5 years without Eddie Van Halen: a guitar hero, a revolution
Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, known in the world like Eddie Van Halen, left us on October 6, 2020, exactly five years ago, at the age of 65, struck down by a tumor. Eddie was much more than a musicianleaving its mark as an electric guitar icon, an innovator without borders, capable of mixing technical genius and creative audacity. Unleashed, unpredictable, with the aura of a real rock star, Van Halen has transformed virtuosity into art and energy into legend.
Eddie Van Halen’s legacy
“My father was much more than an example for me. He was an incredible musician And an incredible person, in doing what he was doing simply by following his path. He was a fantastic person. The advice he gave me is only not to take everything too seriously and to be honest, as a person and as a musician“. Most of all, it is Wolfgang van Halen To have kept and renewed the lesson of his father, Eddie Van Halen, guitarist, innovator and co -founder of Van Halen, who passed away on October 6, 2020. Shortly after the death of Guitar Hero, Wolfgang dedicated him “distance“an intense and personal song that opened the way to Mammoth Wvh debuta project that also bears a direct tribute in the name to the first incarnation of the paternal band. “Before called Van Halen, the group was called Mammoth,” said Wolfgang in Rockol in 2020. “When I was little, my father told me that at the beginning the Van Halen were called that. I thought that one day, I would have formed my band and I would have called it in the same way. So here we are: Mammoth Wvh”. But Eddie Van Halen’s greatness does not live only in the memories and music of the son. He lives in every guitarist who, after him, touched a six electric ropes looking for a new sound. The “guitar hero” did not limit himself to playing, but revolutionized the guitarrewritten its rules, merging technique, speed and an almost engineering idea of sound.
With “Eruption“Of the Van Halen, in 1978, Eddie showed the world an unexplored frontier, that of Two -hand tappingwhich forever transformed the way of conceiving the instrument. It was not only virtuosity, it was pure curiosity, the same one that brought Eddie and his Frankenstratthe guitar he created, to disassemble and recombin guitars and amplifiers to create his legendary “brown sound”, warm, saturated, recognizable among a thousand.
There Frankenstrat: Eddie Van Halen’s guitar
There Frankenstrat It is more than a guitar, it stands a Symbol of the creative genius of Eddie Van Halen. His name, fusion between Frankenstein and Stratocaster, already tells the idea behind the instrument. Eddie began working at the first Frankenstrat around the 1973when he was looking for a guitar with The agility and balance of a Fender Stratocasterbut with the Heat and power of a Gibson Les Paul. The guitarist then took a Stratocaster’s body from a pile of defective pieces in the Charvel factory in California, bought an economic handle, connected a full -bodied humbucker pickup, usually mounted on a Gibson, applied its characteristic stripes painting and the rest is history.
Red, black and white: the iconic livery of Frankenstrat Eddie Van Halen has always been legend, while every strip and every sign tell the hands of an tireless innovator. From the stage to the study, between 1979 and 1984, Frankenstrat accompanied Eddie Van Halen in the definition of his revolutionary soundleaving an indelible imprint in the world of electric guitar. Over the years, official replicas and amateurs have perpetuated its inheritance, contributing to the iconicity of a sacred monster of music, built by the ingenuity of those who revolutionized the rules of rock.
“It was the Mozart of our generation”
During the Special of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Aired on the HBO on 7 November 2020, three of the greatest guitarists in history paid homage to the virtuoso of the six ropes who disappeared on October 6, 2020. Slash of the Guns n ‘Roses He called it “an extraordinarily gifted musician, with a completely unique style and sound, who had a huge impact on anyone who took a guitar from 1978 onwards”. Kirk Hammett dei Metallica He added: “It was since the time of Jimi Hendrix that a guitarist had not so impactful. His example, for me, was stimulating. He simply explored the simplest thing, a harmonious on a single rope and brought him to this technical context where no one thought was possible. He was another planet”. “He had that type of talent that is found once every hundred years,” commented the guitarist of the Rage Against The Machine, Tom Morello: “Eddie Van Halen inspired me to practice 20 thousand hours to try to reach 100 miles from his inspiration from his mastery of electric guitar. AND was the Mozart of our generation“.
In addition to the tributes arrived on the occasion of the ceremony of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame In 2020, among others, that of Adrian Smith of the Iron Maiden arrived who, interviewed by the specialized newspaper “The Metal Voice”, said:
“Probably he and Jimi Hendrix, certainly among those I could live, had an impact on electric guitar like no one else. I loved Eddie’s way of playing even if, when he came out, I had already started playing for five or six years. If I had had the opportunity to start when I listened to him for the first time I would have simply copied it, as he did 99 percent of the other guitarists. Go to a couple of times but I never succeeded.
Eddie Van Halen’s best solos
Five years later, Eddie Van Halen continues to be the symbol of the impossible real return: an artist capable of transforming the technique into emotion, energy into melody, rock in science and magic together.
His guitar has never stopped speaking, and in his immortal solos, from “Eruption “ and “Jump“Of Van Halento “Beat it “ Of Michael Jackson, Eddie’s legacy continues to tell us what it really means to be free. In the lines below we propose listening to some songs by Van Halen and collaborations with other artists in which it is impossible not to applaud and appreciate the art and talent of the six ropes virtuoso.
The instrumental “Eruption” was inserted as the second track of Van Halen’s debut album, the band that the artist founded in 1972 with his brother, the drummer Alex Van Halen.
With “Jump”, included in the sixth formation album, “1984” (precisely) of 1984, the group definitively conquered the favors of the general public, ensuring the second place in the US ranking of album sales for five consecutive weeks after solved to the bestseller of Micheal Jackson “Thriller”.
“Runnin ‘with the Devil” for Van Halen enthusiasts is an authentic must, being the opening track of the first album delivered to the Annals by the band, the eponymous album of 1978.
Eddie Van Halen was also the owner of prestigious collaborations, first among all those with the king of pop: in 1982 the guitarist recorded the solo of “Beat It”, originally inserted by Jackson in “Thriller”, an album that two years later would blow the place at the head of the US charts at “1984” by Van Halen themselves.
“Mean Street” is the opening track of “Fair Warning”, the fourth study album published by Van Halen in 1981: the album, despite having been well welcomed by critics, stopped in the US just two million copies, marking the negative peak of sales during which the formation was led by the frontman David Lee Roth.
The instrumental “Cathedral” was inserted as the third trace of the 1982 album “Divi Down”: “I had been playing it for a year and wanted to record it”, explained Van Halen himself about the song, “he plays like an organ of a Catholic church, that’s why it was named after it. In that piece I used a casino the tan of the volume. If you use it too much and stop. Two take of that song, and just at the end of the second the volume knob started: it was practically blocked “.
