The 1995 song that features Eddie Van Halen destroying a piano
It’s not hyperbole to say that Eddie Van Halen was regarded as one of the greatest guitarists in rock history.
He all but revolutionised the way his contemporaries looked at the instrument; all of a sudden, the two-handed fretboard tapping technique wasn’t just a sloppy party gimmick but an innovative way to squeeze more juice from the can. The trick spread like wildfire across heavy metal and hard rock solos throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
His guitar playing wasn’t just contained to his own music; Eddie stepped across to the Michael Jackson universe in 1982, delivering the rip-roaring guitar solo known and echoed fervently in air-guitar style across the world on ‘Beat It’.
Given his grandiose guitar history, it’s less well known that Van Halen was a skilled keyboardist, too. Surprisingly to many die-hard fans, on Van Halen’s first number one chart hit, ‘Jump’, the star was playing the spritely synthesiser melody, as well as the guitar.
And so, with the same genuine curiosity and imagination that birthed his unique fretboard tapping, it was only fair that Eddie tried his hand at changing the way we saw the piano, too. Too bad that the instrument got destroyed in the process.
On the 90-second track ‘Strung Out’, featured on the 1995 Van Halen album Balance, the icon was haunted by a recording made some 15 or so years prior at composer, pianist and arranger Marvin Hamlisch’s beach house. In the song, the barely recognisable piano shudders and snaps.
In a conversation with Guitar World around the time of the album release, Eddie looked back sheepishly at the damage he had done to the instrument to end up with such a curious track: “I just used to waste this beautiful piano.”
Reminiscing about the summer that Eddie and then-wife Valerie Bertinelli spent lounging in Hamlisch’s house with that unlucky piece of equipment, he added, “It was like a Baldwin or a Yamaha. It had cigarette burns all over it and I was sticking everything but the kitchen sink in it: ping-pong balls, D-cell batteries, knives, forks — I even broke a few strings.”
Though Eddie admits he was “just fucking around” when he first envisioned the creative demise of such a grand instrument, he approached delicately at first, with just his fingertips: “It started off with me playing the strings with my fingers.”
The musical mastermind continued, “I would create harmonics by hitting the key and muffling the string up and down to bring harmonics out like on a guitar. I have like 10 tapes of this stuff.” Only a little part made it onto the album, which debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200.
Eddie found the inspiration, but, in doing so, he lost the respect of Hamlisch. Eventually, summer must come to an end, and the popular composer returned to his abode to find his pride and joy burnt, peeling, and frazzled from unintended usage.
Eddie threw up his hands and, laughing, explained, “I tried to get the piano fixed before he came back, but he found out somehow. I guess they didn’t repaint it as well as they could have.”
