Edward Van Halen

[Matt Milton]

he thought Eddie’s experimental approach to music had more in common with Fred Frith and Derek Bailey than Vai...

you're making me want to go listen to Van Halen albums now, for the first time ever! (I love Derek Bailey and have many fond memories of certain gigs of his. Wish I'd seen more of them, though I saw a fair few)

Never been into widdly metal guitar at all. I dig metal for riffs rather than solos really. With one exception: I was a huge fan of Jane's Addiction when I was a teenager and Dave Navarro's playing on Jane's Addiction albums is just hardwired into my brain now.

[Phil59]

I'll never forgive him for ruining guitar stores, with that kid (whatever town you are in) twiddling away with both hands on the fretboard, desperately looking for approval.

Only kidding. He certainly got kids back into guitar at a time when the synth was killing it off. But I have to admit the only time a I really listened to him was in MJ's Beat It. Incredible.

"MJ's Beat It. Incredible"

Absolutely!

[christianm77]

It’s a funny one but EVH was such a band guitarist and now the idea of rock guitar seems to be purely about nailing tasty stuff, or having chops or whatever; and someone gets really good at both like Guthrie Govan and this is great rock guitar now...

So for me it will always be a band thing. I miss the days when you have someone who has perhaps limited chops but functions as the lead guitarist in the band and comes up with unforgettable lead parts as a second hook or foil to the lead vocal.

For all his flash EVH actually fits into that mould for me, as of course does Slash etc, and in the UK John Squire and James Dean Bradfield (both Les Paul players, in JDB’s also a lead singer which is interesting) are the last players I really heard doing that in a traditional lead guitar way... maybe the grunge era guys, Billy Corgan, Navarro, Fruscante, the bloke from Soundgarden (name?), Tom Morello of course (not sure if Jack White counts.)

The thing kind of shifted to textural playing. I think of Radiohead, Blur in the UK, the more riff thing in alternative rock and nu metal, even Morello got less ‘leady’ to my ears.

JDB says players learn a certain way now and are very tame. I have to agree. There’s a way these band players cut through...

Thats something I think has gone out of the music and that rock guitar has lost its context. There are plenty of great creative players these days, but that format has gone by and large I think.

[charlieparker]

As someone who grew up listening to Eddie, I thought he was the greatest for a long time. However, his music really started to stagnate after 1984. I am not sure if was the breakup of the original band or if just his alcohol problems. He formed an incredibly original style fairly young and then didn't evolve much after it.

I totally agree that in the end his catchy rhythm parts and songs are more impressive than his soloing, which is amazing in short bursts in a song but just strikes me as pyrotechnics when he takes extended solos.

In the end, I think he is somewhat limited, but I guess you can say that about anybody. I know he was a big fan of Holdsworth and that he brought some of the legato ideas of Holdsworth to rock. But there is a recording of him playing with Holdsworth at GIT and it kind of shattered my opinion of him as a musician. He just played his riffs, completely ignoring the harmony. It just sounded so limited next to Holdsworth. Maybe an unfair critique, but before that I thought Eddie was some kind of genius who could play in the style of Holdsworth but just played rock on the albums.

[Greentone]

Christian77,

Yeah, Jack White counts.

[christianm77]

Fair enough. When you write a riff that someone can play after a minute of instruction and yet is totally unmistakeable, you have earned your place at the table haven’t you?

[christianm77]

As someone who grew up listening to Eddie, I thought he was the greatest for a long time. However, his music really started to stagnate after 1984. I am not sure if was the breakup of the original band or if just his alcohol problems. He formed an incredibly original style fairly young and then didn't evolve much after it.

I totally agree that in the end his catchy rhythm parts and songs are more impressive than his soloing, which is amazing in short bursts in a song but just strikes me as pyrotechnics when he takes extended solos.

