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So a brief thought on why Eddie Van Halen was one of the three or four greatest guitarists of all time (this applies, incidentally, to other great guitarists like Hendrix). 1/
I don& #39;t know if he is the *best*. If you got into guitar playing in the 80s like I did, you could find guitarists who were probably faster, crazier, and more technically proficient pretty easily. 2/
Like, the second half of eruption isn& #39;t that difficult, relatively speaking, especially if you played piano. And if you really went down the rabbit hole, you& #39;d find guys like Al DiMeola and Allan Holdsworth who were just insane players. 3/
(you can actually tell that EVH was listening to a ton of Holdsworth starting around Fair Warning and through 1984; the weird solo at the end of "Girl Gone Bad" is plucked from Holdsworth as much as any SRV ripoff of Buddy Guy. But I digress). 4/
What made EVH great was 2.5 things. First, like Hendrix, he was insanely influential, in a way like near-great guitarists like Malmsteen or even Satriani or Vai were not. Just about every kid who picked up a guitar for at least two decades thought "I wanna sound like *him*". 5/
Like I said, there are a ton of extremely talented guitarists you& #39;ve never heard of out there that would blow your mind, but most of them are only really discovered after you& #39;ve decided to pick up the instrument. EVH& #39;s reach is really probably only matched by 2/3 others. 6/
Second, he was an innovator. All of Van Halen& #39;s early albums have something where you& #39;d say "what the hell was that," and when you found out you& #39;d think "wow, that& #39;s really cool." 7/
The tapping on Eruption, the tap harmonics on Spanish Fly and Women in Love, the volume swells on Cathedral, I could list a dozen but I& #39;m already past the "briefly" that I promised. But it was an embarrassingly long time before I realized Cathedral wasn& #39;t a keyboard solo. 8/
All these things have antecedents in other guitarists work (Page used to barre with his right hand and pulloff with his left which is sort of a reversed tapping) but what brings it all together for me is my half-point, which is that he remained accessible. 9/
When you break down EVH& #39;s stuff, he& #39;s basically a rock/blues guitar player with insane chops. The main riff for Hot for Teacher (and his riffs are very, very underrated) is basically just a fast boogie-woogie with some power chord fills 10/
So he knew how to couch his technical proficiency and tinkering in stuff you actually wanted to listen to. You can play "So This is Love" and people won& #39;t have heard it, but they& #39;ll tap their feet along. Play your average Shrapnel Records guy, and people leave the room. 11/
