The singer Eddie Van Halen could never write like: “We are totally incapable”
Every guitarist should do themselves a favour and try not to match what Eddie Van Halen did.
It’s admirable that he opened up the playing field for guitarists, but trying to compete with his musical mind would be the equivalent of someone trying to outwrite Bach or Segovia. That kind of legacy is practically etched in stone at this point, but Eddie could always admit when some artists could write tunes that he couldn’t even imagine writing whenever he got behind the fretboard.
For one thing, Eddie was always far more idiosyncratic than any other guitar player of his generation. Anyone would be itching to find out what effects pedals he was using to come up with his sound, and even if you took out the flanger pedal in ‘Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love’, a lot of the magic was all there in his fingers whenever he played his Frankenstein. But a lot of that came from his ability to play along to the classics.
You have to remember that the musical landscape around the time of Van Halen was a lot different from what everyone had thought of. In a world before songs like ‘Runnin With the Devil’, the main focus of the day were acts like KC and the Sunshine Band, and Eddie would be a dead man before he was forced to play that kind of music. That’s not to say that all of those genres don’t have merit behind them, either.
Eddie was clearly a fan of the heavy acts of his time, whether that was playing along to Eric Clapton or old Black Sabbath riffs, but the beauty of the 1970s was how much of a cornucopia every single genre. Sure, there were the emerging sounds of disco, but punk was also coming into play, new wave had blossomed out of that, and even Tom Petty was starting to invent heartland rock along the way as well. But if there was one genre that was completely left off the dial for Eddie, it was easy listening.
He wasn’t into the music industry, trying to write laid-back ballads, but that’s not to say that there weren’t some fantastic stars that came out of that. The folk scene had already had plenty of singer-songwriters like Cat Stevens and Joni Mitchell, and while people like Elton John toed the line between being rock and roll and sentimental depending on the song, Barry Manilow was the one bridge that Eddie could never cross.
As much as the songs were catchy, Eddie felt that there was no way he could compose songs like Manilow, saying, “We are totally incapable of sitting down and writing a song about something we know nothing about. I can’t do what Barry Manilow does, I can’t write jingles, I can’t say, you know, if someone says, ‘Hey, have a MacDonald’s commercial music ready for me by Monday’ – hey, I don’t know how to do that. I have to be inspired.”
That might be the easy way out for many writers, but it’s a cold hard fact for people like Eddie. No one can manage to come up with the goods on a whim, and while Manilow could seemingly make a masterpiece within a matter of seconds when working on tunes like ‘Mandy’ or ‘Copacabana’, songs like ‘Jump’ and ‘Panama’ are only the result of Eddie being in the right place at the right time with a guitar in his hand.
It might not be the easiest turnaround schedule to understand, but let Eddie’s track record be an example for everyone who came after him. Any A&R man can expect their artists to pump out as much material as they can, but just because the Beast demands to be fed as fast as possible doesn’t mean that it’s going to be getting the best quality every single time.