In the end, I think he is somewhat limited, but I guess you can say that about anybody. I know he was a big fan of Holdsworth and that he brought some of the legato ideas of Holdsworth to rock. But there is a recording of him playing with Holdsworth at GIT and it kind of shattered my opinion of him as a musician. He just played his riffs, completely ignoring the harmony. It just sounded so limited next to Holdsworth. Maybe an unfair critique, but before that I thought Eddie was some kind of genius who could play in the style of Holdsworth but just played rock on the albums.

Interesting. I never got that impression of him being a harmonic improviser or a fusion guy. He was a blues/rock guy with a bunch of crazy tricks.

The changes thing in rock lead playing is interesting. Aside from the obvious guys like LA session players with a bit of a jazz background, I feel a lot of great blues based players did actually express chords in their playing. I don’t hear the minor blues being the only trick.

Obviously you have BB King... David Gilmour is to my ears extremely deft at navigating chords melodically, but then he wasn’t playing 8 million notes either and they are often quite set piecey solos. Clapton and Hendrix too, they were real ear players. I doubt they’d have been able to play tough Coltrane changes, but in the context of a song, they do to my ears often play changes. (A lot of the original blues guys as it has been mentioned had jazz chops but played it down, and that showed up in their playing.)

Whereas by the 80s solos were usually in small, often separate vamp sections rather than the whole song progression.

If jazz crept into 80-90s rock playing it was definitely in the ‘outside thing’ that you hear Holdsworth often doing when he goes into turbo mode (like on In the Dead of the Night) where it’s not so much scalic or arpeggio based as shapes based.

EVH does this all over including in the Beat It solo and Eruption. I also hear it in the grunge era players. And metal players of course.

[BWV]

EVH was playing that stuff in the late 70s, when we all in middle school thought Ted Nugent was the shit

Vai was a great player in the 80s but would write such cringeworthy cheesy material

Yngwie was the next big rock guitar thing after Eddie, Vai and Satriani combined that scale and arpeggio technique with the more expressive Eddie thing

[christianm77]

TBF I do think there’s a lot of Zappa buried in Vai; the liking for unusual modes and so on. (Flexable is obviously as Zappaesque as he got and doesn’t work for me TBH. He needs the cheese, it’s who he is, and he loves it haha)

Not so much in the phrasing though, which I don’t think anyone has successfully emulated apart from Dweezil.

[christianm77]

I really like Vai’s solo after Mike Stern’s. So much less obviously rocky than Mike’s lol but no jazz guitarist would think to improvise that way. It’s a different conception. I dig it.

Listening to that it really drove home the difference in approach. I think jazz guitarists are primarily interested in pocket, groove and rhythm in soloing. Most shredders are more interested in texture and sound. So, a jazz player of fusion guy will make quite a conscious effort to lock the faster playing into the grid. I think this is particularly true of Allan and Frank Gambale, which is hard because both are using techniques that don't lend themselves to playing clear rhythms, unlike alternate picking.

On the other hand with EVH and so, you often have a bit of drift or flat on those fast repeated patterns. They aren't metrical... the playing is much less concerned with the linear side of it. I don't think it's true of every rock player, but its something I hear from the EVH school. Satriani and so on. Satriani does not do the legato thing in the same way Allan does to my ears.

I think there are more jazz trained shred players now who super on grid. But again, some of that drift is part of the charm, what makes those players wound the way they do. And Allan wasn't metronomic in that way.

[BWV]

Unfortunately YouTube video is blocked in the US.

Zappa doing Zappa is great, think Vai leaned on it too much and became more of a schtick

interesting observation on rhythm and shred

FWIW prefer Mike Sterns post 80s playing, after he got help for his chorus abuse problem

[Max405]

Eddie is a brilliant player. His playing has no boundaries. His playing broke new ground and influenced millions including myself. He is in my gallery of the greats!

[greveost]

As someone who grew up listening to Eddie, I thought he was the greatest for a long time. However, his music really started to stagnate after 1984. I am not sure if was the breakup of the original band or if just his alcohol problems. He formed an incredibly original style fairly young and then didn't evolve much after it.

This is what happens to most guys (if not all) who did similar epic things fairly young.

In the end, I think he is somewhat limited, but I guess you can say that about anybody. I know he was a big fan of Holdsworth and that he brought some of the legato ideas of Holdsworth to rock.

