The first Van Halen song featuring David Lee Roth on guitar
No one else in Van Halen had any right trying to pick up a guitar next to Eddie Van Halen. Although every member of the band made them who they were in their prime, it wasn’t hard to look at the guitar maestro playing through his signature tapping licks and realise that he had every piece of the fretboard covered for five guitarists’ worth of hands. David Lee Roth could normally play most of the show without ever having to worry about strapping on a guitar, but he did break out the acoustic for the first time when working on one particular deep cut from their first album.
Then again, it was hard to really anticipate what the first Van Halen record was going to be once it hit stores. Most people had already become used to progressive rock bands playing bold solos every time they played, but listening to a song like ‘Eruption’, the entire guitar vocabulary seemed to change within those few minutes, with Eddie becoming everyone’s favourite guitar hero overnight.
This is strange, considering that most of the album is only a few pieces of their live set that they were playing on the road. Outside of the odd guitar overdub or sound effects like the opening of ‘Runnin’ With the Devil,’ the majority of the record is the band playing the same way they sounded onstage, usually flying off the handle enough to keep the audience wanting more.
Of course, if a band makes an entire album out of nothing but that style of playing, things are bound to get incredibly boring really fast. What they needed was a few ways to break up the monotony, and aside from the hilarious attempt at doing barbershop quartet-style harmonies on the song ‘I’m the One’, Roth managed to show off a handful of decent licks on the song ‘Ice Cream Man’ at the end of the record.
While the track itself was a cover of an odd blues tune, the lyrics are tailor-made for Roth’s delivery. He had always carried himself like the walking embodiment of a sex god, so listening to him sing about something that is clearly not ice cream as he plonks away on the acoustic is almost adorable from a musician’s perspective.
Especially if anyone knows a thing or two about what Roth is actually playing. The blues was never meant to be the hardest genre to play along to, but the fact that Roth is in open E tuning lets him ease up a little bit in terms of raw skill. Since hitting all the open notes sounds like an E major chord, it’s a foolproof way to get Roth involved, especially when all he has to do is change chords by barring one finger.
Even if he had another guitarist onstage, Eddie still managed to smoke Roth regardless. The frontman sets the stage on the first part of the song, but by the time Eddie comes screaming in during his solo, his stretches are the stuff of nightmares for soloists, managing to reach frets that make him look like an alien when anyone else tries to put their hands through that agony.
That’s not to say that Roth doesn’t bring anything to the table. His choice of breaking out the acoustic and having a sing-along is a welcome way to break up a show full of balls-to-the-wall rock and roll, and up until the day that Van Halen was no more, Roth never forgot how to give the people a good time.
