The song Eddie Van Halen thought every rock fan should love: “Blow your f**king mind”
Jump? Hardly, Eddie Van Halen sprang up like Jack-in-the-Box on a pogo stick.
Just when all the virtuosos seemed to be hanging up their hats, the half-Dutch, half-Indonesian youngster blasted a new hammer-on style of guitar playing to the forefront of rock ‘n’ roll. In an age where image and video media were becoming all the more important, his flashy style was a perfect, timely addition to the rock canon.
Nikki Sixx called him “the Mozart of rock guitar”, Steven Tyler agreed that he “changed the course of guitar”, and Greg Howe similarly said that EVH was “unquestionably the most influential guitarist since [Jimi] Hendrix.” As you can tell, the notable theme with his plaudits is that he seemed to find something fresh and unique when there seemed to be nothing new under the sun.
However, this innovation was always rooted in the same basic blues-based classic rock that first inspired him. While Jeff Beck and The Who might have appealed to him, there was one act that stood out above all others to the lion-maned musician: Cream. After all, with Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton comprising the trio, they were the virtuosos band of choice, each member firmly eligible to be classed among the best in the history of their instrument.
As far as Eddie Van Halen was concerned, nothing confirmed this with as much mercurial certainty as their live work. When discussing musical obsessions with Steve Baltin back in 2009, the late rocker revealed, “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 it,” he said.
This flashy fluidity gave the music a sense of excitement that he always looked to channel in his own work. He thought the trio tesselated perfectly and became more than the some of their parts, praise he didn’t afford Led Zeppelin thanks to Jimmy Page’s “sloppy” playing.
But as for Cream, he continued, ”I love the live jam stuff, the improvisation.”
Adding: ”It was nothing like the record, and that is why I loved Cream. ‘Cause Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce pushed Eric Clapton. I almost feel bad for Eric because half the time he probably didn’t know [that], because these guys were jazz players playing Marshall amps and loud as shit.”
Clapton probably did know that they were pushing him in underhand ways; in fact, he probably knew that ‘pushing him’ put it lightly. They were trying to trip him up. They even invited Jimi Hendrix onstage, prompting Clapton to proclaim, ”You never told me he was that fucking good!”
However, thankfully, the rocker was able to match the strides of everything hurled at him by his jazzy compatriots. And Eddie Van Halen thinks one recorded jam personifies that above any other, imploring everyone with even a passing interest in rock ‘n’ roll to listen. ”Listen to ‘I’m So Glad’ on Goodbye Cream. If that doesn’t blow your f**king mind, I don’t know what will,” he urges.
Originally recorded by Skip James in the early 1930s, the track is a classic example of how Cream took the blues and pushed it closer to a form of rock ‘n’ roll jazz than ever before. Their rendition on their fourth and final album, where all three tracks were cut live in the studio in 1968, was a signature wallop of notes weaving in a slalom of searing skill. In fact, for pure playing, the skill on display has perhaps never been matched in rock before or since.
It’s fitting, then, that somewhere deep in the alchemy of their advancement to the art form is its very history; as the blues historian Gerard Herzhaft noted of the track they transmute almost beyond recognition, ”This spiritual probably dates back to the beginning of the blues.” Yet, it sounded utterly contemporary when they got their hands on it.
This feat is something that supercharged EVH’s desire to bring something new to the genre, too, and as a legion of testimonies from the likes of Paul McCartney and Ace Frehley prove, he succeeded in picking up where ‘I’m So Glad’ left off.
