The two legendary guitarists Eddie Van Halen was sure hated him
Eddie Van Halen didn’t turn heads in the way that other guitarists do. He wasn’t doing something good. He was doing something totally different.
When you look at other guitarists who have taken the world by storm, one of the things that they have in common is that they all excel in doing something which was already known. Jimi Hendrix for example would be dancing around the fretboard, improvising using pentatonic scales and moving around the stage like a man possessed. It was fantastic, and an example of one of the best instances of a guitar style that people were aware of.
What Eddie Van Halen did was different. While he could play a guitar solo like anybody else, he wanted to branch outside of the realms of the regular guitar solo. The way he did this was by implementing a new finger-torturing tapping technique. He left picking behind, leaving it for the other guitarists out there, while he used his picking hand to tap strings further down the fret in a bid to play at a speed that people would have previously thought impossible.
One of the things that was so impressive about Eddie wasn’t just the astounding speed at which he played, but the way his music didn’t solely revolve around that revolution of fast fingered brilliance. Yes, he played like a bullet out of a gun, but when you listen to songs like ‘Ain’t Talking Bout Love’ and ‘Hot For Teacher’, he uses that increased pace to create genuinely melodic riffs rather than just quick guitar runs.
Because of his innovative approach towards playing the guitar, Eddie Van Halen was only ever really interested in listening to other guitarists who also implemented their own style. He respected rock music and modern rock musicians, but in his personal listening, he wanted to hear guitarists who could do something that he couldn’t, and those kinds of guitarists didn’t come along very much. However, following a jam at The Roxy, Van Halen found a new favourite guitarist in the off-beat and experimental Allan Holdsworth.
When the two of them met, Van Halen was thriving, but Holdsworth was on the verge of calling it a day. He wasn’t living the life of a hippy with a dream like so many budding guitarists were, Holdsworth had a family and kids to support, and with music not playing the bills, he was moments away from selling his equipment and getting a regular 9-5 job. Once Van Halen played with him, he knew he couldn’t let a talent like Holdsworth fade into obscurity.
“He’s not even on a label,” said Van Halen, “So I fucking called Ted, our producer, and I said, ‘Goddamn it, check this guy out. He is hot. He might be a little out there, you know. He might be a little spaced out, but ….’ Anyway, I got him signed to Warner Brothers.”
This was a good deed by Eddie, but it wasn’t one that stemmed from selfishness, rather, understanding. Eddie was well aware how tricky it could be breaking into the mainstream when you have a new style of guitar playing you’re trying to popularise. Recalling the push back he received when making a name for himself, Van Halen saw it as his sole duty to help out a fellow boundary-pusher. In discussing this side of his thinking, Eddie revealed two classic guitarists who he particularly thought made it clear they hated him when he was trying to make a name for himself.
“There’s one thing that bothered me so much in the very beginning, in ’78, our first tour, is how people like Joe Perry and other guitarists would just give me the shaft with their eyes. Wouldn’t say hello. Wouldn’t be nice. No nothing. I’m not that way,” recalled Eddie, “I don’t give a fuck if I’m playing a Holiday Inn lounge, I enjoy playing. But I can’t stand to see a person with Allan’s talent, because of mismanagement and people fucking him around. You know, he was ready to sell his guitar and everything and work in a factory. And that is fucking sickening.”
He continued, “So I just think about people like Joe Perry or Ritchie Blackmore, who all hate my guts anyway, they wouldn’t go out of their way to help anybody, ’cause they would feel threatened. Hey, the way I look at it is I wish there were more people that were innovative so I would have somebody to cop licks from. It might sound a little ego’d-out, but there are very few guitarists that I can listen that make turn my head and go, ‘Whoa! How did he do that?’”
