Eddie Van Halen

Edward Lodewijk Van Halen (/væn ˈheɪlən/ van HAY-lən, Dutch: [ˈɛtʋɑrt ˈloːdəʋɛik fɑn ˈɦaːlə(n)]; January 26, 1955 – October 6, 2020), was an American musician and songwriter. He was the main songwriter, guitarist and keyboardist of the rock band Van Halen, which he co-founded in 1972 with his brother, drummer Alex Van Halen, alongside bassist Mark Stone and singer David Lee Roth. He is regarded as one of the all-time greatest guitar players in rock history and was well known for popularizing the tapping guitar solo technique, allowing rapid arpeggios to be played with two hands on the fretboard.

Biography

Early life

Born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Van Halen was a son of Jan van Halen and Eugenia (née van Beers). Jan was a Dutch jazz pianist, clarinetist and saxophonist, and Eugenia was an Indo (Eurasian) from Rangkasbitung on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies. The family eventually settled in Nijmegen, Netherlands.

After experiencing mistreatment for their mixed-race relationship in the 1950s, the parents moved the family to the U.S. in 1962. They settled near other family members in Pasadena, California, where Eddie and his brother Alex attended a segregated elementary school. Since the boys did not speak English as a first language, they were considered "minority" students and experienced bullying by white students. They began learning the piano at age six, commuting from Pasadena to San Pedro to study with an elderly piano teacher, Stasys Kalvaitis.

Van Halen was never taught to read music; instead, he watched recitals of Bach or Mozart and improvised. Between 1964 and 1967, he won first place in the annual piano competition at Long Beach City College. His parents wanted the boys to be classical pianists, but Van Halen gravitated towards rock music, and was greatly influenced by British Invasion bands like The Beatles and The Dave Clark Five. Consequently, when Alex began playing the guitar, Eddie bought a drum kit; however, after he heard Alex's performance of the Surfaris' drum solo in the song "Wipe Out", he gave Alex the drums and began learning the electric guitar. According to him, as a teen he often practiced while walking around at home with his guitar strapped on, or sitting in his room for hours with the door locked.

Eddie and Alex formed their first band with three other boys, called themselves The Broken Combs, and performed at lunchtime at Hamilton Elementary School in Pasadena when he was in the fourth grade. He later cited this performance as key to his desire to become a professional musician. He described supergroup Cream's "I'm So Glad" on the album Goodbye as "mind-blowing". He once claimed that he had learned almost all of Eric Clapton's solos in the band Cream note for note. "I've always said Eric Clapton was my main influence," he said, "but Jimmy Page was actually more the way I am, in a reckless-abandon kind of way." Speaking at an event at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in 2015, Van Halen discussed his life and the American Dream, saying "We came here with approximately $50 and a piano, and we didn't speak the language. Now look where we are. If that's not the American dream, what is?"

Van Halen band Main article: Van Halen

Eddie and his brother Alex formed a band in 1972. Two years later, the band changed its name to "Van Halen" and became a staple of the Los Angeles music scene, playing at well-known clubs like the Whisky a Go Go.

At a 1976 concert at The Starwood in California, the band opened for UFO. KISS bassist Gene Simmons saw the performance, and said,"I was waiting backstage by the third song." He asked the band about their plans, and they said, "There is a yogurt manufacturer that is going to invest in us." Gene begged them not to go that route and invited them to record some demos at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village in New York City. Gene then signed them to his company and the band recorded early demos of their songs, including "Runnin' with the Devil". Excited about the band, Gene approached KISS manager Bill Aucoin and KISS frontman Paul Stanley about them, but they dismissed his desire to sign them to Aucoin's management fold. Stanley later said he "rejected Van Halen to protect KISS", and that they made an effort to make Gene drop the band to "keep Gene in check". The discouraging words caused Gene to rip up the contract, and he “let them go” after feeling he may have held the band back.

The next year, Warner Records offered Van Halen a recording contract.

