“It made him happy”: Eddie Van Halen’s favourite song
Most of the time, when someone with a unique sound comes along, we are able to pinpoint the artists that have inspired them to create this new sound. That doesn’t mean that they sound like said artists, but there is a connect, something that clearly shows the creative wears their influences on their sleeve. Then you have exceptions like Eddie Van Halen, who came along and delivered something totally unique, unlike anything that had been before.
Rock music was well and truly established by the time Eddie Van Halen came along. People were fans of various rock bands, and the genre was seen as cool and a form of rebellion. One of the biggest aspects of this style of music was the famous guitar solo, as lead guitarists were a pivotal part of driving the sound of the genre forward.
Some of the great guitarists who helped spearhead rock music were George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Their style was derivative of the blues and R&B, with influences clearly coming from those two genres and glimpses of the past present in everything they wrote. Then you had Eddie Van Halen come along, who had a sound that was a million miles away from these guitar players, completely out of this world with a tone and playing style that felt like it had been plucked from a world of fiction.
One of the most standout things about Eddie Van Halen was his guitar tapping technique. Rather than playing the strings with his pick, he would tap them with his left and right hands. It gave his playing a speed that other guitar players couldn’t keep up with. However, it wasn’t just quick; his style was filled with melody, and he wrote beautiful songs using this new style of playing that people weren’t familiar with.
That kind of music has followed him around his entire life and has dripped down into his family. We talk about nepotism a lot in music, and while it does feel like a lot of famous musicians find a platform because of who they know rather than what they know, it also shouldn’t be surprising to us that people who have famous musicians as parents end up playing an instrument themselves. Wolfgang Van Halen is a good example of this. When you grow up with Eddie Van Halen as your parent, it’s only natural that you’ll start playing guitar as well.
A great example of the ever-changing nature of music is that even an expert like Eddie Van Halen was able to learn something from his son when he started playing. He was shocked at the tone he was able to pull out of his guitar. “I don’t know how he got those Marshalls to sound that way,” said Eddie. “I couldn’t get the sound out of them that he did! I guess there’s a benefit to playing both bass and guitar, as his fingers are so damn strong.”
Eddie liked a lot of the songs his son wrote, but his favourite was a track called ‘Think It Over’. It was one of his favourite songs of all time, as he loved the pop elements to it and thought the solo was great. “It made him happy,” Wolfgang concluded. “He always called the solo my George Harrison solo […] Nothing flashy but perfect for the melody supporting the song.”
