RIP Eddie Van Halen

Too many people are dying right now. This year has been awful, and it just continues. The pandemic has taken 215,000 plus, and counting. And people who are relatively young, in their 60’s, are going rapidly too.

Most notably, Eddie Van Halen passed yesterday after a nearly decade long battle with cancer. That seems to be what gets the “older” people right now if they do not get COVID, of if they get it and recover. I never listened to Van Halen. I obviously know of them, but to me they were more of a band that the people I hang out with made fun of. It never had to do with Eddie Van Halen himself though. The jokes were always at the expense of Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth. They were always too much. But, the songs I know, the ones everyone knows, the guitar always stood out. The guitar is also the best part of “Beat It”, the song from Michael Jackson. All of that was Eddie Van Halen. He was a tremendous, virtuosic guitar player. He was one of a kind. He made hair metal, at least for me, listenable. If there was a way to single out his playing, I would have been the biggest Van Halen fan in the world. The things he did on a guitar where akin to what Jimmy Page did with Led Zeppelin. Now in no world is Van Halen even close to a band like Led Zeppelin. But, Eddie Van Halen was just as good a guitarist as Jimmy Page. He was also up there with other greats. I can look past what genre of music he played and appreciate how skilled and inventive and simply amazing he was as a guitar player. He is the Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix or Son House of hair metal. He is the one guy that everyone singles out as the “best” guitar player in his era. Sure the music was goofy and not for me, but Eddie Van Halen was great. He did things on the guitar I never heard, and no one else can duplicate.

I remember being at a Widespread Panic concert years ago with my oldest brother, and during set break they played the first Van Halen record. I was bad mouthing it because I recognized David Lee Roth’s voice. But my brother told me to get that out of my head and try to focus on the guitar player. I scoffed, not knowing too much about Eddie Van Halen at the time. But once I got where my brother was trying to get me to go, it hit me. The guitar was astounding. It was heavy, but technically precise. The fact that he could play so fast, yet make it look effortless was more than enough for me to admit this guy was awesome. I went home after that show and tried to find clips of just Eddie Van Halen playing the guitar. No accompaniment, just him. The stuff I saw on YouTube blew me away. He played better than Steve Vai. He shredded better than Slash. He picked at the guitar like a modern day Django Reinhart. From that moment on I never underestimated Eddie Van Halen. I still wasn’t a fan of his band, and they sure made it difficult with all the fighting and bickering they did, but I found myself liking and appreciating Eddie Van Halen. When I found out he did the guitar on “Beat It”, my fandom of him grew. He proved he could do other music.

Eddie Van Halen is one of the greatest guitar players to ever grace this Earth. It sucks that he’s gone, but we do have his music for the rest of our lifetime. Even for someone like me, someone who doesn’t like the band he is associated with, I can get down with Eddie Van Halen the guitar player. He was taken too soon, and he’s another decent person we’ve lost again in 2020. Rest In Peace good sir. I hope you and Prince are shredding wherever you are right now.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast.

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