Eruption Van Halen
The ultimate game-changer: a technique tourdeforce that inspired a million shredders, placing EVH in a category of one
By 1978 there had been a number of pivotal feats of solo guitar work, notably Jimi Hendrix’s brutal, dive-bomb/feedbackheavy assault on The Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock in ’69. Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Page and Tony Iommi had all pushed the instrument into new realms. But then Eddie Van Halen came along and shifted the paradigm for lead guitarists in rock, metal, pop – hell, for anyone playing an electric guitar in any musical field – with his showcase moment on his band’s self-titled debut. It only lasts one minute and 42 seconds, but there was guitar playing before Eruption, and guitar playing after it.
Eruption was a litany of dazzling techniques that reset the standard, all performed with the incredible dexterity, speed, personality and the high-gain aggression that would characterise much of Eddie’s work until his passing in 2020. He took pentatonic blues licks and played them legato style, with incredibly fast and fluid hammer-ons and pull-offs, often incorporating open strings and non-diatonic notes for flow. In some hands such notes might have sounded incongruous; in his, they made perfect sense. Every metal player needs a grasp of palm-muting, and he was the master.
His home-made ‘Frankenstrat’ was a Strat-bodied guitar armed with a gutsy Gibson PAF pickup, and it sounded alive whether emitting squealingly high artificial harmonics, or with the low E string dangling slack as he dipped the whammy bar of his Floyd Rose trem system as far as it would go.
Eddie’s incredibly consistent tremolo picking was a vital part of his sound, notably 30 seconds into Eruption when – all on the high E string – he repeats a high E major figure three times before descending, landing on an F and so implying a very-metal Phrygian tonality, washed down with another whammy dive.
Two-handed tapping had existed in various forms long before this point, but here Eddie Van Halen took it to the stratosphere, and into the mainstream. His beautifully timed, cleanly played ascending triads (C#m, D#dim, E, C, D, E) had a darkly baroque sound, and showed what articulation and speed could be achieved in a rock/metal context with the technique.
And then there was his unmistakable sound. His Frankenstrat fed into a Marshall Super Lead, MXR Phase90 and Echoplex tape echo, which gave an edgy, massive sound that inspired legions of players, if not always to his liking. As Eddie once told The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan: “When I used the stuff I invented, I was telling a story, while I felt that the people who were imitating me were telling a joke.”
Metal players were among those who marvelled. Lifelong fan Dimebag Darrell would play his version of Eruption live. When Eddie died, Machine Head’s Robb Flynn took to Instagram to play his take in tribute, saying, “Nothing will ever be as good as the original […] R.I.P. G.O.A.T. [Greatest Of All Time].” Slipknot singer Corey Taylor noted that Eddie had “influenced 40 years of musicianship”.
And it all started here. Eruption was the sound of the old rulebook being torn up, and a new one being written.