By Gustav Larsen Humphries (Y12)
Superstrats are a kind of electric guitar which take the ergonomic shape of a Fender Stratocaster and essentially turbocharge it with advanced hardware, improving playability – literally a ‘super’ stratocaster. They are one of the most popular types of electric guitar in the world; I’d guess somewhere near half a million are produced yearly. The first superstrat was thrown together by a 19-year-old Eddie Van Halen in his garage in Pasadena, California, made because no existing guitar could do what he wanted it to do.
I happen to have a superstrat. I also happen to be a huge fan of Eddie Van Halen’s musical work. But it isn’t just the model itself that was inspired by Eddie. Look at the picture of my guitar (I’ll assume you can figure out which image that is): see those two rounded black rectangles with grey dots in the center? These pickups, as they’re called, are inspired by modifications Eddie made to his very own, probably in his garage (again). And below, that black machine with a hanging bar attached? It’s known as a Floyd Rose, and Eddie was closely involved in perfecting its design – today, millions of guitars use them. The point I’m trying to make is that Eddie Van Halen is to hard rock guitar what Isaac Newton is to physics, what colonialism is to the modern world: it doesn’t matter how you look at it, how little you know. Peel back the layers and, one way or another, you’ll find him.
This influence isn’t limited to inventions; quite the opposite, actually. Eddie is as close as a person will ever get to being a time traveller (until we make a time machine, at least), literally because he directed the future. It is often said that he played 80s guitar in the 70s, and he did, because 80s guitar was fundamentally inspired by his playing. His bandmate, Sammy Hagar, once said: “I think Edward’s an alien, if you want to know the truth. He’s not from this planet. I couldn’t tell you the planet, but everyone on the planet probably plays guitar.” It might interest you to know that Hagar has publicly stated his firm belief in aliens, claiming he’s had direct interactions with them.
As he never took guitar lessons, Eddie’s playing was completely unconventional. Everything he knew, he learned either by ear or by playing notes until something good came out. And so the sounds he produced were naturally unconstitutional: take his tremolo picking technique (think playing the same string repeatedly and fast): instead of resting his wrist on the guitar – the norm – he suspended it in mid-air and flicked it from side to side. This reduces effort for the forearm and allowed him to pick the string up to 15 times per second, for extended periods of time. 15. I dare you to go to the music rooms, steal a pick from Mr. Aram’s mug, and see what’s the best you can do. I assure you it won’t be 15 plucks a second. And if it is, you miscounted. But I diverge. He took piano lessons as a child, and so he grew up on classical music, which bled elegantly into the hard rock he so piously revered; it created a melodic, dramatic, neoclassical feel in some cases which set him apart from others at the time. He grew up on blues, too, stating his biggest influence was Eric Clapton’s work in Cream. But really, his playing was his own, perhaps more than any other guitarist at the time. Not taking guitar lessons was his advantage: the value in not knowing something is that one is not subject to the existing figurative boundaries limiting it. Eddie thought differently, bigger than his counterparts for this reason: who was to tell him what was possible or not, what is to be done with a guitar and what not?
All this, combined with a ruthless practice routine consisting of playing up to ten hours a day, left him ready to face the music (ha! Funny one, I know). And so his band, aptly named Van Halen after him and his older brother/drummer Alex, released their debut album to the world in 1978 – aptly, too, named Van Halen. The description by Apple Music says it best: the album was earth-shattering. Not only because Eddie’s guitar playing was probably intense enough to give the North American tectonic plate, his residence, a hairline fracture, but because it changed how people looked at the guitar. Wild, vicious solos, swinging blues-based riffs, so-called ‘divebombs’ done with his tremolo bar (the hanging bar I mentioned earlier; these divebombs would leave his strings out of tune, and this is why he helped perfect the Floyd Rose: to solve the tuning problem. It didn’t exist at the time). Perhaps most famously of all was his two-handed tapping technique, which he introduced to the world at the end of the instrumental Eruption. This was just bonkers, to be honest. It’s like playing the piano, but you raise the lid and start punching the strings themselves rather than pressing the keys. I can personally say that the tapping at the end of Eruption is what inspired me to play electric guitar in the first place – it just sounds so cool (part of this probably comes from the fact that he