The song Eddie Van Halen said was “impossible” for him: “I tried so hard”
Being in any rock and roll outfit means having to pay a lot of dues before you even walk into the studio. Any band that hits the big time usually has horror stories of playing to empty clubs or having a few beer bottles thrown their way, but Eddie Van Halen knew that he could never bother doing anything but rock and roll.
Even before he was out of diapers, both Eddie and Alex were already surrounded by music when listening to their father perform. He was far from the kind of rock and roll star that they idolised back in their prime, but if they could make their way across the Atlantic to America by playing along with their old man, it wasn’t going to be that hard for them to adapt to rock and roll when people like Eric Clapton started tearing up the scene.
But what Eddie was doing was far different from anything that he heard in his record collection. There were pieces of blues licks that people course parse out of Van Halen’s greatest tunes, but when he launched into any of those tapping licks or used any of the phasing effects on his amplifier, it felt like you wear hearing a guitar that was getting beamed in from outer space half the time. It was definitely interesting, but it wasn’t what was going on at the time.
Because, really, Van Halen were never intending to be a bog-standard pop rock outfit. They wanted to play arenas the same way that their heroes in Led Zeppelin were doing, but all of the arena bands were kept on their toes the minute that punk came out. There was a new language everyone had to learn, but that didn’t cater to a bunch of kids that wanted to follow in the footsteps of their favourite rock legends.
And looking at the first iteration of the band, they were the last people most would think of when it came time to play disco music. People like Donna Summer were making big waves on the charts, but compared to every other record out at the time, Eddie could never understand what made some of those grooves sound so infectious whenever they came on the radio.
The band were trying to be one of the biggest names in rock, but during their life as a covers act, Eddie was completely lost half the time, saying, “We got signed in the middle of punk and disco. They laughed at us. ‘These dudes are playing rock and roll. It’s ‘Get Down Tonight’, man. KC and the Sunshine Band. It sounded like Black Sabbath when we did it. It was impossible for me to emulate these records. For the life of me, I tried so hard to make them sound like the record, but it was a blessing in disguise because all I could do was me.”
What Eddie counted as a blessing there was more like a series of miniature miracles whenever they performed. A song like ‘You Really Got Me’ is already a classic for a reason, but the minute that you hear Eddie’s take on that classic riff after coming out of the massive guitar solo ‘Eruption’, every single kid was shellshocked and wanted the chance to get their guitars to sound like that.
But even for the countless guitarists that Eddie spawned after that first album, none of them were even going to touch what he could do. They could try to get the best effects and amps to emulate his tones, but the real magic behind every single note that he played was all in his hands whenever he strapped on his guitar.
