“I like some of that stuff”: How Jeff Beck’s ‘Wired’ got Eddie Van Halen into his music
Eddie Van Halen is one of the most prolific guitarists to ever pick up a six-string. He didn’t just play the guitar well; he brought a completely different spin to it, popularising different playing styles, effects, and amplifier settings. He was an innovative musician who drastically changed the attitude towards the guitar, so much so that people started to view how they could play it in a much more varied sense.
It was obvious the moment he started playing that not only was Eddie Van Halen going to be a success, but he was going to change guitar music forever. Tony Iommi, who also pioneered movements in guitar music, immediately recognised the talent that Eddie Van Halen displayed. He took the band on tour and saw the crowd get swept up in Eddie’s style of playing.
“Eddie was playing things I’d never seen before,” said Iommi. “We’re still friends, and we became friends then. Of course, he set off a whole new load of players playing like that, and now I can’t believe some of them. I can’t follow it. I certainly couldn’t do it.”
It’s always interesting hearing such innovative musicians talk about their influences because a lot of the time, the artists they admire might not sound a lot like the music they proceeded to make, but their attitude stood out rather than the actual music. This is evident in the fact that Eddie Van Halen once cited Jeff Beck as an influence.
When you consider a musician like Jeff Beck, a lot of his music is laced with melody and emotion. For instance, if you listen to his track ‘Where Were You,’ you hear a four-minute journey of different styles of playing conveying different emotions. It feels some way away from Eddie Van Halen’s speedy tapping style, but it was likely Beck’s attitude towards music that inspired Van Halen.
Beck wasn’t just a musician; he was one of the first artists to show the true power a guitarist could have within a rock band. He brought the guitar player out of the shadows and into the limelight, proudly displaying the magnitude of riffs, solos, and extended outros. The role of a guitarist would have likely been very different were it not for Jeff Beck taking on these challenges.
Brian May agreed, as he once described Beck as one of the greatest, dynamic and influential guitarists ever. “If you wanna hear his depth of emotion, sound and phrasing, and the way he could touch your soul, listen to ‘Where Were You’ of the Guitar Shop album,” he said, “Sit down and listen to it for four minutes.”
When Eddie Van Halen cited Jeff Beck as a big influence, one album stood out to him in particular when speaking to Steven Rosen for Classic Rock in 1978 and featured in his book Tonechaser: “Since the last five or six years, I really haven’t been into any one guitarist,” he said, “I like everybody. I’ve listened to Blackmore and [Jeff] Beck and especially [Beck’s album] Wired, I like some of that stuff. Before that I just never really got into him.”
