![]() RIP Eddie Van Halen.”Īttendees at last year’s Melbourne Guitar Show will fondly remember Simon Hosford and James Ryan’s Van Halen tribute band Fair Warning playing the entire Van Halen debt album to a packed crowd of dropped jaws. Rest In Peace my dear friend till we meet again”, said Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi.Īmerican guitarist Alex Skolnick summed up what many other guitar players are feeling today when we he posted, “There have been many big losses in the music world but few that just stop you in your tracks, leave you speechless and basically unable to function. Eddie was one of a very special kind of person, a really great friend. He fought a long and hard battle with his cancer right to the very end. “I’m just devastated to hear the news of the passing of my dear friend Eddie Van Halen. You are deeply loved and will be missed.” Let’s take a minute and try to imagine our world if he never showed up. The appreciation and love for him is bigger though. “Feeling deep sadness and overwhelming appreciation. Steve Vai, another guitar god has just posted the following: My heart is broken and I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover from this loss. ![]() Every moment I’ve shared with him on and off stage was a gift. He was the best father I could ever ask for. “I can’t believe I’m having to write this, but my father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, has lost his long and arduous battle with cancer this morning. Tributes are flooding in from artists all over the world on social media, none more heartfelt than that of Eddie’s son Wolf. It ended up being Record of the Year,” Eddie revealed to CNN. “I said to myself, ‘Who is going to know that I played on this kid’s record, right? Nobody’s going to find out.’ Wrong!” he laughs. He did it for free, as a favor to producer Quincy Jones, while the rest of his Van Halen bandmates were out of town. His blazing guitar solo lasted all of 20 seconds and took half an hour to record. In 2012, Guitar World Magazine ranked Eddie Van Halen Number one on its list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.”Įddie will also be forever known as the guitarist who played the blistering guitar solo on Michael Jackson’s Beat It. Van Halen went on to sell tens of millions of albums and were inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. The band Van Halen lived two notably successful lives, one with Diamond David Lee Roth out front, delivering hits such as Panama, Jump and You Really Got Me, and then in the mid eighties with Sammy Hagar and the mega selling 5150 album, giving us tracks such as Dreams and Why Can’t This Be Love. ![]() ![]() If Hendrix was the mad professor of rock then Eddie was the supreme athlete, tapping and stretching notes beyond what we thought was capable and like Hendrix, inspiring millions of kids around the world to pick up the guitar and play. He’s much younger than me, but I couldn’t believe what his fingers could do.Australian music fans have awoken to the news that pioneering guitar genius Eddie Van Halen has died at the age of 65 of throat cancer.ĮVH burst onto the world stage in 1978 with the release of Van Halen’s debut album which featured the iconic guitar track ‘Eruption’, taking guitar gymnastics to a place we’d never seen or heard before. I mean, I’m not big on chromatic runs or whatever, I’m not a great technician, but we just did it – one, two, three, go! That’s a tiny little moment but a moment of great joy, playing with this guy. “That was one of the great moments of my life, I’ve got to say – because we did it once and we got it right. And I remember, at the very end of the soloing section there’s a little harmony run-up, so we overdubbed that together live, but as an overdub. I think he did three different ones, all of which were utterly brilliant. “He’d done the Beat It solo and I wanted him to have that kind of feeling about it. “The stuff you hear Ed doing – the big solo which had been set up – that’s an overdub, because I wanted Ed to have a number of goes at it,” May explained to Guitar World in 2020. Though much of Star Fleet Project was laid down live – as you'll be able to hear in the reissue – Star Fleet's triumphant solo was an overdub that Van Halen attempted a number of times, never “treading the same path twice,” according to May. ![]()
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