How to play the guitar like Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen was the premiere guitar hero of the 1980s. An innovative thinker with skills and techniques that were virtually unheard of before him, Eddie Van Halen was one of the few guitar players in the history of music who could truly be considered revolutionary. Almost singlehandedly, Van Halen changed the course of rock and metal, setting a shredding template that was copied and followed by nearly every hair metal musician who came after him. Even as his tap-heavy approach went out of style, Van Halen himself never did. Grunge might have wiped out all of Van Halen’s disciples, but Eddie and his bandmates managed to continue as one of the biggest groups in the world.
To understand Eddie Van Halen’s playing is to understand what turned him into the musician that he was. That includes tracing his life as a first-generation American, the influence of his professional musician father, and the family’s dire financial straights that prevented Van Halen from obtaining the equipment that his peers in the California rock scene had access to. Every time you saw Van Halen strap on a guitar, he had decades of formative experiences fueling every lick and solo that came out of his amplifiers.
The son of a Dutch pianist, Van Halen grew up as the younger of two brothers, along with his brother Alex. As the songs of immigrants who did not initially speak English, the Van Halen brothers formed a strong bond with each other as they dealt with the prejudice of America in the 1950s and 1960s. By the time they were teenagers, both Van Halen brothers found refuge in hard rock and heavy metal music.
But before that, the brothers had to slog through piano lessons. Both showed promise, and Eddie’s impressive ear helped him excel despite never learning how to read music. “For years, my mom and dad put us in these piano contests, where you would rehearse one piece of music all year long,” Van Halen told Esquire in 2012. “Depending on how many years you played, they put you in a category, and then after you play, they post the top 100, or the first 1,000 that won on a billboard outside. ‘Hey, you’re on there.’ ‘Ah, Dad, what’s going on?’ I didn’t give a shit. And then an hour later, top 100, Alex and I both were. And we wait longer, and we’re in the top 20, and then we’re in the top 10. And then we’re in the top four… and I won.”
Van Halen’s ability to reproduce everything from Bach to Jerry Lee Lewis solely by ear helped get him primed for his eventual career. But before he ever picked up a guitar, Eddie gravitated toward the drums while Alex played guitar. Eventually, Eddie got discouraged by Alex’s escalating abilities and retaliated by stealing his guitar. The connection proved to be key to unlocking Eddie Van Halen’s talent, career, and professional future.
If you’re trying to play like Eddie Van Halen inevitably centres around one technique: his tapping. Van Halen himself credits Jimmy Page, while guitarists like Genesis’ Steve Hackett and Canned Heat’s Harvey Mandel were experimenting with tapping throughout the 1970s. But it quickly became Van Halen’s signature, largely thanks to his desire to push the technique beyond what any player had attempted before him.
While other guitarists used tapping in brief snippets, Van Halen began creating entire compositions based on the technique. Songs like ‘Eruption’ and ‘Spanish Fly’ have tapping baked into their DNA in ways that are as important musically as they are visual. Van Halen’s two-handed hammer-ons were certainly flashy, but they were rarely used just to show off: they were integral to the composition of his solos.
A key to understanding Van Halen’s playing style is knowing his equipment. Famously, without the funds to afford a proper guitar, Van Halen built his own. Attempting to put the sound of a Gibson in the body of a Fender, Van Halen tricked out a discarded ash Stratocaster body, attached a maple neck, put a Gibson PAF Humbucking pickup in, and rounded it out with a Floyd Rose tremolo. The result was the Frankenstrat, Van Halen’s legendary number-one guitar for most of his most famous songs.
During his earliest days with Van Halen, Eddie had a relatively simple setup. The Frankenstrat went through a Marshall amplifier (specifically a late 1960s Super Lead) that helped define his signature tone. When it came to pedals, Van Halen started out with just an MXR Phase 90. By the time he and the rest of the band were recording their debut, Van Halen’s pedal board had expanded to include an Echoplex and an MXR Flanger. Other than some EQ and possibly some additional tape echo, Van Halen’s tone largely came from his amps (usually cranked to the max), his guitar, and his fingers.
One of Van Halen’s favourite tricks was remarkably simple: he manipulated the volume control for different dynamics. Perhaps the best example comes from Van Halen I‘s opening track ‘Runnin’ with the Devil’. After blasting out the opening riff, Van Halen physically dials back the volume on his guitar to create a less-distorted sound. When it comes time for his solo, Van Halen makes sure that the volume control is on ten. From years of club gigs, Van Halen learned how to adjust on the fly, and with his signature Marshall amps cranked to their highest volume settings, Van Halen learned to use his guitar for subtle adjustments.
‘Runnin’ with the Devil’ also shows off Van Halen’s love of hammer-ons, harmonic overtones, and high string bends. One thing it doesn’t actually have is any tapping, which prevents it from putting every one of Van Halen’s signatures in one song. You probably don’t need a guide of Eddie’s best examples for his techniques, but if you’re truly a newcomer, here’s the basic entry list: ‘Eruption’, ‘Ain’t Talkin ‘Bout Love’, ‘Jamie’s Cryin’, ‘Unchained’, ‘Panama’, ‘Hot for Teacher’.
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Everything from the intro to ‘Mean Streets’ to Sammy Hagar-era hits like ‘Dreams’ and ‘Why Can’t This Be Love’ to reviled later-period material with Gary Cherone have something in common: Van Halen’s guitar spits and sputters out killer licks. Even on covers like ‘Where Have All the Good Times Gone’, where Van Halen later admitted that he was just trying to make noise instead of composing notes for his solo, his instincts point him back to his unmistakable style.
During Van Halen’s heyday, Eddie occasionally received criticism for lack of economy in his playing style. You could see everyone from Randy Rhodes to Jerry Garcia rolling their eyes at Van Halen’s furious flurry of notes. But what wasn’t always understood was Van Halen’s intent, namely that every tap, note drop, and squeal had its specific purpose. It might have come off as overwhelming (or overbearing), but Van Halen’s background in classical music helped him shape his solos into true pieces, not just random noise.
That’s why generations of guitarists are still learning the exact notes of ‘Eruption’. It’s why, whenever you tap or play a pinch-harmonic, people think you’re doing a Van Halen impression. Eddie Van Halen didn’t invent the techniques that he pioneered, but he did find his own unique sound through a combination of building his own equipment, seeking out the right combination of sounds, and channelling them through his singular musical mind. To play like Eddie Van Halen is to channel hardship and strife into delirious fun and frenetic fretboard fireworks. There were legions of imitators after him, but there truly was only one Eddie Van Halen.