employs a very classical technique – I guess those piano lessons paid off, literally). And his tone! It could bite your hand off if you got too close. Guitarists literally revere his sound on the first Van Halen album, to the point they even named it: the ‘brown sound’. What made it so unique was that he cranked his Marshall amplifiers (amplifiers produce sound for an electric guitar) to a volume so high the hardware started to overdrive and cause the sound to break up. This distortion would create a warm, full tone which could give a harsh, vicious bite or crunch upon striking the string with more force. The only downside is that this would require playing the guitar at the same volume as a fighter jet, and the extreme stress on his amplifiers would cause components to break down every other show. The things we do for tone…
And what he wrote wasn’t just skilled; it was good. His riffs are actually enjoyable to listen to. His solos are flashy but tasteful nonetheless. There’s a great deal of variation in his work: robust chords on Runnin’ with the Devil, lightning-fast notes with an unbelievable amount of swing on I’m the One, slow and sultry wails on Jamie’s Cryin’, or the apocalyptic sounds of On Fire. At 23, Eddie Van Halen pulls the marvellous trick of being the greatest guitar show-off the world has ever seen, and doing it tastefully. The album and the band, by extension, were naturally a success: they published their second album 13 months later. I’ll let you guess what it was called… yeah, Van Halen II. To be honest, Eddie’s playing was never as intense on any other album as it was on the first. Maybe he had a point to prove, and he proved it. Some say, too, that Van Halen peaked in 1978. I disagree: no doubt, their debut album was one of their best, but it was the culmination of four years of consistent work – the time from their formation to their first deal. Their following releases, though not entirely, consisted of new creations over the past year or two, at most. And some of them were just as good, if not better. So really, Van Halen’s prime was never a specific year, but over the course of the late 70s to late 80s.
Eddie didn’t actually like the attention superstardom gave him. On the contrary, he was a shy person. He frequently suffered from anxiety and stage fright, which, I’m sure you can guess, is not helpful when your job is performing to stadiums. Supposedly, he once, at age 12, told his father he was scared before a performance. His father gave him a cigarette and a drink. They helped, and he was dependent from then on out.
As the years (and albums) passed, Eddie’s playing grew less intense, but no less innovative. He more or less moved on from his ‘brown sound’. The band’s sixth studio album, 1984 (released in, you guessed it, 1984), was notably popular – it remains their bestseller and is the source of perhaps their biggest hit, Jump. But the nuanced significance of 1984 was that it was the first album on which Eddie played something other than the guitar (actually the second; the first was on And the Cradle Will Rock (1980), but it’s honestly hard to discern the electric piano, so my point remains.) The album opens with a tone-setting synth fanfare, an alien piece fit for a science-fiction film, titled 1984, of course. On I’ll Wait, Eddie coaxes a mournful, colder sound from the machine. And of course, Jump. Who could forget that opening riff? How ironic that the biggest hit of Van Halen, a band launched into outer space by their guitarist’s work, was a song where the guitar is, for the most part, inaudible.
This doesn’t mean Eddie’s guitar playing on the album was bad. On the other hand, Hot for Teacher is my favourite of anything he wrote. A boxier, lighter tone allowed Eddie a playful and agile performance, I find, with more ‘motion’. Does that make sense? Probably not. Anyway, the point is, he’s still got it.
With this newfound fame, Eddie could be arrogant. He was understandably quite full of himself, sometimes to a despicable level. One time, whilst commenting on the death of 25-year-old Randy Rhoads, an incredible coming-up guitarist killed in a plane crash, Eddie expressed his sorrow, then immediately proceeded to talk about how Randy was ‘honest’ if nothing else, for having said that everything he learned, he learned from Eddie. Wow. Classy. Eddie had a habit of criticising other musicians. In 2001, he described jamming with Limp Bizkit as making him feel “like a scholar among kindergartners”. On the contrary, he has, in numerous interviews, understated his skill, famously claiming “I’m just a punk kid who plays the guitar”. He was said to be sweet, down-to-earth, and generous, keeping his active philanthropic efforts quiet. The two sides don’t add up. But considering how he acted in his later, sober years, I think he was drunk on fame, liquor, or both – not that it justifies what he did. But it raises the question: to truly love music, one should see the industry not as a competition but as a meeting point of incredible talents. Why didn’t he?