Eddie remained on good terms with Gene. It was rumored that Eddie nearly replaced guitarist Ace Frehley after his departure from KISS in 1982, but that Gene talked him out of leaving Van Halen. However, neither Paul Stanley nor Eddie Van Halen remember this happening. Stanley does remember Eddie coming down to the studio, being "blown away" by their song "Creatures of the Night", and telling Stanley he wanted to get into playing keyboards. Stanley was confused at Eddie's interest in keyboards, but his interest resulted in the creation of "Jump".

The band's 1978 album Van Halen reached #19 on the Billboard pop music charts and was one of rock's most commercially successful debuts, highly regarded as both a heavy metal and hard rock album. By the early 1980s, Van Halen was one of the most successful rock acts of the time.

Eddie recorded the solo on the Michael Jackson song "Beat It" when The Who guitarist Pete Townshend became unavailable and recommended him. Eddie met with Quincy Jones and Jackson. Unsure of what he could add to a pop song, he played along with the song and ended up restructuring it and adding the classic solo. In a 2012 CNN interview, he said, "I listened to the song, and I immediately go, 'Can I change some parts?' I turned to the engineer and I go, 'OK, from the breakdown, chop in this part, go to this piece, pre-chorus, to the chorus, out.' Took him maybe 10 minutes to put it together. And I proceeded to improvise two solos over it." He added, "I was just finishing the second solo when Michael walked in. And you know artists are kind of crazy people. We're all a little bit strange. I didn't know how he would react to what I was doing. So I warned him before he listened. I said, 'Look, I changed the middle section of your song.' Now in my mind, he's either going to have his bodyguards kick me out for butchering his song, or he's going to like it. And so he gave it a listen, and he turned to me and went, 'Wow, thank you so much for having the passion to not just come in and blaze a solo but to actually care about the song and make it better." Eddie was so pleased he refused payment for his work. Ironically, Jackson's Thriller went to the #1 spot on the charts, pushing Van Halen's album, 1984, to #2. 1984 went five-times Platinum a year after its release. Its lead single "Jump" became the band's first and only #1 pop hit and brought them a Grammy nomination.

The band won the 1992 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocals for the album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. In 2019, the band ranked 20th on the RIAA list of best-selling artists, with 56 million album sales in the United States and more than 100 million worldwide. Additionally, Van Halen charted 13 number-one hits in the history of Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart; meanwhile, VH1 ranked the band seventh on a list of the top 100 hard rock artists of all time, and, in 2007, Van Halen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Individually, Van Halen received acclaim for his guitar work in the band.

Other work

Van Halen engaged in several projects outside of his eponymous band, including solo work and partnerships with his brother on film soundtracks (such as The Wild Life, Twister, and Sacred Sin) as well as musical collaborations with Kiss bassist Gene Simmons, singer/songwriter Nicolette Larson, Queen guitarist Brian May, Sammy Hagar, Black Sabbath, Roger Waters, Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, and LL Cool J. In 1982, he contributed the guitar solo to "Beat It", for Michael Jackson's Thriller, which became the biggest selling album of all time. In addition, Van Halen made cameo appearances in the music video for Frank Sinatra's "L.A. Is My Lady", an episode of Café Americain starring his then-wife Valerie Bertinelli, and an episode of Two and a Half Men.

Health issues and death

Van Halen struggled with alcoholism and drug abuse. He began smoking and drinking at the age of 12, and he stated that he eventually needed alcohol to function. He entered rehabilitation in 2007, and later shared in an interview that he had been sober since 2008.

Suffering from lingering injuries from past, high-risk, acrobatic stage performances and crashes, Eddie underwent hip replacement surgery in 1999, after his chronic avascular necrosis, with which he was diagnosed in 1995, became unbearable. He began receiving treatment for tongue cancer in 2000. The subsequent surgery removed roughly a third of his tongue. He was declared cancer-free in 2002. He blamed the tongue cancer on his habit of holding guitar picks in his mouth, stating in 2015: "I used metal picks – they're brass and copper – which I always held in my mouth, in the exact place where I got the tongue cancer. ... I mean, I was smoking and doing a lot of drugs and a lot of everything. But at the same time, my lungs are totally clear. This is just my own theory, but the doctors say it's possible."

