"If I can help a kid discover a liking, or even a passion for music in their life, then that's a wonderful thing.
- Eddie Van Halen
There's a stand up comedian that I've followed since the early 80s named Dom Irrera. He's a big Italian guy from Philly and that's his general persona. I remember a bit he did once. I paraphrase it here:
Every time I go back home to visit, my mother always wants to play guess who died. She'll say to me, “Dom…guess who died?” I say, “Ma…I don't wanna play guess who died.” She says “Okay…well, guess who has diabetes.”
The fact is, once you get to a certain age, it comes up more and more, death. More people you know or know of are checking out. This is a quick break from Music of the States to acknowledge the anniversary of a significant rock and roll passing - Eddie Van Halen.
I read this recently by a gentleman named Nathan Sarick:
I am a high school history teacher and sometimes I fill in as the guitar teacher. On my first day of guitar class six years ago, I gave the students a survey about their musical experience, interests, goals, etc. One of the questions was: “Who is your favorite guitar player?” After I collected the surveys and began to review them, I was shocked and saddened to see that the most common answers for that question were “I don’t have one” or just a question mark.
If my high school guitar teachers in the early ’90s had asked me who my favorite guitarist was, I would have replied, “I can only pick one?”
I concur. If I'd have been asked that question in high school, I could have filled up the page. In a handful of conversations with young men or the last few years, I've asked that question, “Who's your favorite guitar player?” None have ever had one and some didn't have a single guitar player they could name, period. Is there any hope for the world? If you lived through the 1980s, it's hard to imagine, isn't it, that any young person of that time (especially a male) wouldn't have known the name Eddie Van Halen? They may not have been a fan of the music and the band that carried his last name, but they sure would have known who he was and what he did.
There was a time not that long ago when guitars ruled the earth. When, as AC/DC's Bon Scott sang, “There were fifteen million fingers learnin' how to play.” That was back when kids wanted to strap on guitars and make a racket. Nobody made a more distinctive racket than Eddie Van Halen. He called himself just “a punk kid who plays guitar.” To me, that's like Einstein saying he was just a schlub who liked to fiddle with numbers. Eddie did with the guitar what Einstein did in science, changed the way the world was perceived. He said, “You only have 12 notes, do what you want to with them.” but he did things with those notes that no one had ever thought of doing. The punk kid from Southern California was a sonic acrobat on the fretboard who invented a kind of six-string pyrotechnics previously unknown. He was an innovator in technology and technique and, like Dr. Frankenstein, built his own monster but called his the Frankenstrat. Unlike Dr. Frankenstein, Eddie had control of his monster and changed music with it.
Being a guitar genius and virtuoso means little if it's not applied to some purpose. Eddie found his. He along with his brother Alex, Michael Anthony and some guy named David Lee Roth put a band together that created a magic formula of bawdy party rock that helped make the 80s a fun time to be alive. Sure, Roth was the dancing clown out front, but it was the Eddie with his impish grin, cigarette and red and white striped axe that drove the machine.
“Influencer” is a now a kind of a vapid term used for anyone who gets people to watch them apply make up or view a picture of their sandwich. Things that will be forgotten by tomorrow's sunrise. Eddie's influence was of a different kind. The kind that reshaped the known world.
So, guess who died? Eddie Van Halen, on this day in 2020. He was 65. R.I.P.