I don't hear any Holdsworth in his playing at all. But yeah, he admired him.

But there is a recording of him playing with Holdsworth at GIT and it kind of shattered my opinion of him as a musician. He just played his riffs, completely ignoring the harmony. It just sounded so limited next to Holdsworth. Maybe an unfair critique, but before that I thought Eddie was some kind of genius who could play in the style of Holdsworth but just played rock on the albums.

Eddie was a genius at what he was doing, a rock player, Holdsworth did his thing, and of course also a genius, more of a fusion/rock player. But completely different guitar players.

[christianm77]

Oh definitely the three notes a string stretch legato things (like the Beat It stretch lick) and a few whammy nuances.... but yeah it’s his own thing.

In a way the rock player who sounds most like Allan is Satriani, but a very specific era: Satch took his mid ‘70s Tony Williams era sound and approach (which was less intervallic and more scalar and bluesy at this point) and as far as I can hear basically appropriated it. He mentioned how important that album was to him in a recent interview....

Allan evolved a lot after that so Satch was free to play in that style.... and it’s a great sound.

[charlieparker]

This is what happens to most guys (if not all) who did similar epic things fairly young.

Yes. I consider this true of Parker whose playing was fairly set by the mid 40's. Although, some guys like Miles, Corea, and Coltrane continued to evolve over their careers.

I don't hear any Holdsworth in his playing at all. But yeah, he admired him.

To my ear, Eddie has a very legato style with very minimal picking except when tremolo picking for effect. I assumed that was inspired by Holdsworth. I recall reading an interview where he mentioned playing like Holdsworth when playing for fun, but couldn't find it, so maybe he never said it.

[Jazzism]

To my ear, Eddie has a very legato style with very minimal picking except when tremolo picking for effect. I assumed that was inspired by Holdsworth. I recall reading an interview where he mentioned playing like Holdsworth when playing for fun, but couldn't find it, so maybe he never said it.

Well UK opened for Van Halen on one of their US tours so he would have got to hear AH quite a bit. I stopped listening after Roth left. Never really liked the timbre of Hagars voice although TBF he’s technically a better singer than Roth. You can hear an evolution in Eds concept, if you check out out the outro solo on Drop dead legs off 1984, you can hear him trying to go outside the tonality on occasion which may be an AH influence.
Yeah, I’ve also heard those GIT tapes of Ed trying to hang with Allan and Jeff Berlin doing some UK tunes. It is embarrassing, but what the hell, nobody can do it all. As a comparison, have a listen to AH trying to play on the Zappa plays Zappa gig, it’s almost like his approach totally doesn’t work for that type of almost modal type of vibe some of Zappa’s tunes require, which was an eye opener for me, as I’ve loved everything I’ve heard Allan on regardless of the quality of the music he has played on as a guest soloist.
Cheers!

[greveost]

Yes. I consider this true of Parker whose playing was fairly set by the mid 40's. Although, some guys like Miles, Corea, and Coltrane continued to evolve over their careers.

Yeah, Parker was something else, I am not sure if he was even human, lol. Truly one of a kind.

Corea, Miles, Coltrane kept evolving over the years, and they surrounded themselves with stellar players along their careers. Circumstances in Jazz are a little different than rock. Imagine if Miles would have played with for example Charlie Parker his whole career. In the shadows of Gillespie, would he have evolved within the bebop framework to the giant he became? Most likely not.

To my ear, Eddie has a very legato style with very minimal picking except when tremolo picking for effect. I assumed that was inspired by Holdsworth. I recall reading an interview where he mentioned playing like Holdsworth when playing for fun, but couldn't find it, so maybe he never said it.

Yeah, their extended use of legato they had in common.

[Hep To The Jive]

To my ear, Eddie has a very legato style with very minimal picking except when tremolo picking for effect. I assumed that was inspired by Holdsworth. I recall reading an interview where he mentioned playing like Holdsworth when playing for fun, but couldn't find it, so maybe he never said it.

