Eddie Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen
Edward Lodewijk "Eddie" Van Halenis a Dutch-American musician, songwriter and producer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, occasional keyboardist and co-founder of the hard rock band Van Halen. He is considered to be one of the world's greatest guitarists, and one of the most influential rock guitarists of the 20th century. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Van Halen number eight in the list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists. In 2012, he was voted in a Guitar World...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth26 January 1955
CityNijmegen, Netherlands
I think Clapton is brilliant. He's the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar.
Jimmy Page is an excellent producer. Led Zeppelin I and II are classics. As a player he's very good in the studio, but I've never seen him play well live. He's sloppy. He plays like he's got a broken hand and he's two years old. If you put out a good album and play like a two year old, what's the purpose?
Bass is for people who can't play guitar
If your going to learn to play lead guitar, get an electric guitar .. it doesn't have to be an expensive one .. acoustic guitars aren't good for learning lead, because you can't play up very high on the neck and they take heavier-gauge strings which makes it hard to bend notes
Obviously you have to have rhythm. If you have rhythm, then you can play anything you need. If you have rhythm and you love music, then play and play and play until you get to where you want to get. If you can pay the rent, great. If you can't, then you'd better be having fun.
I never dreamt of being a musician for my livelihood. I certainly never would have wanted to be in the business that I'm in, meaning the fame and the glory, the glitter, the rock star, the famous part.
Cancer is like a cockroach. It just comes back stronger. I'm tearing apart the immune system of the cockroach and seeing how it ticks. I've opened up my own pathology center.
When Van Halen started out, there was no path to fame. We just played what we liked. Even today it always comes down to the simplicity of rock and roll.
The stainless-steel frets were a major breakthrough, because of the amount of playing and bending that I do. I have to get my guitars refretted every couple of months.
Some people think a song without words isn't a real song. Tell that to Beethoven and he'll kick your ass!
I mean it's funny, playing music, how of course you want it to do well, you want them to like it, but it's not competitive like an election, it's the Olympics, it's not a Formula 1 race. The Billboard charts are just to show you what people like.
I started doing all kinds of weird stuff on the guitar, which became part of my playing. I started doing harmonics and tapping on the guitar and pulling off strings and doing all this weird stuff that no one had ever done before.
You've only got 12 notes and however you mix them up is your thing.
I was so used to doing old blues licks with the first three fingers. When I started using my pinky and finding more spread things, that's when I started getting my own style.