The one guitarist Eddie Van Halen wanted a guitar lesson from: “Amazing”
There could be entire college courses taught on how to study what Eddie Van Halen did for guitar playing. Although anyone can practice the scales he did and attempt to pull off the massive tone he got out of his guitar, the magic was really all in his fingers whenever he played some of his iconic licks. Whether with David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar, Eddie always knew how to make his guitar sing, but he also knew that the key to being a great musician is to never stop learning.
Throughout his time on this Earth, Eddie made it his mission to always try out new things on his guitar, no matter how strange they were. They may have been frowned upon by those who helped invent the instrument, but as any great artist knows, rules are meant to be broken, and whether that was transitioning over to the piano or using an electric drill to get sounds out of his guitar on tracks like ‘Poundcake’, nothing was going to stop Eddie from doing whatever he wanted to do for the song.
Most of his techniques may have been enough to terrify anyone operating a studio, but even the greatest session musicians knew how to take the fundamentals of rock and roll and turn them into something beautiful. Brian Wilson was never afraid to get freaky with some of his instrumentals when working with The Wrecking Crew, and whenever he had someone like Carol Kaye filling out the low end, he created the perfect groove behind the greatest chord progressions anyone had ever heard.
And it’s not like Eddie wasn’t paying attention to some of those strange harmonies when he first started. He always said that people like Eric Clapton were among his favourite musicians of all time, but whenever he listened to people like Glen Campbell, he knew there was some magic going on whenever he weaved together his melodies.
Despite being miles above many of his peers in terms of technique, shock rocker Alice Cooper remembered Eddie wanting him to get him a lesson from Campbell when playing golf with him, saying, “The real reason he came in, he says, ‘Okay let me tell you the real reason I wanted to come in. I need for you to get me a guitar lesson with Glen Campbell.’ Glen Campbell was such a great guitarist that other guitar players could hear what he was doing and go, ‘Oh my gosh, this guy’s amazing.’”
While Campbell probably wasn’t going to show Eddie anything new about his tapping technique, his greatest strength was playing melodies. Even when he had a bass in his hands on the song ‘Wichita Lineman’, hearing him tear through a four-string solo was among the most singable melodies that the low end had ever heard. And for Eddie, he quickly realised that melody ruled over everything else.
Because looking at Eddie’s competition, it seemed like everyone was taking his playbook of tapping and putting their own spin on it. There was no point in him trying to trademark his tapping style, so the next best thing was for him to stretch out and create the kind of melodies that people wanted to sing rather than trying to play at breakneck speeds like all the other virtuosos.
And when looking at the tail end of Van Hagar’s years, it’s easy to see Eddie favouring melodic lines over worrying about showing off his technique. He already had the records that proved he was a musical god among men, so now that he had nothing to lose, he might as well have tried to make the kind of solos that he was satisfied with rather than using a lead break as an exercise.