I'm not sure about that. To me it seems his picking is his strongest point, he does some slurs in solos of course, but it's not extensive, and never relies on it for speed. So 'very minimal picking' is def not about EVH.

[Hep To The Jive]

.
Yeah, I’ve also heard those GIT tapes of Ed trying to hang with Allan and Jeff Berlin doing some UK tunes. It is embarrassing, but what the hell, nobody can do it all.

It's a fair criticism, but then again he's a kind of player who never felt like stretching out, and likes to stay in his comfort zone. Like Christian said, he's more of a sonic player than anything else. I'd call him more of a guitar composer than improviser. From jazz perspective, he's not much of anything, because really he plays the same licks how he plays them every time. But his composing is brilliant, and the whole concept perfect for a rock band. Mediocre improvisational skills is good enough for rocknroll, and in fact it's better that way.

[greveost]

It's a fair criticism, but then again he's a kind of player who never felt like stretching out, and likes to stay in his comfort zone. .

It's not fair, it is comparing apples and organges.

EVH is not a jazz/fusion improvisor.

He is a rock guitar player.

[MarkRhodes]

It's a fair criticism, but then again he's a kind of player who never felt like stretching out, and likes to stay in his comfort zone. Like Christian said, he's more of a sonic player than anything else. I'd call him more of a guitar composer than improviser. From jazz perspective, he's not much of anything, because really he plays the same licks how he plays them every time. But his composing is brilliant, and the whole concept perfect for a rock band. Mediocre improvisational skills is good enough for rocknroll, and in fact it's better that way.

That last sentence! Don't disagree, though I think it could easily be misunderstood.

[Hep To The Jive]

That last sentence! Don't disagree, though I think it could easily be misunderstood.

Yea, what I mean improvising is not something a rock guitarist expected to do too much or be on the same level as a jazz or jazz/rock player.

[Hep To The Jive]

It's not fair, it is comparing apples and organges.

EVH is not a jazz/fusion improvisor.

He is a rock guitar player.

Yea, I think you're right

[Litterick]

Regardless of what we think, our counterparts on rock guitar forums think he is the greatest and most influential guitarist of our time. I can only presume he is doing something we do not appreciate, because it is not our kind of music.

[christianm77]

TBH I think great rock guitar is always much more about sonics than jazz playing - although Jimmy Page said some interesting things about how he thought Django was trying to play feedback and stuff like that on acoustic.

It’s interesting as well to compare the way rock and jazz players jam.

Maybe that’s part of the reason why fusion guitar isn’t a genre I’m crazy about. It can often sound like rock constrained by the values of jazz, whereas some of my favourite rock players are incredibly basic players in the formal sense but are highly imaginative when it comes to sound. And some are head spinning virtuosos, too.

Jazz/rock players I do feel have that heavy sonic element for me: Johnny Mac (Mahavishnu and Miles era), Pete Cosey, Henry Kaiser, Sonny Sharrock and Bill Frisell.

I wish I could dig it up the interview, but I remember a rock player (not a super famous one) saying that the technique in jazz and classical players is usually ‘transparent’; that is it facilitates the music.

In rock it’s use is usually more display or to create an effect. I thought that was very perceptive and certainly applies to EVH.

[MarkRhodes]

Yea, what I mean improvising is not something a rock guitarist expected to do too much or be on the same level as a jazz or jazz/rock player.

I agree. I think rock (and country and blues) players are more apt to want to play something that sounds good and fits the song than to play something novel. Which is why a lot of such players will play a solo from the record pretty much the same way live. It's not that they can't do anything else; it's because that is now as much a part of the song as the intro, the lyrics, the chorus, etc. It's more of a package deal. They may stretch out later and improvise but it's got to hang together and sound good. When normal people say of a performance, "That was...different" it is not a compliment. ;o)

[christianm77]

Swing era musicians used to do that as well btw

[MarkRhodes]

Swing era musicians used to do that as well btw

Yes! And that's one reason I love that music so much. Solos for non-instrumentalists, you might say! We all love Charlie Christian and Prez but so do a lot of non-players who have a visceral response to their tone and phrasing and, uh, "dig it the most." (Same with Wes and Django.)

