The bands Eddie Van Halen said needed to get better
There’s an unspoken rule among most guitar players about not going anywhere near what Eddie Van Halen did.
As much as people love to hear guitarists tapping their way through every single solo they play, it’s not like any of them are ever going to come up with some brand new invention that would compete with what Eddie brought to the instrument. Then again, Eddie did know that there were always a few bands that needed some more time in the rehearsal room before they reached primetime.
Because as much as Van Halen were all about having fun, it’s not like they were given their gifts by accident. Their greatest strengths were always their ability to practise, and for Eddie, him and his guitar were practically inseparable. He would spend his days hiding away in his room playing the best riffs that he could think of, and even if they didn’t all turn into proper Van Halen songs, it was worth it for him to make something that he felt proud of rather than appealing to whatever was on the radio.
It’s not like he was able to play most of what was coming out of the speakers, either. Most people had moved on to albums by KC and the Sunshine Band by the time that Eddie started making waves, but this is one of the few cases where the rock world came to him. He was never going to get away with playing pop-rock, and even when he did have stone-cold classics like ‘Jump’ in his arsenal, it was always about writing something from the heart rather than trying to get a hit.
But for all the chops that he could show off throughout the course of one song, that wasn’t what was happening circa 1992. Van Halen may have put out a great record one year before, but when looking at the sea change that came with Nirvana, being a virtuoso wasn’t the most important thing anymore. People were interested in the artists behind the songs, and even when grunge rose and fell, there were still pop-punk acts looking to fill the void.
And if most people thought that Kurt Cobain didn’t play anything fancy, a band like Green Day was practically playing the bare minimum for Eddie. ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’ may have been a pretty simplistic song on the first Van Halen record, but when listening to the biggest names in the pop-punk genre, Eddie felt that they needed some time to practice before they really hit their stride.
Although he liked those bands, he felt people like Green Day and the Offspring would need to add a little more depth to their sound, saying, “I just think a lot of bands out there ain’t going to last until they get better. On the other hand, I might be a better player than some of these people, but what they’re doing speaks as well as what I do. I just articulate a little better. And I play loud, too.”
That’s not to say that there weren’t some guitar hero moments in the pop-punk world, either. Billie Joe Armstrong was a massive Van Halen fan when he was a kid, and looking at a band like Weezer, it was clear that Rivers Cuomo had done his homework and made the kind of rock and roll guitar solos that could appeal to kids who did nothing but hang out in their garage playing Dungeons and Dragons and pretending to be a rock star.
Since Armstrong eventually got to meet Eddie and talk about how close their connection was, though, it’s safe to say that the guitar legend could see past any of the rudimentary musicianship. Compared to most other shredders that didn’t look at anything that didn’t have screaming solos, he was still looking at those that had the songs, and even if they weren’t his cup of tea, there was no way of trying to beat a song like ‘Welcome to Paradise’.
