The one guitarist who changed Eddie Van Halen’s life: “He influenced me and everybody I know”
The entire rock music landscape seemed to move on its axis when Eddie Van Halen emerged on the scene. Although he may not have been the first guitar hero the world had ever seen, his innovations on the fretboard were unheard of both at the time and to this day, making melodic pieces that took seasoned veterans years to figure out. Although Eddie may have had a penchant for writing some of the most strenuous guitar pieces in the rock canon, he can still point to one guitarist as one of his biggest inspirations.
Then again, Eddie always maintained his signature style outside of any kind of inspiration. Despite being able to pick up subtle pieces of blues and even jazz harmony here and there, some of his licks are so identifiable with him that he may as well have them trademarked, from the various whammy bar dives to the way he used tapping to create mile-long solos in a few seconds.
When Eddie was first coming up in the world, though, he wasn’t interested in guitar, only picking it up when his brother came home and played his drums instead. Although Eddie would quickly master the fretboard better than anyone, he was also interested in listening to what was coming out of the modern guitar gods.
For Eddie, inspiration was less about imitation and more about possibility. The players he admired were the ones who opened doors rather than laid down rules, showing that the guitar could move beyond its traditional role without losing its power. That mindset shaped how Eddie listened to other musicians, not searching for licks to copy, but for ideas that suggested the instrument had further to go.
That was especially true when it came to guitarists who thought like architects. Instead of treating solos as isolated moments, they built songs where tone, feel, and arrangement were inseparable from the playing itself. Those lessons would quietly inform Eddie’s own approach, where innovation served the song rather than existing purely for spectacle.
Being inspired by how Eric Clapton played guitar in bands like Cream, Eddie would take most of his inspiration from ‘Slowhand’, down to his need to keep most of his effects simple and let his fingers do the talking for him. While Clapton was a significant figure in the late 1960s thanks to his work with Cream, his former band, The Yardbirds, also had another guitar legend in their ranks.
Initially a session player, Jimmy Page wanted to create studio creations unlike anything the world had ever seen. Quickly outgrowing the confines of the blues outfit, Page’s next stint in Led Zeppelin brought the world the most outlandish approaches to both rock guitar and production, including songs that featured both taste and fury on ‘Heartbreaker’ and ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’.
While Eddie claimed to stop listening to music once he began to write his compositions, he still thought that Page was one of the most innovative guitarists ever to live. When discussing Page’s influence, Eddie claimed that no one else came close to what the guitarist accomplished, telling The Hollywood Walk of Fame, “I don’t think there is anybody here who has not been affected or touched by Jimmy Page’s music, his guitar playing. So the guy is a fucking legend, you know. He influenced me and everybody that I know. What more can I say?”
While Van Halen was cutting their teeth around the same time Zeppelin was winding down, Eddie eventually took inspiration from Page for one of his signature techniques. When watching the guitarist play at a gig in California, Eddie incorporated Page’s pull-off technique and moved the guitar nut with his left hand, inadvertently giving birth to the tapping technique he would use for the rest of his career. Despite the massive techniques Eddie pioneered, even he knew that Page was one of the founders of what hard rock guitar was supposed to sound like.
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