Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Rocker Van Halen dies
Cancer claims guitarist whose riffs burned hot for decades.
NEW YORK — Eddie Van Halen, the guitar virtuoso whose blinding speed, control and innovation propelled his band Van Halen into one of hard rock’s biggest groups, fueled the unmistakable fiery solo in Michael Jackson’s hit “Beat It” and was elevated to “rock god” status, has died. He was 65.
A person close to Van Halen’s family confirmed the rocker died Tuesday of cancer. The person was not authorized to publicly release details in advance of an official announcement.
With his distinct solos, Eddie Van Halen fueled the ultimate California party band and helped knock disco off the charts starting in the late 1970s with his band’s self-titled debut album and then with the blockbuster record “1984,” which contains the classics “Jump,” “Panama” and “Hot for Teacher.”
The band Van Halen is among the top 20 bestselling artists of all time and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Rolling Stone magazine put Eddie Van Halen at No. 8 in its list of the 100 greatest guitarists.
Eddie Van Halen was an autodidact who could play almost any instrument but he couldn’t read music. He also was a classically trained pianist who created some of the most distinctive guitar riffs in rock history. “You changed our world. You were the Mozart of rock guitar. Travel safe rockstar,” Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx said on Twitter.
The members of Van Halen — the two Van Halen brothers, Eddie and Alex; vocalist David Lee Roth; and bassist Michael Anthony — formed in 1974 in Pasadena, Calif. They were members of rival high school bands and then attended Pasadena City College together. They combined to form the band Mammoth, but then changed to Van Halen after discovering there was another band called Mammoth.
Their 1978 release “Van Halen” opened with a blistering “Runnin’ With the Devil” and then Eddie Van Halen showed off his skills in the next song, “Eruption,” a furious 1:42 minute guitar solo.
Mike McCready of Pearl Jam told Rolling Stone magazine that listening to Van Halen’s “Eruption” was like hearing Mozart for the first time. “He gets sounds that aren’t necessarily guitar sounds — a lot of harmonics, textures that happen just because of how he picks.”
Van Halen released albums on a yearly timetable — “Van Halen II” (1979), “Women and Children First” (1980), “Fair Warning” (1981) and “Diver Down” (1982) — until the monumental “1984,” which hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album charts (only behind Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”). Rolling Stone ranked “1984” No. 81 on its list of the 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s.
Strains between Roth and the band appeared after their 1984 world tour and Roth left. The group then recruited Sammy Hagar as lead singer — some critics called the new formulation “Van Hagar” — and the band went on to score its first No. 1 album with “5150,” More studio albums followed. Hit singles included “Why Can’t This Be Love” and “When It’s Love.”
After Hagar was ousted in 1996, Roth returned in 2007
Van Halen’s music has appeared in films as varied as “Superbad,” “Minions” and “Sing” as well as TV shows like “Glee” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” Video games such as “Gran Turismo 4” and “Guitar Hero” have used his riffs. Their song “Jamie’s Cryin” was sampled by rapper Tone Loc in his hit “Wild Thing.”
For much of his career, Eddie Van Halen wrote and experimented with sounds while drunk or high or both. He revealed that he would stay in his hotel room drinking vodka and snorting cocaine while playing into a tape recorder.
“I didn’t drink to party,” Van Halen told Billboard. “Alcohol
and cocaine were private things to me. I would use them for work. The blow keeps you awake and the alcohol lowers your inhibitions. I’m sure there were musical things I would not have attempted were I not in that mental state.”
Eddie Van Halen was born in Amsterdam and his family immigrated to California in 1962 when he was 7. His father was a big-band clarinetist who rarely found work after coming to the U.S., and their mother was a maid who had dreams of her sons being classical pianists. Eddie and Alex had a tight relationship that flowed through their music.
He said his earliest memories of music were banging pots and pans together, marching to John Philip Sousa marches. At one point, Eddie got a drum set, which his older brother coveted.
“I never wanted to play guitar,” he confessed at a talk at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 2015. But his brother was good at the drums, so Eddie gave into his brother’s wishes: “I said, ‘Go ahead, take my drums. I’ll play your damn guitar.’”
Van Halen, sober since 2008, lost one-third of his tongue to a cancer that eventually drifted into his esophagus. He was married twice, to actress Valerie Bertinelli from 1981 to 2007 and then to stuntwoman-turned-publicist Janie Liszewski, whom he wed in 2009.