours and such.

Roth may have had very limited vocal range, but he made up for it with his sheer mind-blowing performances, cheeky songwriting, and over the top personality. 

“There are certain things that come along that are undeniable and it’s just a matter of watching the momentum as it goes along. When that album came out it was, ‘Okay, here’s a game changer.’

And every band that they played with suffered the consequences of having them opening because they were just a force to be reckoned with. You didn’t want to follow that.”

• Paul Stanley, KISS

“One of the reasons I left Black Sabbath was because Van Halen was blowing us off the stage every night. It was embarrassing.”

• Ozzy Osbourne, Prince of Darkness

 

Hagar, a 15-year veteran of rock and roll by the time he joined Van Halen, has a much more powerful voice than Roth, more commercially viable songwriting skills, and is absolutely about fun.

With Roth, Van Halen reached number 1 on the Billboard Charts with Jump, but by then had become a staple of rock and roll through their endless touring and energy. Much like Bon Scott and AC/DC, Roth’s Van Halen had pushed Van Halen to the pinnacle of rock and MTV. When he left, many thought that Van Halen was over.

But, much like Brian Johnson with AC/DC, Hagar came in, rejuvenated the band, and took them to heights not seen by very many acts. And he did it for 10 years with 4 number 1 albums and 10 number 1 songs on the US charts.

There have (and always will be) debates between “who was better, Roth or Hagar”. That shouldn’t be the question. It really should be “who do you like better, Roth or Hagar”. Both iterations were incredible, both iterations had Edward Van Halen leading the way. But with Hagar, Edward was free to bring anything he wanted to the table.

Hagar believed he was in a band with Edward Van Halen.

Roth believed Edward Van Halen was in a band with him.

Before you say “Hey, Vannyboy, what about the failure that was Van Halen III with Gary Charone?” Well, Van Halen III is an unbelievable album. It’s incredible from top to bottom with Eddie browning the Brown Sound to almost black. It’s great, it really is. But…it’s not Van Halen. It doesn’t have that feel. The band had just lost its “fun factor”.

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Edward The King, Edward The Man

By ALL accounts, Eddie Van Halen was simply a gem of a guy. Everyone he met says the same thing. He was the kind of guy that would give you the shirt off his back. But he was also the guy who jealously guarded his innovative techniques and equipment…until he made it big, then he shared everything.

Ed also did things like visiting former David Lee Roth guitarist, Jason Becker, who is suffering from ALS, bringing him a guitar, playing it on video, and then signing it for him. Why? Ed knew that some day Jason may need to sell that guitar to pay for medical expenses or just to live. It’s a guitar that is hand delivered by Ed, played on video by Ed, and signed by Eddie for a fallen star. Jason recently sold that guitar at auction for $110,000.

This next one will choke you up, folks.

Pantera guitarist “Dimebag Darrell” (real name Vinnie Paul Abbott) and his brother, the drummer for Pantera, were MASSIVE Van Halen fans. Vinnie credits Eddie for being the reason he wanted to play guitar in the first place. Before each performance, Vinnie and his brother would say “Van Halen!” to each other before they stormed the stage. It was their way of saying “let it all hang out”.

In 2004, Vinnie got the chance to meet Eddie Van Halen. Afterwards, on the plane, he told his brother “I just met Eddie Van Halen. If this plane goes down now I’ll be okay.”

One day while hanging out, Vinnie/Dimebag asked Ed if he could buy one of his guitars. He said that the black and yellow “Bumblebee” guitar that Eddie made Van Halen II with was his favorite guitar ever. Ed said “Nah, I’ll make one just for you”.

He never got the chance.

A few weeks after meeting his hero, Vinnie Paul “Dimebag Darrell” Abbott was murdered on stage by a deranged fan. The last words Vinnie ever said were “Van Halen!”

