The 1984 song Eddie Van Halen wanted to be remembered for: “It was a real departure”
Any artist wants to leave behind a legacy. Even if they do nothing but serve the rock legends before them, that’s often enough to earn a place in the echelons of music Valhalla, helping spread the gospel of rock and roll to a new generation. But for all Van Halen did for rock and roll, Eddie Van Halen seemed otherworldly—every note he played took on a different meaning the moment it hit the speakers.
That sense of legacy, though, wasn’t just about technical innovation. For Eddie, it was rooted in connection. The idea that music should resonate on a human level rather than simply impress on a mechanical one. His playing could be jaw-dropping, but it was never empty; there was always a feeling driving every note.
It’s this emotional core that separates great musicians from truly iconic ones. While countless guitarists have studied his techniques, far fewer have managed to capture the same balance of virtuosity and accessibility that defined Eddie’s work. In many ways, his legacy isn’t just about how he played, but why he played in the first place.
Although most people were doing what they could to make it on the Sunset Strip, Eddie was already a freak of nature the minute that he started breaking out his signature tapping solos. Despite not being the first person to invent tapping, Eddie was certainly the one to perfect it, and while he adopted the technique from Jimmy Page, there was no one else who could have managed to pull off that kind of technique that showed up in ‘Eruption’.
But Eddie knew that there was more to his musical life than being flashy all the time. He wanted to be a multifaceted artist, and that meant trading in his licks for the odd song that relied on creating a certain mood. Since music was changing by the minute in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, you can hear bits and pieces of everything in Eddie’s sound, from the way that he incorporated punk into ‘Loss of Control’ or made some of the wildest solos imaginable across Fair Warning.
For all that he could do behind the fretboard, though, that wasn’t Eddie’s first instrument. Outside of being introduced to the drums before his brother, Alex, took over his kit, Eddie was paying close attention to what the piano had in store, and even if no one noticed that he had started working on the keyboard on ‘And the Cradle Will Rock’, it didn’t matter as long as it sounded good coming out of the speakers.
While David Lee Roth would occasionally have problems with the lack of guitars, Eddie could never be stopped, usually making whatever lick he had into their next hit. And while ‘Jump’ wasn’t on the same level as ‘Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love’ in terms of heaviness, it might be the purest way of breaking down what his playing technique was all about, from the tapping solo to the opening keyboard drones.
“99 per cent of the reason that I make music is to hopefully try and touch people with it. And that one touched the most people.”
Eddie Van Halen
Even though many years had passed since the release of 1984, Eddie considered ‘Jump’ to be the one Van Halen song that deserved to be etched in stone, saying, “It would have to be ‘Jump’. Musically, it was a real departure for us. We had the challenge of using the synth and keyboards for the first time and integrating that with the guitar and melody line. It was also our biggest hit. And ‘pop’ comes from the word popular, which means a lot of people liked it. Now, 99 per cent of the reason that I make music is to hopefully try and touch people with it. And that one touched the most people.”
Then again, the important word there is “departure” for Eddie. Outside of his need to blend both of his favourite instruments together, the bridge is where things really come alive, turning the whole song into a glorified synth-pop track for a second before it gives way to shimmering guitars and the kind of chordal harmony that it would take a mad genius to figure out on the spot.
But “mad genius” was always the best way to describe Van Halen’s music. Not everything made sense, and it normally took a lot of time for people to figure out where everything was going, but once they took the deep dive, they realised that this was one of the most innovative musicians the world had seen since Jimi Hendrix.
