Eddie Van Halen (1955-2020)

[mfunk9786]

Eddie Van Halen

[beamish14]

Eddie Van Halen

Being of Indo-Surinamese descent, seeing him and his brother succeed was truly inspiring. He was a revolutionary
musician, and while the last few years were very rough, his legacy is more than established.

[flyonthewall2983]

He had a connection to Ennio Morricone who of course also passed this year, playing lead guitar on this song from The Legend of 1900

[FrauBlucher]

I was never into Van Halen but what always struck me was how many Van Halen t-shirts I saw people wearing in the late 70s into the 80s. As many as the Led Zeppelin Ts. They certainly had a huge following early on

[L.A.]

Eddie Van Halen

This can’t be happening. R.I.P.

I had no idea he was ill.

[Fiery Angel]

I saw VH in concert 6 times--twice with Roth, 4 with Hagar--and whenever someone would ask who was the better frontman, the obvious answer was always "Eddie." RIP.

[flyonthewall2983]

Says a lot when a musician's style is as copied as his was. And he did it all in the early days from guitars he made himself, from discarded wood and secondhand parts.

It hurts a little knowing he went out in such a rough way. He fit the mold of a troubled genius, with his drug and alcohol problems, as well as the feuds within his own band taking whatever personal toll they did on him.

[hearthesilence]

Eddie Van Halen

This can’t be happening. R.I.P.

I had no idea he was ill.

I remember when he was first went through chemo 20 years ago - it looked bad then, and he seemed quite lucky to get through it, so as sad as this may be, I kind of feel like he was lucky enough to get those extra years and see his son grow up.

I'm not the biggest Van Halen fan, but I do like what I listen to regularly quite a bit, and that includes EVH's solo on "Beat It." Anyone looking for an intro should go to the first LP, but there are great moments on all of those albums with David Lee Roth.

[whaleallright]

The sheer strangeness of his guitar playing (which is easy to forget after 40 years of rehashes and imitations) is a pretty great motif in one of the greatest films of all time.

[ando]

You couldn't mistake EVH for anyone else. R.I.P.

[colinr0380]

When a brief clip of Van Halen jumping on top of and dancing down a row of desks whilst wielding his guitar was shown on the news report this morning, I couldn't help but think that Die Hard homaged that action in a certain scene, just with a machine gun instead of the guitar!

[flyonthewall2983]

The first CD I bought with my own money was the VH Greatest Hits album from 1996 that had two new songs with Roth, when he was back in the band for a cup of coffee. They never produced as solid or characterful record as the first one or 1984 with Sammy Hagar, but several of those songs stand up to the hits from the Roth years.

Jerry Cantrell told some pretty nice anecdotes about Eddie in a recent interview, about how they met while Alice In Chains opened for Van Halen in 1991.

[ando]

This is an Interesting interview with Eddie on his formative years taped in 2017.

[flyonthewall2983]

He secretly reconciled with Sammy Hagar earlier this year

[flyonthewall2983]

Van Halen manager Irving Azoff on Eddie. He goes on to say that Alex and Wolfgang will go through his vaults for unreleased VH recordings, to see what's suitable for future releases.

When a brief clip of Van Halen jumping on top of and dancing down a row of desks whilst wielding his guitar was shown on the news report this morning, I couldn't help but think that Die Hard homaged that action in a certain scene, just with a machine gun instead of the guitar!

You might not be too far off

[Rayon Vert]

I started reading Van Halen Rising: How a Southern California Backyard Party Band Saved Heavy Metal the day after Eddie died. I was finishing another rock biography the day of and coincidentally had already picked this as my next book. It's a good read, written by a PhD American historian, well-researched and only focusing on the band's early history up to the release of the first album. My favorite part of reading musician or group biographies is reading about childhoods/adolescences and the path towards putting it all together and this definitely fits the bill.

A lot of pre-fame VH demos and live recordings are up on youtube in recent years. Fun listening to the cover band they were and their choices of material, like this 75 live Pasadenia gig. (Check out also these very early 74 demos for early stabs at song-writing, including a few that later ended up on 1980's Women and Children First - my favorite album of theirs by a wide margin. I think this was earlier in the year before M. Anthony joined and the other guys are 19 to 21). Roth was the more R&B guy and made them play stuff as non-rock as James Brown's Cold Sweat! (not captured on a recording). He was also the instigator behind their cover of Bowie's Jean Genie here. Eddie doesn't have all of his chops developed yet, but he was definitely already a rare virtuoso, technically beyond most (?) pros at this point.

[flyonthewall2983]

1998 Footage from MTV of his studio "music theory, not fact"

[flyonthewall2983]

"Distance" by Mammoth WVH

[hearthesilence]

I just saw his son's interview where he reveals that he had been fighting stage 4 lung cancer and later a brain tumor (which probably spread from his lungs). Brutal what that guy's been through over the years.

[flyonthewall2983]

The sheer strangeness of his guitar playing (which is easy to forget after 40 years of rehashes and imitations) is a pretty great motif in one of the greatest films of all time.

11 years later the band recorded the song “Humans Being” for Twister, an Amblin production. In the end credits, over a montage of storms is a piece Eddie and Alex recorded separately, featuring some of his most emotional and dramatic playing.