The Van Halen song even Eddie Van Halen couldn’t play: “I can’t even do that”
To be a guitarist is to study the acts who have come before and, at least for the first part of one’s education, try to copy the riff. There aren’t many Van Halen songs that could be considered a walk in the park for guitar players.
Some aspiring musicians may be able to get the actual fretwork down to a science or do their best to emulate what Eddie did so naturally, but few have patented licks that just seem to be coming from a completely different world as he does.
When Van Halen arrived, he came fully formed as a new six-string organism. Sure, he could play scales and even drop the odd blues run, but his talent lay in turning the idea of the guitar on its head and pioneering a brand new way forward for the instrument. He felt new, fresh, and unstoppably original. But being such a maverick came with its setbacks, too.
There were still limits on where Eddie could take his technique, and perhaps more importantly, getting himself back to the heights he had already hit. Smashing a lick in the studio is a little different to taking it out on stage, and walking away from a song only to return years later will leave a lot of guitarists feeling sorry for themselves. By the time the group returned after a long sabbatical, he admitted that ‘Chinatown’ had a lick that even he couldn’t match.
Then again, the Van Halen on A Different Kind of Truth was a much different version of the group that appeared on their debut album. Whereas David Lee Roth had been in and out of the band more times than most could count, making a new album in 2012 was more or less a way to put a fine bow on their career rather than create some grand artistic statement.
The only reason the record exists is Wolfgang Van Halen, who had been serving time as the bass player ever since Roth came back. Wolfgang had been looking through the Van Halen vaults of different tunes and was actually nudging his father into finishing a handful of them for a new Van Halen album.
While the result was an album that ran a little bit longer than most Van Halen projects, ‘Chinatown’ is still one of the heaviest songs that the group have put out. It’s a shame that Roth can’t really hit the high notes in the same way that he used to in the early 1980s, but this is probably the best use of his talents, usually involving him getting some help from the band’s harmonies and emphasising the swagger in his voice.
Although Eddie still remains one of the most accomplished guitar players the world has ever seen, he was more impressed by what his son was doing on bass on the track, saying in Eruption, “He uses both a pick and his fingers. That kid can pick! In the solo on ‘Chinatown’, I can’t even do that. I can fan-pick, but he’s really something else. A lot of bass players look down on players who use picks, but that’s just because 99% of them can’t play with a pick.”
That might be because Wolfgang was born into a different musical world of guitar players than his dad. Whereas Eddie was brought up listening to those heavy Black Sabbath records when he was starting to rise, Wolfgang was raised in the age of groups like Metallica, which usually meant training your forearm to match those intense downstrokes.
Then again, it’s not like Wolfgang didn’t have some practice from his old man. After all, this is the same guy who ended up teaching him to put together his first few licks when he was performing and even brought him out onstage every now and again during numerous reunion tours to play rhythm guitar on the song ‘316’.
Wolfgang might continue the kind of music that he started with his dad in Mammoth WVH, but his original music is probably closer to what Eddie was talking about. It’s a no-brainer for everyone to focus on the guitar maestro in Van Halen, but while leaving Michael Anthony behind must have hurt the fans, hearing Wolfgang deliver on record during his solo years is a nice look at what he had kept under wraps when not playing ‘Hot for Teacher’ every night.
