‘The Sound of Silence’: the classic Sammy Hagar thought was butchered by a “wasted” Eddie Van Halen
There aren’t too many things that Eddie Van Halen couldn’t get under his fingers. Even though many fans would have trouble trying to figure out half of what he played during his prime, it wasn’t hard for Eddie to find himself playing a ballad and then flying off the handle when it came time to deliver a ripping solo with a few tapping sections for good measure. While Sammy Hagar was more than happy to sit back and watch Eddie teach a clinic on guitar theatrics, he knew some songs were well outside his range.
If you look at Eddie’s influences, though, he was always a far more bluesy play than he was given credit for. A lot of his biggest influences were always people like Eric Clapton and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, and while that lent itself to sounding heavy, the guitar maestro still found ways to embrace his inner bluesman by busting out a few of his solos as well.
But a lot of the best songs the band ever made had more to do with their original compositions than covers. ‘You Really Got Me’ may still be one of the main standouts from their period with David Lee Roth, but hearing Eddie make something as fierce as ‘Eruption’ or come up with the beautiful intro to ‘Hear About It Later’ was always where he operated the best. Even when working with Michael Jackson, it was a lot easier for him to make a massive solo on ‘Beat It’ than be shown what to play half the time.
When the band’s run with Hagar started coming to an end, though, ‘The Red Rocker’ started to see a few cracks in the foundation. Eddie could still play better than almost anyone around at the time, but. In contrast, most people spent time learning songs from their contemporaries, Hagar remembered everything coming to a grinding halt when Eddie offered to lend his skills to Paul Simon.
Then again, the thought of the man behind Graceland working with Eddie was already weird, but it wasn’t impossible, either. Simon’s world music albums were all based on getting new sounds that didn’t fit within his normal wheelhouse, but the minute that he offered Eddie a chance to play ‘The Sound of Silence’ live, Hagar remembered Eddie cracking under pressure.
When discussing the moment in his book Red, Hagar remembered Eddie being in shambles trying to put everything together, saying, “Simon took him in the trailer and tried to show him the song. Eddie couldn’t get it. I guess he was too wasted. He tried his finger-tapping to the song. Eddie’s a great musician but very methodical. He was looking for the melody while Paul was singing and playing with him, and he couldn’t get it.”
But that’s not exactly fair since they were coming from two separate worlds. Eddie did have a drinking problem during the tour for Balance when this took place, but giving him only a few minutes to learn a folk rock song would have been the equivalent of handing Yngwie Malmsteen a banjo and telling him to put together music for a bluegrass band.
Whether or not Eddie could actually play the song didn’t do much to erase the writing that was already on the wall. It was time for all of them to take a break or split up entirely, and while Hagar had some great times with them in a post-Roth world, a lot of the fun of those early days simply didn’t exist.
