The musician Eddie Van Halen could “never” write like
There’s no real set structure for how to create a classic pop song. If there were some mathematical way to properly nail down what makes people go crazy when they heard the latest pop masterpiece, it would have been bottled up and sold to labels already, but Eddie Van Halen was among the first to prove that anything was possible for a rock band on the charts.
Because looking at their track record, would anyone have expected that one of the most decorated acts to come out of rock and roll would technically be considered a metal band in their prime? The likes of Black Sabbath showed that metal was music for outsiders that didn’t fit into society, but by the time that Eddie started putting together his own riffs with David Lee Roth in front of him, nothing about their music seemed to be dark and depressing. This was a party, and everyone was invited.
And looking at the amount of people who’ve bought their records, they sure got their fair share of thrills as well. No matter if it’s with the neverending grooves on the Roth records or the more introspective material they made with Sammy Hagar, a lot of what made their albums work so well comes back to Eddie being able to find that one magical hook that completely ties the song together whenever he plays.
But his writing process was never in line with the singer-songwriter crowd. He was more interested in creating the greatest riffs possible, and the last thing he was going to do was sit around like James Taylor with an acoustic guitar and practice fingerpicking ditties before they turned into songs. That style had its place, but Eddie was fascinated by how that kind of music worked.
Even by the standards of singer-songwriters, though, Elton John was a unique beast. John was the last person who claimed to write magnificent lyrics, and his work with Bernie Taupin is when he truly felt free to do what he wanted with the melody, usually using Taupin’s words as a road map when deciding where to fit the melody into everything. In that respect, John is more of a song craftsman than a writer, but Eddie couldn’t wrap his head around how he did that.
For the guitar maestro, that version of writing music was completely alien to him, saying, “With us, everything always starts out with the music first. Some people start with lyrics, the way Elton John takes Bernie Taupin’s lyrics and writes music to them, which I’ve never really done, because lyrics don’t really speak music to me. We always start with the music first.” And considering the one time he tried it, it’s probably best that he didn’t use that method.
Eddie had always started off with the music first, which is why the two classic lineups sounded so different, so when Gary Cherone was brought in, their decision to switch it up and use the Elton John approach sank like a stone. Van Halen weren’t a band that needed to be inspired by the right lyrics, and whenever they tried to work outside of their comfort zone, that led to the records that people either loved or absolutely despised from the moment they put them on.
There’s nothing wrong with John’s method, and the platinum records and gold singles pretty much speak for themselves, but Van Halen was best when they let the music do the talking. Because if you tried to have Eddie throw in a guitar lick on top of a song he didn’t know, it was bound to be a disaster.
