Vale Eddie

Sometime in late 1978 my mate Paul and I were sitting in his car. He had left school, started an apprenticeship and had his driver’s license. I had done none of those things. Like a lot of teenage boys at the time we had become friends around surfing, cars, pursuing girls and of course rock and roll. Disco had taken over the airwaves and we hated it. Punk was still for the few very cool people who had heard it.

Our music back then was the legends of heavy rock and metal. Purely and simply it was about the electric guitar. Paul liked the heavier sounds of Black Sabbath and AC/DC. I was more drawn to the light and shade of Led Zeppelin, the glam of Bowie’s Ziggy period. We both loved Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Alice Cooper and no doubt due to the love of guitar we also listened to early Steely Dan a lot.

To this day I can remember him showing me a cassette he just bought. It was the first album by Van Halen. When he slid the cassette into that vital teenage car accessory, the cassette player, he simply said, “Listen to this.” Then he turned the volume way up.

Simply put, although it was not a phrase in use then, it was a WTF moment.

Runnin With The Devil was fucking jaw dropping but then, then came track two - 1.42 minutes of Eruption. WTF!, WTF!!, WTF!!!!

The rest of the album was awesome too. It rocked, you could sing along and of course you could air guitar yourself into seventh heaven.

Like Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen changed the sound of electric guitar forever. I’m not a good enough guitarist to appreciate just how technically skilful he was but I can play three chords and have a set of ears and that is enough. Besides there are plenty of websites that you can visit to get the lowdown on the Eddie sound but why bother, just crank up songs like Jamie’s Cryin, Panama, Beautiful Girls, Everybody Wants Some and Jump and listen to a true innovative master.

 Along with archetypical frontman David Lee Roth, rock solid bassist Michael Anthony and his underrated drummer brother Alex, Eddie created a hugely successful band that had it all. I say that because they had one extra thing that the previous masters of rock lacked, maybe because Van Halen were not sons of England but Californian men - Van Halen had showbiz.