The greatest guitar riff of the 1960s, according to Eddie Van Halen
The humble riff has been a staple of rock music ever since the genre’s inception. When we talk about our favourite guitarists, such as Eddie Van Halen, we do so with his riffs in mind.
Of course, Eddie wasn’t just a great riff writer in the conventional sense, he was a revolutionary. The Van Halen lead introduced a new way to write great guitar music, which still baffles the most nimble-fingered fret aficionados to this day. His tapping technique wasn’t just a flash way to play speedy solos, it was a great way to put together unique-sounding riffs that people hadn’t previously thought of, purely because they couldn’t reach up and down the neck of a guitar quick enough.
Consider a song such as ‘Hot For Teacher’ – while people were writing riffs that were heavy with distortion and had a similar energy and punch to them, nobody was able to play in the same way that Eddie was. Tony Iommi remembers listening to the Van Halen guitarist play when Black Sabbath took them on tour and being blown away by the exciting new lead who was seemingly changing the way people saw the instrument.
“I just don’t know how he could play like that,” said Iommi during an interview with Rolling Stone shortly after Eddie had passed away, “Nobody can play like him.” The Sabbath riffmaster continued, “What I like about Eddie, he was always an inventor. He’d always want to come up with something new. He worked hard to develop his own amplifiers. And he’d work on his own guitars as best he could to make them feel comfortable to him. He was always very much an innovator with a bunch of things.”
While Eddie might have invented a great deal within the world of rock, he was inspired by those who came before, just the same as everybody else was. One of those musicians who initially got him into the guitar was Iommi himself, as Eddie said his effort on 1971’s ‘Into The Void’ is one of the best riffs ever written. In fact, as Eddie ran through his list of favourite guitar riffs, almost every single offering came from around this period.
“There are millions of riffs,” said Eddie when pondering over what his favourites might be, “I wrack my brain, trying to think. Obviously, I can’t mention any of my own, right?” He reeled off ‘Into The Void’, Deep Purple’s ‘Burn’ and ‘Down Payment Blues’ from AC/DC’s 1978 record Powerage. All of the guitar lines came from the 1970s, except for one, an offering from arguably one of the most versatile six-string enthusiasts of all time: Eric Clapton.
Peruse the pages of Clapton’s discography, and you’ll come across a range of great riffs and solos. The guitarist wasn’t content staying within one simple genre, and instead merged the styles of guitarists new and old, in turn creating a brand new sound which we now recognise as modern rock musicianship. He has previously been called the most important guitarist of all time due to his ability to merge these playing styles, and even Ian Anderson said his effort in Cream was a precursor to prog.
“A more progressive approach, which had been the latter part of ’66, listening to people like Graham Bond, who had at that point in his band Jack Bruce on bass and Ginger Baker on drums. In many ways, Graham Bond was kind of a precursor of that thing that became progressive rock,” said the Jethro Tull flautist, “And, of course, Cream in its way, when those two guys left Graham Bond and set out as Cream, that became something that moved Eric Clapton along from just being a blues guitarist.”
Throughout all of this music, there are plenty of good riff variations sporadically spread throughout, but when picking his best, and subsequently the best riff from the ‘60s all around, Eddie Van Halen went for the most iconic – ‘Sunshine of Your Love’. It’s the first thing that a lot of budding shredders learn on the guitar, and its iconic sound still rings despite being written decades ago. A good choice as the best riff of a decade; it’s arguably the best riff of all time.
