The one band Eddie Van Halen never wanted to play like: “Make you horny”
There are probably musical scientists who could spend years trying to figure out what the hell Eddie Van Halen was doing on guitar.
He was the first to say that he wasn’t exactly a genius by any stretch, but looking at every single lick that he played throughout his career, you’d have to wonder whether or not he was an alien, he had four hands, or both at the exact same time. But even if he had nothing but an acoustic guitar and a microphone in front of him, Eddie could have made any guitar in his hands sound like one of the most intense instruments in the world with a beat behind him.
Hell, sometimes he didn’t even need a beat, either. Alex Van Halen was certainly an anchor during a lot of their greatest songs, but a tune like ‘Cathedral’ or ‘Spanish Fly’ is a perfect example of what Eddie could do when he was totally by himself. No, it wasn’t exactly chart material whenever he played his solos, but it was always mystifying whenever he had his moment onstage where he could go through every single tapping lick that he had in his musical arsenal.
But there were also limits on where he wanted to go. There were plenty of artists who were trying to make music that was a bit more commercial, but even when Eddie was making his first steps into music, he could never manage to play like everyone else on the charts. The club owners wanted them to play Top 40 music, but if Eddie ever tried to make a song like KC and the Sunshine Band, it would have still sounded like the heaviest thing in the world.
Then again, that’s also half the reason why the band worked so well. You could tell when they were on the radio, the minute you heard them, and even when Sammy Hagar filled David Lee Roth’s shoes, you could still hear the intensity when Eddie kicked off a guitar riff or even when he was working behind the piano when working out tunes like ‘Right Now’.
He was still reaching for new influences all the time, but the guitar legend also said that he was never going to make anything sound perfect. Every single pop song on the charts at the time felt like they were being put together by song doctors, and while there was some great music on the charts at the time, Eddie felt much more comfortable following his heart whenever he picked up his guitar than worrying about dissecting every single note until everything sounded absolutely perfect.
And while a lot of bands had tried to make the gold standard for pop by this point, Eddie thought the way Fleetwood Mac made their records was completely alien to him, saying, “Our stuff, to me, keeps you on the edge of your seat. It builds tension whether you like it or not. It slaps you in the face. [Rock and roll should] Move you in any way. Depress you, make you happy, make you horny, make you rowdy. Anything. If it doesn’t, it’s like Fleetwood Mac!”
That’s not to say that there’s anything wrong with an album like Rumours. Eddie could admit that ‘The Mac’s masterpiece was one of the finest pop albums ever made, but that’s not how he thought about music. He was interested in capturing a feeling half the time he played, whereas Lindsey Buckingham was willing to bend over backwards to achieve the same kind of standards that his heroes like Brian Wilson used to do back in the day.
Neither approach is necessarily wrong, but it just goes to show you how many different avenues there are to making a classic song. Some might be looking to make a pristine record and people like Eddie may have wanted to get a take with some mojo behind it, but either way, both records gave fans that sense of excitement from the moment that they hit the turntable.
