The song that made Eddie Van Halen give up playing drums
When talking about Eddie Van Halen, no one tends to bring up how great his rhythm was.
It’s easy for everything to get overshadowed by the massive leads that he would tear through every single time he played one of his trademark solos, but if you hooked everything up to a grid, there’s a good chance that he could have had pinpoint accuracy whenever he locked in with his brother, Alex. But for all of the great rhythmic chops he had, he knew that he was much better behind the fretboard than behind the kit.
Then again, it’s not like what he was doing was a completely different animal, either. Michael Anthony helped hold down the rhythmic section on everyone of their records, but looking through their greatest hits, Alex Van Halen seemed to take the Led Zeppelin approach by locking in with the guitar player instead of the bassist. Eddie was clearly the driving engine of the group, but he even had moments where he could put his brother to shame.
Because, really, how do you classify the beginning of a tune like ‘Mean Street’. Sure, Eddie might not be playing “notes” in the traditional sense, but considering the amount of classics that involved him tapping his way through a song, making an intro that was all about slapping the shit out of the guitar and tapping entire chords would have sounded like aliens trying to make first contact in the early 1980s.
It was much different than anything that any other guitarist had done, but that’s only because drums were Eddie’s first love. The first bands that he idolised were people like the Dave Clark Five and Cream, and since they both had drummers that were as good as everyone else in the group, it wasn’t out of the question for him to make his living out of banging on things for a living.
When he first began playing drums, though, it’s not like he was a novice right out of the gate. He had a much better ear thanks to his years of learning to play the piano, but after one day of coming home and listening to Alex sitting behind his drum kit playing ‘Wipe Out’, he knew that there was no point in him trying to outdo what his brother was playing.
‘Wipe Out’ was already a massive testing ground for any drummer, and Eddie admitted that the guitar was a much better fit after Alex bested him, saying, “I used to love Dave Clark Five so I bought myself a drum set. I’d be out throwing papers as a paper boy to get the money to pay for this $125 drumset. Alex would be home practicing ‘Wipe Out’ and he got better than me. He was taking flamenco guitar lessons at the time, and I picked up his guitar.”
Although the early days of surf rock feels like the furthest thing from what Van Halen would be doing, it’s not like there wasn’t any room for that kind of playing, either. ‘Hot For Teacher’ might be better known today for its lude lyrics and being one of the final killer singles from the David Lee Roth era, but listening to the intro of the tune with Alex’s drum intro, it’s practically what ‘Wipe Out’ would sound like on steroids.
There might have been a bit of sibling rivalry between Eddie and Alex when they were figuring out their first tunes, but it’s not like there was any question as to whether they made the right decision behind the scenes. Eddie was clearly made to play the guitar, and even if not every one of the tunes worked perfectly, he always felt much more at home tapping his way through his licks than trying to outdo whatever his brother was trying to make.
