The legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen thought was terrible live: “He’s very sloppy”
Any aspiring musician looking to be the greatest guitarist on the planet is playing for third place next to Eddie Van Halen.
Eddie Van Halen was one of the most iconic guitarists of all time; there can be no denying it. As the lead axeman for rock titans, Van Halen, he is credited with developing techniques on the guitar that we now see ubiquitous in the harder forms of rock music. Everywhere from metallic hardcore to black metal and even pop music, you see flecks of his influence.
It’s reflective of Eddie’s impact that even Pink Floyd’s resident guitar hero, David Gilmour, one of the most influential axemen of all time, admitted that the American metal pioneer was the one guitarist he wishes he could play like. He told Guitar Player in 1985: “I can’t play like Eddie Van Halen. I wish I could. I sat down to try some of those ideas and I can’t do it. I don’t know if I could ever get any of that stuff together. Sometimes I think I should work at the guitar more. I play every day but I don’t consciously practice scales or anything in particular.”
When he burst onto the scene with Van Halen’s debut album, Eddie’s signature way of tapping rewrote the handbook on what guitar players could do, leaving a legion of imitators that hadn’t been seen since the days of Jimi Hendrix. Although Eddie was in his own world as a guitar player, he did feel the need to call people out when he saw them.
When he first started dabbling in music, Eddie initially wouldn’t play the guitar. Starting on the drums, Van Halen quickly switched instruments when he realised his brother Alex kept playing his drums when he wasn’t home. Once he began work on guitar, though, it didn’t take Eddie too long to be consumed by the instrument.
Franksteining every instrument he could into his unique design, Van Halen made it a habit of putting different sounds into his guitar to make it sound larger than life. Rather than recreate the sound of the studio with various pedals, he wanted to make the most of what he could naturally squeeze out of the guitar, either through his tapping on ‘Eruption’ or the volume swells on ‘Cathedral’. As he started to gain momentum in the early 1980s, though, Eddie did point out that some of his original guitar heroes were not holding up as well as he thought.
Then again, Van Halen’s innovations would have been nothing without Led Zeppelin kicking down the door first. Bursting onto the scene in the late 1960s, Jimmy Page’s approach to guitar birthed the idea of the guitar riff, bringing a surge of energy to every song like ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Kashmir’.
When talking about seeing Led Zeppelin, Eddie wasn’t impressed with what Jimmy Page brought to the live stage, telling Guitar World, “Jimmy Page is an excellent producer. Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II are classics. As a player, he’s very good in the studio. But I never saw him play well live. He’s very sloppy. He plays like he’s got a broken hand, and he’s two years old. But if you put out a good album and play like a two-year-old live. What’s the purpose?”.
Despite Eddie’s comments, Page had earned his place as one of the kings of rock guitar. Outside the studio, Zeppelin was known for having a perfect marriage whenever they played live, with Page playing slightly ahead of the beat on every song. Since drummer John Bonham was typically behind the beat, the constant push and pull between the guitar and the drums gave them their classic sound.
It was at one of those shows that Eddie was able to cultivate one of his guitar trademarks, telling The Smithsonian, “Led Zeppelin’s playing and Jimmy Page is playing with his hand up in the air. So I moved the nut [with my finger]. Basically, every tap I’m doing is just an extension of my hand. From there, I started to make up little pieces like ‘Eruption’.”
Even with the casual burn toward Page, the Led Zeppelin guitarist had to give Eddie credit, saying no one could match what he had brought to the instrument. There might have been a handful of common traits between Led Zeppelin and Van Halen, but Eddie was looking to take what Page had started and bring it one step forward.