Before his funeral word got out that Vinnie’s family wanted to bury him with a guitar, since that was the center of his life. So Ed called and asked if he could donate one, and they said of course. He asked “what color” and they said “yellow and black was his favorite”.

Ed showed up to the funeral with his “Bumblebee”. Not a replica. THE Bumblebee guitar that Ed had written Van Halen II with. Vinnie was buried with his favorite guitar ever, one that was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That’s the kind of heart Eddie Van Halen had.

While it doesn’t seem that Roth was ever a friend, Ed and Hagar were neighbors and best friends for years and years…until they weren’t. Why did it end between guys who claimed to be like brothers? Greed, paranoia, and drugs. All on Ed’s side.

I’ll briefly explain…

In 1996, KISS started a “Reunion Tour” with the original lineup, back in make-up. They were set to make $100M. Edward, with the wrong people around him, began to see dollar signs. In fairness, that is a LOT of dollar signs. His manager, a different guy than he had had for the first 8 years with Hagar, started telling Ed “hey, dump Hagar, get Roth, and make a large fortune”. Ed’s plan? To make a Greatest Hits record and invite Roth to do a reunion tour. Hagar wanted none of it. So the Van Halen brothers fired Hagar. They famously showed up on The MTV Music Awards with Roth, who couldn’t help but ham it up now that he was important again. But what Dave saw as “hamming it up”, Ed saw as “very disrespectful to Beck”, who was on stage getting an award. So that tour was canceled that night.

Ed had some reunion tours with both Sammy and Dave. Dave didn’t care enough about Eddie personally to be hurt by anything he might have said or did, he only cared about the money. Sammy did one reunion tour, which was a disaster personally, and broke their friendship up for a decade.

Ed, who had always been an alcoholic, was now using meth. I think it was meth. Nobody has said it, but that is what it looked like to me. He became erratic. He would play out of tune in concerts. He became a shell of himself. It was really hard to watch.

 In 2007, Van Halen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Only Sammy Hagar and bassist Michael Anthony showed up. No Roth. No Alex. No Ed.

Ed was in rehab.

In 2012, Van Halen released their last album, A Different Kind of Truth, with David Lee Roth at the helm. The album was modern releases of songs that they had written with Roth in the 70s that hadn’t made it to other albums. The music was great, but seemed like a step backwards to me. Roth had completely lost his range and sounded more like Barry White. Michael Anthony had been unceremoniously fired from the band and replaced with Eddie’s incredibly talented son, Wolfgang, a move that was handled very poorly.

On October 6, 2020, Edward Van Halen died of cancer. He had smoked since he was 12, yet still blamed previous tongue cancer on holding aluminum picks in his mouth while he played. Hard headed as hell, or just unwilling to accept the blame. He had been sick for a long time but few people knew it. He died surrounded by his wife, his ex-wife, Vallerie Bertinelli, and his son Wolfgang. Wolfie wrote an incredible song for his father called “Distance”. Ed got to hear it, but didn’t know it was about him and that his son knew he was on his way out. Edward, you see, was a family man. He adored his son, Wolfie. Clearly, Wolfie felt the same.

Sammy Hagar revealed, after Edward’s death, that he and Ed had made up and were friends again. They talked every week, but never about the band. They were just…friends.

Right Now 

The biggest, most impactful song that Van Halen ever did was “Right Now”, off of the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge album, in 1991. In the era of grunge, the video beat Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video for MTV’s Video Of The Year Award.

It’s a song about living for now. Move past the mistakes in your life and head for something better, but all of that begins right now. At this moment.

Since the release of Van Halen I in 1978, there hasn’t been a moment that rock music has not been affected by the brilliance of Edward Van Halen. He, like no other guitarist before or since, changed the landscape of rock music, changed the techniques in how to play guitar, changed how the guitar was made, and melted faces of literal billions of people. All other guitarists pale in comparison and recognize his contributions.

For that, and for making my life so, so much better, I have Edward Van Halen at number one.

The Greatest Guitarist To Ever Live.