The musician that made Eddie Van Halen pick up a guitar: “Imprinted in my brain”
Most of Eddie Van Halen’s playing doesn’t seem to have any clear inspiration. When looking back at the first Van Halen album, what Eddie was doing with his guitar was way ahead of his contemporaries, employing different tapping techniques that left other guitarists with their jaws on the floor. Then again, even Eddie admitted to doing his homework on some of the best guitarists in the world.
With the band’s debut album in 1978, they announced themselves as the brand new rock and rollers to be feared and met every snort of derision with proof of their impending dominance. As punk was sizzling under pressure, Van Halen set their course for universal appeal and classic rock infamy. But the real moment the ruling legends of the rock music game began to quiver was when Eddie Van Halen’s guitar was plugged in. The guitarist was like a blast from the past, a true impresario for the new generation.
Such prowess within the music industry rarely happens by accident, and Van Halen spent many years meticulously practising his craft, listening and re-listening to records, and finding inspiration and influence to make his own life-changing tunes.
Before getting started in music, Eddie actually wasn’t cut out to play guitar at all. For most of his childhood, Eddie sat behind the drums while his brother Alex took up the guitar before realising that both worked better on the opposite instrument.
When he started to work through different scales, Eddie quickly adopted a blues-infused vocabulary through the work of Eric Clapton. As far as Eddie is concerned, he owes ‘Slowhand’ half of his career, telling Rolling Stone, “Eric Clapton is basically the only guitar player that influenced me – even though I don’t sound like him. He made me pick up a guitar”.
Whereas Eddie was lighting up the club scene in the late ‘70s, Clapton was doing something similar in the late ‘60s. Having been through his time working in The Yardbirds, Clapton’s knack for wanting to play the most fiery blues possible led to him forming the supergroup Cream. Being free to expand beyond the traditional rock and roll format, Clapton would go on long solos that captured the essence of a singer, leading to many people painting ‘Clapton is God’ in graffiti across town.
As Eddie was coming up, he would pour over every lick that Clapton played, recalling, “I would literally slow down those records and learn every lick, and bottom line, it’s all blues-based. You’ve got three chords that are most pleasing to the ear, and you’ve got 12 notes to work with”. Even when working in the context of Van Halen, Eddie knew how to incorporate a few of Clapton’s trademarks into his sound.
Outside of his tapping skills, hearing Eddie go through some of his shredding techniques has a blues edge laced throughout it. Amid the mind-bending techniques, there are some of Clapton’s trademarks, like the massive crying bends that ring out on ‘Ain’t Talkin Bout Love’ or the more lyrical guitar parts that he made later on ‘Jump’.
Eddie also found a way to put those blues trademarks into his tapping licks. When combing through some of his material, Eddie usually taps the root note of any scale he’s trying to emulate and runs down a blues scale on one string.
Then again, Eddie has his brand of innovation in the ‘80s as well. Shying away from conventional harmony whenever he could, some of Eddie’s greatest innovations to the instrument have come when he goes outside of what everyone else is doing, like the wild flamenco playing on the intro to ‘Little Guitars’ or sounding like he’s trying to go past the sound barrier on his solo on Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’.
Until his death, Eddie still held Clapton’s early work as the gold standard. He said: “I could play some of those solos now, they’re imprinted in my brain. That blues-based sound is still the core of modern rock guitar”. Eddie Van Halen may have taken that model into new areas, but there’s no competing with Clapton’s touch when it comes to rock ‘n’ roll.