[Stevebol]

I remember Frank Zappa bragging at the time that he had hired Vai, a guy who could out-Van Halen EVH.

I must say impressive as it is, that type of guitar wankery never appealed to me. Lots of other guitar wankery yes. But not the tapping/whammy bar Strat thing.

I'm not a huge fan of the tapping but it can be nice in small doses. Van Halen didn't officially offer Billy Sheehan the job of bassist in Van Halen but I suspect Eddie wanted him. VH and Talas toured together in 1980. Sheehan said that Michael Anthony was the right bassist for Van Halen.

Sheehan was taking tapping to extremes before Van Halen. What a tap fest it might have been;

Who do I like the most from that late 70's- early 80's phase...
I find myself listening to AC/DC. They're just so much fun. Angus has an amazing tone and his showmanship is great.

[MarkRhodes]

Jump blues rates a mention here as it took Swing into a combo context with some boogie woogie.
Tiny Grimes on his tenor guitar did great things.

(What I mean is, soloing is crucial to the style but you don't have to be a musician to dig it. ;o)

[greveost]

Swing era musicians used to do that as well btw

Yeah, in the really early days it was improvised embellishments of the melody rather than improvised solos, and out of that developed the modern Jazz as we know today.

[christianm77]

Joe Henderson was quite well known for playing more or less the same solo every night.

[Lobomov]

Joe Henderson was quite well known for playing more or less the same solo every night.

Everyone loves Wes, but he was extremely rehearsed too

[christianm77]

Don't make me post the Steve Swallow/Carla Bley video again (wasn't it on here that I found it?)

There's nothing wrong with composition as a tool. I do think that a lot of those solos may have coalesced over the course of a tour as well - the musician noticing what went over with the audience and so on.

If we claim to love jazz, we can hardly dismiss Louis, Miles, Oscar, Wes, and so on who all did this.

Improvisation is a big deal; but so is music. And in jazz, I would posit that the tool of improvisation should be at the service of the music, not the other way around.

[steve burchfield]

In pop and country some singers insist on same solo every show but some will allow trademarks with improv. Many great players have to do commercial gigs to pay the bills so they can play what want on their own time.

[greveost]

Don't make me post the Steve Swallow/Carla Bley video again (wasn't it on here that I found it?)

There's nothing wrong with composition as a tool. I do think that a lot of those solos may have coalesced over the course of a tour as well - the musician noticing what went over with the audience and so on.

If we came to love jazz, we can hardly dismiss Louis, Miles, Oscar, Wes, and so on who all did this.

Improvisation is a big deal; but so is music. And in jazz, I would posit that the tool of improvisation should be at the service of the music, not the other way around.

But just because it serves the music, rather than the music being a vehicle for improv, very spontaneous, and creative improv can still be done within the frame of the music as a whole.

It is not automatically an either or, even though many times, it seems that way.

[MarkRhodes]

Everyone loves Wes, but he was extremely rehearsed too

Maybe the lesson to draw from this is that "extremely rehearsed is a GOOD thing." ;o)

Speaking of Wes rehearsing:

[MarkRhodes]

Ensemble riffs! This went from Swing bands to jump bands to rock bands.

[Sam Sherry]

Edward L. Van Halen, January 26, 1955 - October 6, 2020

[Woody Sound]

Music aside, I wonder if it was lung c. I know he smoked like a fiend. What a shame.

[AndyV]

Eddie Van Halen dies at 65 after cancer battle - CNN

[MarkRhodes]

Music aside, I wonder if it was lung c. I know he smoked like a fiend. What a shame.

Throat cancer.

There's an RIP thread in the Chit Chat section above

RIP Eddie Van Halen

[neatomic]

"Back in 2000, Eddie underwent treatment for tongue cancer. He subsequently had part of his tongue removed, and was declared cancer-free in 2002. Despite being a heavy smoker, the Van Halen icon blamed his cancer diagnosis on metal guitar picks that he kept in his mouth while performing"

rip evh

cheers

[Alter]

Such sad news. Killer band and player...

