EVH
Wow. Eddie Van Halen has died. I didn't know he was sick, but apparently he'd been fighting throat cancer for years.
I wasn't a huge fan, but he was perhaps the most influential guitarist of his era. He makes the top ten of any great guitarist list--top of the list to millions. And the band Van Halen (no matter who the lead singer) released one top ten album after another in the 80s and 90s.
Here is where I'd put some videos, except this new template doesn't allow me to. So go to YouTube and play your favorites.
PS Johnny Nash of "I Can See Clearly Now" and "Stir It Up" is also gone.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:30 AM
5 Comments:
Does the template allow commenters to include links?
"Fools" -- one of my favorites. The boys make some creepy sounds in the intro, beginning at 0:59 Eddie shows off just how fast he can do tapping. This lasts for ten seconds, and nobody could possibly count how many notes he plays during this interval.
Then the best part: When the chords begin at 1:20, Eddie bends the strings so far that he's not playing normal notes -- he's got stuff halfway between an F and F#, or whatever. Finally the bass enters and the song begins.
They were playing this song in the mid-70s when playing high school parties and the Whisky and anywhere else that would have them. The lyrics are juvenile and fun -- literally "I'm sick of my folks making me clean my room." But they didn't record it until their third album.
I'm not a huge fan; it never would have occurred to me to see Van Halen in concert. My favorite guitarist is Steve Howe. But sometimes it's fun to just listen to someone show off how fast he can play, and for that Eddie Van Halen is the very best. (Randy Rhoads is second.)
Only their first three albums are worthwhile (says this old fogey).
I can see ignoring the Sammy Hagar years. But 1984 and Diver Down do nothing for you?
They had their moments. "Panama" is a great song -- the only track on those later albums that stands up with their earliest stuff. "Pretty Woman" was okay, but prefacing it with a guitar solo made it obviously an attempt to recreate "Eruption"/"You Really Got Me".
I like their acoustic stuff: unlike most metal bands, they can sing in harmony and do fun things like "Big Bad Bill Is Sweet William Now".
But most of the stuff was just, well, okay. If I'm listening to FM radio, I will probably not change the station if "I'll Wait" comes on, but "Dreams" and "Finish What You Started" and "Right Now" from the Hagar days are just as good. I'd check other stations real quick, and then maybe go back to this on KLOS.
But now I have satellite radio, and that's all in the past. There's no need for me to listen to songs I've heard every single week for the past twenty years. Bye bye, classic rock radio!
PS -- "Jump" was wretched, a travesty. If I had been a hardcore fan I would have felt betrayed by this dreck. Fortunately, I didn't really care about the band much; if they hadn't been a local band I would have cared even less.
By the way, one of the coolest things about hard rock bands is when the members trash-talk each other. For some reason, I just love this video:
Trash talking
For some reason, Alex sounds almost like he has a New York accent. Is that just the attitude? He lived in Amsterdam till age nine, and then Pasadena.
We always think of rock'n'rollers dying from hard drugs or hard drinking, but it looks like the chain-smoking was Eddie's achilles heel....
You neglected to mention EVH holds a patent No. 4,656,917.
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