The one guitarist Eddie Van Halen said was the epitome of rock: “Full of life”
Rock and roll was always more than a genre of music to Eddie Van Halen.
For him, this was the lifestyle that he wanted to have for the rest of his life, and from the release of the first Van Halen record onward, he was determined to make the best of every single riff he played. Not all of them needed to have the same impact as ‘Panama’ of ‘Runnin’ With The Devil’, but even during his lower moments, Eddie could find comfort knowing there were other guitarists who saw their craft the same way he did.
Whereas most people have to grind their ass off to make sure that they make something halfway decent, everything came from a place of fun for Eddie. David Lee Roth was the consummate showman who kept everything rocking whenever the band played live, but compared to what Eddie was doing on the guitar, the lyrics almost didn’t matter. You can practically hear that cheeky grin across his face, whether he was working on ‘Jump’ or ‘Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love’, and his lifelong pursuit was to find people who played like him.
Because if you look at a lot of his friends in the industry, all of them saw their craft the same way. Toto were always having fun on whichever record they decided to play on, and while Allan Holdsworth might not have the same kind of impact that Eddie would have liked him to have, there were already plenty of metal guitarists who were coming for the Van Halen crown whenever they started playing.
By the time that most people heard ‘Eruption’, they wanted to find a way to do that themselves, but none of them seemed to have the same lust for life that Eddie did. All any guitarist needed to do was know what key a song was in to start doing their tapping schtick, but even in an era that was packed to the brim with hair metal posers, Dimebag Darrell came out swinging the minute that Pantera released Cowboys From Hell.
Despite having a few moments flirting with hair metal, Pantera were a different band entirely once they reached the 1990s. The LA-rock scene had been played out for far too long, and after listening to Metallica and Slayer, they finally had the model that they wanted. But even with inspiration from Kerry King, James Hetfield, and Eddie Van Halen, what Dimebag came up with on ‘Floods’ and ‘This Love’ was enough to knock out virtually anybody.
And when Eddie attended his funeral, he said that the Pantera guitarist should be considered one of the best rock and rollers that ever was, saying, “I’m here for the same reason as everyone else: to give some love back… This guy was full of life. Dime was the epitome, he lived, breathed and is Rock ’n’ Roll.” But beyond his rock star credentials, Eddie managed to give Dimebag the ultimate send-off present by giving him one of his signature Bumblebee-style guitars.
But this wasn’t the simple torch-passing moment that most people thought it was. Eddie had built up a guitar institution by that point, but this was the guitar that he had used for years and even the one that appeared on the back cover of Van Halen II. It was practically a piece of Van Halen history half the time, but as he told it, “Dime was an original. He deserves the original.”
There aren’t going to be many people who could even hope to touch the same kind of heights that Van Halen did, but when metalheads talk about the greatest musicians to ever pick up the instrument, it’s not out of the question to put Darrell on the same level as his hero. He wasn’t going for the same approach, but like all of Eddie’s famous licks, he never managed to play a single unoriginal note in his life.
