The band Roger Waters and Eddie Van Halen both called the best
The career arcs of Roger Waters and Eddie Van Halen couldn’t have been more different.
Although Van Halen launched out of the gate with one of the greatest albums that the rock world had ever seen, it was going to take a while before Pink Floyd stumbled upon their masterpieces after Syd Barrett left. Then again, it’s not like Waters was going to be patting people like Eddie on the back when he saw his band becoming one of the biggest bands in rock and roll.
Because, really, Waters was not the kind of person to engage with many new artists. He knew that there was great talent out there if he knew where to look, but judging by his distaste for genres like heavy metal, it’s not like he was happy to have any connection with the likes of Black Sabbath or Deep Purple.
But if it weren’t for Pink Floyd, there’s a good chance that some pieces of hard rock wouldn’t have existed. Rush managed to combine Floyd’s elaborate songs with hard rock thunder, and when you look at a track like ‘The Nile Song’ off of More, they were clearly no strangers to making songs that were a bit more gritty. There was a healthy amount of bite to what they were doing half the time, but Eddie was on a completely different page when he played his tapping licks.
Despite being on a record together, Waters felt that what Eddie was doing was far less important than the grand soundscapes that would turn up on albums like Amused to Death. But way before Eddie even started to make those signature tapping licks his wheelhouse, he was looking on in amazement alongside the rest of Waters’s generation whenever Eric Clapton played guitar in Cream.
Although ‘Slowhand’ is regarded as a legend in every part of his career, Eddie maintained that his best work was with the power trio, saying, “The only band I was really over into was Cream. And the only thing I really liked about them was their live stuff. ‘Cause they played two verses, then go off and jam for 20 minutes. [Then] come back and do a chorus and end.” And for the first time, Waters actually seemed to concur.
Waters may not be the easiest person to find common musical ground with, but he remembered being absolutely shellshocked when seeing Cream perform live, saying, “Apart from being a great blues band, Cream had a real good go at so many other styles, even if some of it sounds a little silly now. There are songs on all the Cream albums that amaze me still, like ‘Crossroads’, ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, ‘White Room’ and ‘I Feel Free’. They were desperately trying to write material that was truly progressive and original. And they achieved that.”
If you really think about it, though, Waters’s statement could easily apply to Eddie in many respects. Waters may have thought that the future of rock and roll was in making grandiose concepts like The Wall, but listening to what Eddie was doing on guitar, he could make grand musical statements on the same level as Clapton without even needing David Lee Roth to write any lyrics on top of everything.
So while Eddie and Waters might be on two separate musical islands, their common ground was always based around people trying to dream bigger. Cream were never meant to be a traditional blues band, and if they managed to take their music into new territory, what was stopping both of them from doing the same?