[christianm77]

Dammit

This year...

[greveost]

Very tragic.

[rlrhett]

Wow, I forgot how bad Sammy Hagar was. I was enjoying that until he started singing.

[Hep To The Jive]

wow, RIP Ed

I was on a long train ride yesterday, like 9 hours, and I was re reading Running With The Devil, VH former manager memoirs. Fantastic read btw, highly recommended, a lot of shocking (but not really) revelations about the band and show business. So I woke up today thinking I gotta check what is EVH up to these days... Well, it's a very sad answer.

[AndyV]

Posted on FB by guitarist And Black:

Virtuoso. Visionary. Revolutionary. Tinkerer. Inventor. Sonic assassin. Showman. Hit maker. Off-the-boat-Immigrant, the American Dream made flesh. It's impossible to sum up this man's contributions to music in a stupid post like this but I'm gonna try.

First, and this can't be stated enough - there was simply nobody like Edward Van Halen before he arrived. Easy to forget when you think of the droves of followers who made cliches out of his inventions. But make no mistake, Ed was numero uno.

His band were wildly popular and they made loud party music, so the critics were never going to get behind them. But Van Halen's work deserves to be studied and analysed, poked, prodded and puzzled over for another century at least. And Eddie was the engine of it all.

He made it look easy - the ever-present grin, the casual onstage acrobatics. Behind all that was an all-consuming devotion and discipline. Countless hours not just practicing his instrument, but trying to reimagine the instrument itself: tinkering with gear, mad-scientist-style, tearing things apart, blowing shit up, forcing conventional equipment to submit to his will. He needed the perfect tonal delivery system for his entirely new six-string language and he attained it. Boy, did he ever.

Even guitarists occasionally forget the primacy of EVH. The decades after his official bomb-dropping arrival in 1978 have been strewn with fretboard wizards who, standing in his impossibly long shadow, absorbed his tricks, his tone, his innovations. Some played them faster, added new techniques, broke the land speed record. Some of them were innovative in their own right. But without Edward's blueprint, they just wouldn't have existed. In electric guitar history, there is pre-Eddie and post-Eddie.

And those packed arenas? They were packed because the man could write SONGS. Songs that appealed to people who aren't guitarists. Van Halen music is irrepressible, reckless, dazzling, drunken, daredevil shit with melodies you hum all the way home. There is a white-knuckle vitality to the music that grabs you by the lapels and forces you to deal. Ed's virtuosity was just a way to throw some extra adrenaline into the party - a party to which EVERYONE was invited.

EVH's influence on me goes without saying. If you play electric guitar, it's inevitable. But he's so much more than a guitar god - the albums, the songs, the crackling incandescent energy of the music are the likes of which you only get to witness once per lifetime. I'm grateful to have had Van Halen in my formative years. Thank you, Ed.

[christianm77]

As said elsewhere, the thing about Eddie is that he was a brilliant, very flashy and highly individual rock and roll guitar player who liked to write and play songs in a BAND.

Do we see many of those these days?

Already when I was learning, the rock players I was hearing weren't influenced by EVH, but more hearkening back to the 60s and 70s, excepting maybe Tom Morello (who I regard as EVH's spiritual successor on the instrument.)

Back then even if you could puzzle it out, you simply couldn't do the EVH stuff in public....that and the snapping of my cheap vibrato arm put paid to any direct influence... if you wanted new 'wanky' guitar playing you had to go to special guitar oriented albums like Passion and Warfare (and carry them around in a brown paper bag hoping none of your indie mates would see), or to metal.

Above all EVH represents for me the very individual approach to learning the instrument people had back then, teaching oneself, peicing it together, coming up with ones own approach. As a teacher having to take students through syllabuses and the grades etc, I do wonder if we are squishing the creativity out of guitar playing. The 'shred' thing seems to do that to me, producing players who can 'do it all' but invent nothing new the way Eddie did, and without any of that connection to popular culture.