The guitarist who inspired Eddie Van Halen’s “hammer on” technique
The late Eddie Van Halen might have refreshed guitar playing for the 1980s, but like most of those classed as absolute innovators, the context from which he emerged was not wholly original. He perceptively took the best aspects of those who inspired him and added them to his arsenal, creating a new-look sound for his era.
Although the Van Halen legend was a complete virtuoso, mastering every trick in the book, there are two techniques he is most closely associated with: dive bombs and string-tapping. His extensive use of these methods helped make them ubiquitous in modern metal playing.
Van Halen later admitted that Deep Purple’s in-house pioneer, Ritchie Blackmore, had a significant influence on him, particularly with the early metal classic Deep Purple in Rock from 1970. Featuring Jimi Hendrix-esque riffs on tracks like ‘Speed King’ and ‘Black Night’, this album is undoubtedly Blackmore’s magnum opus. For Van Halen, it was Blackmore’s use of dive bombs that was especially compelling, leaving a lasting impact on his own playing style.
While dive bombs certainly accentuated Van Halen’s luminescent arsenal, it is two-handed string-tapping that is his famous weapon and the one he is most closely associated with. From the resounding instrumental ‘Eruption’ to mainstream hits such as ‘Jump’, without such an immense technique that spoke to the bombastic proclivities of the era, we likely wouldn’t be talking about the same player today.
As with anything lauded in music, there are conflicting reports of where Van Halen got the idea to lean so heavily into string-tapping and make the two-handed tact his own. Genesis virtuoso Steve Hackett is widely deemed the first man to extensively use the technique, and he himself has claimed that Van Halen credited him with inspiring him to tap. Interestingly, he maintained they never actually spoke about it.
While Hackett undoubtedly showed the world the technique, Van Halen asserted that another British metal pioneer, Jimmy Page, gave him the idea. Van Halen discussed this on several occasions, and when speaking to The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and Zócalo Public Square in 2017, he explained how.
During an interview, he addressed the misconception that he claimed to have invented tapping, clarifying that he never made such a claim. However, he vividly remembered when he first figured it out—while watching Led Zeppelin perform at the Los Angeles Forum. As Jimmy Page raised one hand in the air while playing notes on the fretboard with the other, Van Halen grasped the concept and ran with it. He added his own twist to tapping by using both hands: his left hand would move up and down the fretboard to adjust the nut and pitch, while his right hand played the strings, both working together to “hammer on” and create his signature sound.
“I think I got the idea of tapping watching Jimmy Page do his ‘Heartbreaker’ solo back in 1971,” Van Halen explained in more detail to Guitar World in 2008. “He was doing a pull-off to an open string, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, open string … pull off. I can do that, but what if I use my finger as the nut and move it around?’ I just kind of took it and ran with it.”
Van Halen always was a bold player. In addition to augmenting one of Page’s trusty techniques, he would also later claim that he was a far superior player to him. This assertion was bolstered by Page asserting that his Amsterdam-born counterpart was “the real deal”. Yet, we all know who made the most significant impact on music, and it wasn’t the ‘Eruption’ star.
