The musician Eddie Van Halen was desperate to work with: “The last guitarist that moved me”
Any guitarist who ever lived would have broken out in a cold sweat if they had been asked to jam with Eddie Van Halen.
Whereas most guitarists are gifted when it comes to making great riffs, what Eddie was doing was on another level, to the point where it seemed like he was an alien that could make his guitar talk on every single record. But even if some of his songs were beyond human comprehension, there were still a few other musical giants that Eddie felt he could learn a thing or two from when they started jamming.
But even when looking at Eddie’s heroes, he was miles ahead of anything they were doing. Cream was the band that made him want to play guitar when he heard Eric Clapton for the first time, but if you listen to Van Halen’s debut, there’s a good chance that even ‘Slowhand’ couldn’t have matched up to what Eddie was doing when he played those tapping licks. He was in the stratosphere from that first record onward, but that’s not to say that he couldn’t develop his craft a little bit more as well.
He was still looking at what the other geniuses in Los Angeles were doing, and when you listen to what Steve Lukather was doing in Toto, you can hear what Eddie saw in them. Here was a guy who truly knew the ins and outs of what a great guitar sound was supposed to be, but that was nothing compared to the geniuses that came from outside the session world. You have to remember that fusion had just come into play, and while Weather Report was massive in the US, the UK gave everyone a new guitar hero in Allan Holdsworth.
Then again, Holdsworth was a different kind of virtuoso than Eddie would have ever been. He wasn’t into the flashiness every single time he played, but when you listen to the way that he played a lot of his melodies, some of the biggest pieces of his songs are virtually impossible to keep up with. He was making music with such finesse that it almost went over everyone’s head, and if Eddie had his way, he would have tried to work with Holdsworth to get the right sound out of him.
They were from two different worlds in a sense, but Eddie could definitely recognise when he was listening to a genius, saying, “I think the last guitarist who moved me was Holdsworth. Just because he was so out there, y’know? I wanted to work with him and try to bring him back to earth, so to speak, and make him more accessible, but it never quite materialised”.
“The guy just has some insane technique, if he’d only make it a little more melodic.”
It is melodic to a certain degree, but the way that Holdsworth constructed chords was always a bit too much for even technical masters. The jazzy style that he had sounded beautiful within the right context, but whereas Eddie had his handful of riffs that were easy to play, no one would have dared to try to play any of Holdsworth’s chord voicings without having to do some intense hand stretching afterwards.
But you can definitely hear Eddie trying to get a sound that approximates what Holdsworth was doing. Fair Warning is one of the first times he really got to spread out in terms of guitar playing, and while he was still up to his old tricks when he tapped out some of his licks, there are a handful of songs where he has the same kind of energy that Holdsworth had whenever he played those demanding solos.
No matter how much finesse that his hero had, though, Eddie had the perfect balance of musicality and showmanship that he needed to become one of the biggest guitarists in the world. Being a gigantic rock and roll star was never in the cards for Holdsworth, but even when he was on top of the world, Eddie was at least trying to do what he could to create the kinds of tunes that paid tribute to his friend.
