The first song Eddie Van Halen ever learned to play on guitar
Name a guitar legend. It doesn’t matter who they are or what kind of style they are famous for; every single guitar legend that you know and love, living or dead, has to start somewhere. Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Slash, and Joni Mitchell all picked up a guitar with no idea how to play it, worked hard, and then got really good at it. For some, that’s harder to believe than others.
Eddie Van Halen was a guitar player unlike anything the world had ever seen. He could perform with a mastery that wasn’t only an exceptional version of what people already knew; it was something completely different and alien. The shredding and tapping style of guitar solo that he played had never been used to the extent that Eddie used it, and the result was some of the most imaginative riffs, energetic songs and face-melting solos this side of the apocalypse.
It begs the question, where did Eddie Van Halen start? When the sound you go on to make is famed because of how unique it is, who actually inspires you in the first place? Well, when you hear the songs that Eddie first learnt to play, it’s not that hard piecing his playing style together. The first thing he learnt was all about speed.
“The first song I ever learned was ‘Pipeline’ by the Surfaris and ‘Wipe Out’,” he said when asked about his early guitar-playing experience. One song that particularly stands out in these two is ‘Wipe Out’ because it is packed with energy and played very quickly. These are fundamental parts of what would become Eddie’s playing style.
The next song helped him establish a tone. “Then I hear this song on the radio – it was the ‘Blues Theme’ on the soundtrack to Easy Rider,” he recalled, “It was the first time I heard a distorted guitar, and I’m going, ‘God, what is that?’ I didn’t really have an amp then. I went to Dow Radio in Pasadena, and I jerry-rigged this plug to plug into the stereo. I just turned the damn thing all the way up, and it distorted. So every amp I’ve ever used, I just turn it all the way up.”
In just three early songs, Eddie Van Halen had already stumbled upon some of the main elements that would make up his guitar playing, namely, speed, energy and distortion. Though these early songs are in no way the pinnacle of why Eddie went on to make the music he did, they set the groundwork on which he could build.
Even someone as skilled as Eddie Van Halen, with a playing style so far removed from the social norm, had to find his inspiration from somewhere and, like every other guitar player, had to start from square one. ‘Wipe Out’ and the ‘Blues Theme’ were the best places for him to begin and go on to become one of the most exciting and respected guitarists in the world.
