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I was just starting out playing when Eddie Van Halen was hitting his peak on MTV...I was a Hendrix worshiper,&only too happy to engage in the argument of "who was the ultimate guitar god" debate...
I had heard some say Jimmy Page&was discovering a whole community of Jerry disciples...Sure there were a few Clapton debaters remaining btt I got to hs...Randy Rhodes(Eddie's choice as I heard it) often came up...Steve Vai&a few other metal boys were popular candidates...
But as a suburbs kid in the 80's the capturer of most of the imaginations of little boys discovering their pubes,was infact Eddie...Again I relied on Hendrix for my inspiration as I began my harmonica disertations...
setting out to pit my instrument against the axe of choice for rock&roll to make my point...I would invoke Santana,Page,Stevie Ray aswell...ripping all of them off as shamelessly,subtley or subversively as I could or as was warrented...
But what I would soon learn at the time was that to rip off Eddies "Eruption ll" was to instantly capture the imagination of an audience to drive home my point instantly, of a lethal mythological axe as was once imagined in the bebop saxaphone of Parker or cool modality of Train
&would be&still pretty much the mighty guitar once Jimmi took one to his teeth...at that point in time for better or worse it was Eddie Van...who provided the fantastical image of an instrument having a physical power like a magical spell...
&when ever I would strike my triplet arpeggios to stun people...I had only to resort to Eddie's emmulation...&it would never fail me...As time went on we would all grow in our development...but nothing was a more direct or immediate connection to those who knew nothing of music..
as Eddie V going off,& in that regard he was an important influence on all musicians my age...regardless of how shamelessly or discreetly we would reference him or rail against him...
Thank U sir,for the wild idea at a musically repressive time of simply going off on that guitar as if lifting the hammer of Thor...we needed the shock to knock us on our butts&dream of our own lightning...RIP #EddieVanHalen
