RIP Eddie Van Halen, 1955-2020

This year has just kept us reeling. It’s still too early to process and the pervasive undercurrent of numbness leaves me feeling disconnected like all the other endless bad news. It can’t be overstated how important Eddie was to rock music and the guitar. Often held up there with Jimi Hendrix as the biggest milestone players in the history of guitar, I’ve always felt Eddie’s influence was more pervasive. There were definitely more Eddie clones in the years following his debut album when he single-handedly turned rock music upside down. Most rock fans, especially guitarists, can still remember the first time they heard Van Halen I and Eddie’s rock guitar manifesto, Eruption. I was around 11 years old, and my sister was blasting that first album in her room. I remember just thinking that this was something otherworldly, I couldn’t conceive these sounds as emanating from one player and one guitar. It still blows my mind a bit, even forty plus years later.

Eddie has always been one of my Mt. Rushmore guitarists, going back all those years, even before I decided to pick up the instrument. He was the total package - rhythm, groove, touch, tone, melody, harmony, riffs, composition. Eddie never seemed to approach the instrument casually, he was always driven by a greater need than most of us ever possess or can understand. The stories of Eddie sitting in his room, playing the guitar for twelve hours straight, may strike some as apocryphal, but I’ve never doubted them. One only need listen to that first album and understand he had been playing less than ten years to appreciate his dedication to the instrument.

The guitar and music have gone in myriad directions since those early days, and in many ways popular music has left those 70’s and 80’s icons behind, but Eddie’s influence remains today and will persist into the future. Music lost a champion and icon and it will never see his like again. RIP Eddie, your spirit will always remain.