In 2012, Van Halen underwent emergency surgery for a severe bout of diverticulitis. Recovery time required due to the surgery led to postponement of Van Halen tour dates scheduled in Japan. Van Halen was later hospitalized in 2019 after battling throat cancer over the previous five years, and his ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli also mentioned a battle with lung cancer in an Instagram post shortly after his death. He died of a stroke at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, on October 6, 2020, at the age of 65, surrounded by his wife, Janie; son and current (at the time) bassist of Van Halen, Wolfgang; ex-wife, Valerie Bertinelli; and brother and co-founder/drummer of Van Halen, Alex. His son, Wolfgang, confirmed his death on social media later that same day. Some of Van Halen's childhood landmarks in Pasadena became memorials where fans could pay their respects.

Style and influence

Tapping

Van Halen's 1978 instrumental solo "Eruption", which was voted number 2 in Guitar World's readers poll of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos",] showcased the tapping technique, which uses both left and right hands on the guitar neck. Although he popularized tapping, he did not invent the technique. According to MusicRadar, Steve Hackett – lead guitarist with Genesis in the 1970s – is "widely credited with inventing two-handed tapping" and was an influence on Van Halen. When asked about this, Hackett said, "Eddie and I have never spoken about it, but yes, he has credited me with tapping... Eddie is a fine player, of course, and he's the one who named the technique."

George Lynch said in an interview that he and Van Halen saw Harvey Mandel tap at the Starwood in the 1970s. Van Halen named Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin as an influence, saying in one interview with Guitar World:

"I think I got the idea of tapping watching Jimmy Page do his "Heartbreaker" solo back in 1971. He was doing a pull-off to an open string, and I thought wait a minute, open string ... pull off. I can do that, but what if I use my finger as the nut and move it around? I just kind of took it and ran with it."

Until it expired in 2005, Van Halen held a patent for a flip-out support device that attaches to the rear of the electric guitar. This device enables the user to employ the tapping technique by playing the guitar in a manner similar to the piano with the face of the guitar oriented upward instead of forward.

Personal life

In 1980, Van Halen met actress Valerie Bertinelli at a Van Halen concert in Shreveport, Louisiana. They married in California eight months later on April 11, 1981, and had one son, Wolfgang, in 1991. In 2005, Bertinelli filed for divorce in Los Angeles after four years of separation. The divorce was finalized in 2007.

The following year, Eddie proposed to his girlfriend, Janie Liszewski, an actress and stuntwoman who was Van Halen's publicist at the time. The two married in 2009 at his Studio City estate, with his son Wolfgang and ex-wife Bertinelli in attendance. 

His brother Alex Van Halen is an ordained minister, and he officiated Eddie's 2009 wedding and that of his former sister-in-law, Valerie Bertinelli, in 2011.

Legacy

In February 2017, Van Halen donated 75 guitars from his personal collection to Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation, a program that provides musical instruments to students in low-income schools. At the 2020 Billboard Music Awards, Eddie Van Halen was honored by several former musicians he worked with. Jack White from The White Stripes, G. E. Smith, Charlie Benante from Anthrax, and Dierks Bentley gave speeches as a tribute to his career. Wolfgang Van Halen also shared several personal photos between him and his father. On October 10, 2020, Saturday Night Live paid tribute by playing a clip of him performing with G. E. Smith from a February 1987 show, which was hosted by Valerie Bertinelli.

In 2020, the Pasadena Library, located in Pasadena, California, offered several archives and documents related to Eddie Van Halen. The collection included several albums, along with photographs by Neil Zlozower, and several CDs. The library also uploaded Van Halen's albums to Hoopla. On November 16, 2020, his son Wolfgang Van Halen announced on The Howard Stern Show that Van Halen would not continue as a band, saying "You can't have Van Halen without Eddie Van Halen".