1985. David Lee Roth, singer and frontman of the band, abandons his now exploding musical career to become an actor. Great. To be fair, he reportedly had a huge ego and was a pain to the rest of the band members. So good riddance, actually. Many people thought this was the end of the line for Van Halen, and it did look that way. Eddie, considered one of the best guitarists in the world at the time, was immediately swarmed with offers for other musical pursuits. The band was without direction. They had just released their greatest hit, and literally, one of their unique selling points had just disintegrated. If I remember correctly, the way it went was that Eddie and Alex couldn’t decide what to do, so they left it to a coin toss: (let’s say heads) meant an all-star tour with other artists, and the dissolution of Van Halen. Tails, then, meant Van Halen stays together, no exterior contracts. Don’t hold me to this piece of lore. I can’t remember it too well, and I can’t remember where I learned about it, either. But the outcome was the latter. So Van Halen needed a new vocalist…
The solution was in Sammy Hagar. He had long been a fan of Eddie’s guitar work, and leaped at the opportunity to work with him and the rest of Van Halen. What was notably different about Sammy from David Lee Roth was that he had a much greater vocal range, which allowed the band freedom to play in more keys; he also had a different approach to lyrics and music, which moved the band from a cynical, rough vibe to something optimistic, happier even. This could be described as the renowned ‘80s cheese’, and in some ways, this is true. Sometimes I feel a bit awkward listening to the Van Hagar work (Halen → Hagar, a nickname for the band at the time) for this reason. Dreams (1985) is a prime example: don’t get me wrong, it’s a great song (one of my favourites on the album, actually), but it’s kind of hard to enjoy when Sammy Hagar is declaring “baby, we belong in a world that must be strong”, and “in the end, on dreams we will depend, ‘cause that’s what love is made of”.
The song comes from the new lineup’s first album, 5150. The album is very different from anything preceding it, perhaps most notably, for the reasons mentioned prior as well as this: in his solo career, as well as being a singer, Sammy had been his band’s lead guitarist. This meant that during live performances, Eddie had the freedom to play the keyboard to his heart’s content, and the guitar department would be taken care of by their new frontman/secondary guitarist. As you might expect, it led to an increase in keyboard parts: on Dreams, the song mentioned earlier, Love Walks In, and Why Can’t This Be Love. The third was a huge hit, the biggest song to come out of Van Hagar. In an interview, Eddie mentioned the freedom Sammy’s presence gave him. The band’s early success had been a double-edged sword, forcing him into the title of ‘guitar hero’, or ‘shredding virtuoso’. He wanted to experiment, to widen his horizons, but was pressured to maintain the same path. Sammy allowed him to truly spread his wings and fulfill his potential. In the same vein, Eddie’s guitar work became much less ‘shreddy’, or quick and aggressive, in this album and the ones following. He was more tasteful, elegant. By no means had he lost his skill – listen to any concert solo around this time; he’s still just as good as his 23-year-old self. But I implore you to listen to 5150 and Van Halen, and juxtapose the two. The difference is obvious, and there is no better way to understand it than to see – or hear – it for yourself.
And so the band continued, Eddie being given the creative freedom he had always desired. They released another three albums with Sammy before his departure in June 1996, due to growing internal tensions. They produced Van Halen III in 1998, with their third lead singer, Gary Cherone. It wasn’t a hit, nor was he. In these final years of the 20th century, Eddie’s drinking and drug use spiralled out of control, unfortunately. He was diagnosed with tongue cancer in 2000, though it was treated successfully. During their reunion tour in 2004, he was a shell of his old self, all over the place during performances. Thankfully, he went to rehab in 2007 and was sober from then onwards. The band produced one final album in 2012, A Different Kind of Truth, after a return by David Lee Roth, and continued touring up until 2015. He was diagnosed with another two cancers, throat and lung, in these years. He died on October 6th, 2020, at the age of 65. But despite his health complications, he and his brother were writing music up until the end. His work is still being posthumously released to this day.
I once saw a clip of Eddie that struck me. He said, “Eddie Van Halen here, telling you. Keep playing. You gotta keep playing, man. It’s the only thing there is. Music, man. Keep playing.” It’s the only thing there is. Music. I take liberty in how I interpret this. Music, here, means passion, art, expression. And what more matters than that, than shamelessly declaring the essence of our lives to whatever audience, through whatever medium or creation? To make or be something true, something real, free of expectations and prejudices, is the most noble pursuit of all. And in a world where the necessity for creativity and human connection is dwindling, it’s all the more important. Keep playing. Those who speak their minds are those who truly live. The philistine is the victim, an Ebenezer Scrooge trapped in a prison they think they desire. Eddie wasn’t a rock star or a performer. As he himself once said, “Rock stars come and go. Musicians play until they die”. He didn’t do it for the attention, or the money, or the life it came with. He did it because he loved music, and he loved to share it.