The first Van Halen song with David Lee Roth on guitar
No one would argue about who would play guitar in a band like Van Halen. Throughout their run throughout their glory years, Eddie Van Halen moulded himself into a guitar genius with every single track, leaving any prospective guitarist in the dust whenever he played. Although Eddie may have been able to create sonic colours that no one had ever seen before, David Lee Roth did have a chance to shine on the guitar now and again.
Before Van Halen was even an idea, though, there was a good chance that Eddie could have been on the drums instead. After his family moved to America from the Netherlands, Eddie was first put behind the kit, until one day, his brother Alex started playing his drums, after which he switched to guitar.
Honing his craft whenever he sat down to play, most of Eddie’s best work came from warping his favourite songs by bands like Cream into incredible melodic exercises. By the time he had seen Led Zeppelin playing at the Fillmore, though, he found his secret weapon in tapping, playing with both hands on the fretboard to create long flourishes of notes in every single track.
As the brothers made a name for themselves in the group Mammoth, they always had competition with the other local act, Red Ball Jet, featuring a young singer named David Lee Roth. After one too many times renting his PA system for their gigs, the brothers thought it would be cheaper to get Roth in the band. By the time Michael Anthony joined to add his signature low-end and searing harmonies, the band were ready to make history on their debut album.
Then again, none of the band members saw their debut as groundbreaking at the time. When working on the first few sessions, producer Ted Templeman said that most of the sessions were recorded with the mentality of capturing what the band was capable of doing live, leading to their iconic cover of The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’ and Eddie’s solo spotlight, ‘Eruption’.
While there were other iconic rock covers in their live repertoire, ‘Ice Cream Man’ was one of the few tongue-in-cheek covers of old blues tunes. Rather than feature Eddie at the top of the song, the first half of the track is dominated by David Lee Roth singing and playing guitar, sticking to a basic blues shuffle in open-E tuning.
Roth’s blues-infused croon may be exciting for a few minutes, but the song doesn’t truly come alive until the rest of the band kicks in, featuring some of the most electrifying soloing that Eddie has ever done on the song’s back half. There are even a few physical anomalies on the final track, including Eddie stretching his left hand to reach a fret that would give any other guitarist tendonitis if they tried it.
Even though Roth was far from the show’s star in the guitar department, that didn’t stop him from adding the odd guitar part to other songs down the road, playing different acoustic ditties like ‘Could This Be Magic’ off Women and Children First. While Eddie could play circles around anything Roth brought to the table, the first half of ‘Ice Cream Man’ is a good example of how much the frontman can do with a handful of chords and boatloads of charm.
