Eddie Van Halen, 1955–2020

In the summer of ’93, I picked up the July issue of Musician magazine from a stand at the Atlanta airport. I don’t remember where I was traveling to, but I must have wanted something to read on the plane. And with a cover story like this, how could I lose, right?

Out of the 100 guitarists on this particular list, 93 of them were subdivided into categories (folk; blues; jazz; etc.). But seven names, at the top of the list, were not listed in any category. They were just there, at the top. Here were the names: Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, John McLaughlin, Allan Holdsworth, Frank Zappa, Jimmy Page . . . and Edward Van Halen.

Having just turned 22 years old, I had only really heard music by three of them—Hendrix, Page and Van Halen. I remember thinking “most of these guys are of rock legend and history, but Eddie is of my time, my generation of music.”

I had a lot to learn about rock legends, history and my generation of music, and that issue of Musician magazine gave me an important start. If these other guys were on the same list as Eddie, then I’d better check them out! So it was off to Turtles Records and Tapes (!) to try scrounging up some of these names. The first CD I ever purchased in my life was Frank Zappa’s Guitar. And soon my tastes in music developed away from the rock and pop that most of my friends listened to, and towards what those same friends called “weird stuff with no singing.”

I’m not a Van Halen expert, but I distinctly remember in the late ’80s and mid ’90s that some music industry publications and even some very early music websites and blogs (not the term used at that time) would make mention of Eddie’s interest in doing some other kinds of creative projects outside of his famous band. He wanted to express his creativity in ways completely separate from his existence as an arena rock god, but the whole music business infrastructure around him would revolt because those kinds of projects (weird stuff with no singing) were not likely to generate millions of dollars. And the labels, promoters and radio stations really needed Eddie to generate millions of dollars, or they weren’t interested.

As far as I can tell, Eddie eventually gave up on the notion of performing or recording any music outside Van Halen’s genre. Again, not a Van Halen expert, but it seemed to me that he became somewhat reclusive, focusing on raising his son, fighting his cancer and trying to maintain an occasional truce with the other bandmates long enough for a revenue-generating VH tour every few years.

“The second cut on the first Van Halen album, ‘Eruption’ revolutionized the electric guitar in 1978. Punk had made guitar heroes passé, but Eddie renewed their cool with a vast array of moves that also built a whole new branch of publishing: the guitar tab book,” according to that 1993 100 Greatest list. “He never lost sight of the great riff, without which the electrifying solo degenerates into turd polishing. Remind yourself of his brilliant riffing with ‘Everybody Wants Some’ for a glimpse of what he could do if he dared to revolutionize rock again by stepping away from the conventions of the arena.”

So now we’ll never know what Eddie would have sounded like had he followed the examples of some of the other great guitarists who continued to mature, develop and innovate, like Jeff Beck, who explored rockabilly, electronica and rock/classical hybrids; Brian May, who has developed a small but devoted following for his post-Queen output; John McLaughlin (an early hero of Eddie’s) who expanded into authentic Indian music in his post-electric prime; or Eric Clapton, who ultimately returned to honest blues after long detours into commercial pop and easy-listening.

No, with very few exceptions, the only way we hear Edward Van Halen—an incredibly skilled guitarist who still “prioritized melody and feeling over flamboyant technique,” as music critic Mark Savage put it—is in the context of one of the loudest and most entertaining hard rock bands in history. We shall not experience his like again.