The Death of Edward Van Halen

I received news yesterday that Edward Van Halen died of cancer. He wasn’t that much older than me, and his music was a constant through my twenties. As the conflicts within the band surged and receded, and as Mr. Van Halen’s personal life was ravaged by his fondness for drink, and as I grew older and my tastes evolved, I lost interest in the California quartet that strutted through the late 70s and early 80s with a wink and a knowing grin.

Oh, the memory is so clear, the first time I heard Van Halen. It was the Fourth of July in 1978. My girlfriend and I had been invited to a cookout at the home of one of my aunts. We had also been invited to party down at the river with two of our friends, friends who could always be counted on to supply a righteous baggie of maryjane when we were in the mood. Wayne and Charlene. We decided to pass on the shindig at my aunt’s place.

Wayne had called me that morning. “Hey, let’s grab some ribs and some beers and we’ll head out to the river and make a day of it.” So my girlfriend and I went to the store and got ribs and potato salad, Wayne having promised to get the beer.

The day would turn out to be significant for two reasons. One, it was the first time in my life that I enjoyed drinking a beer while eating food. Before that day, I had been able to sorta-kinda enjoy beer if I sipped it, but the thought of washing food down with the stuff made me shudder. But on that memorable Fourth, I devoured pork ribs and grocery store potato salad and watermelon and drank several Miller Ponies, those trendy little bottles — what were they, about six ounces each? — of Miller High Life that came eight to a pack.

And two, it was the first time I heard Edward Van Halen play the guitar, an event that introduced me to the experience of a rock & roll album making the hair stand up on my arms.

We had finished eating and drinking and swimming, and the sun was slipping towards the horizon, and the fireworks were due to start in a couple of hours at the drive-in theater, so we packed up and headed back to town, riding in Wayne’s muscle car Dodge. His muscle car Dodge with the really, really nice stereo system.

“Ever hear Van Halen?” Wayne asked, eyeing me in the rear view mirror. I shook my head no, and he slipped a tape into the deck. The descending car horn/siren intro of “Runnin’ With the Devil” rushed out of the speakers behind my head, and I settled in. The song was tight and well-played, and I enjoyed it. But I was unprepared for what followed.

A quick drum intro, and Edward Van Halen’s signature solo, “Eruption,” came out of those speakers like molten silver. My girlfriend was trying to talk to me, but I was in a different country. I was staring at the floor. I was riveted on what I was hearing. I was in awe. While most of my peers were at parties and barbecues, wearing their tank tops and listening to Andy Gibb singing “Shadow Dancing,”  I was asking myself how in the living blue hell that guy was playing those notes that sounded like a shower of superheated mercury.

The next day was a Wednesday, and I went straight to The Record Rack and bought a vinyl copy of Van Halen’s eponymously-titled first album. I probably listened to it twenty times that first day before I bothered reading the liner notes and realized that Van Halen was not the lead singer’s full name, but rather the last name of the drummer and the unearthly guitarist.

Being a guitarist myself, I was determined to learn how Van Halen could play like he did. My efforts were less than successful. It was probably a year before I saw a grainy bootleg video of the band in concert, and there was Eddie, doing that remarkable two-hands-on-the-neck tapping thing. I tried it on my guitar but it didn’t work until I realized that he wasn’t just lightly tapping the strings, but was actually pounding them down with his right fingers like the left hand usually would. Then it all came together.

Hanging out in the local guitar shop became a Wild West thing, with gunslingers wandering in to show off their chops, and other gunslingers one-upping them with dive-bombed vibrato bar maneuvers. This was in the days before Floyd Rose came out with his locking system, so one good growly whammy bar move would throw the guitar wildly out of tune, unless one knew the secret trick of applying 3-in-1 oil to the strings at the nut…but that didn’t always work reliably. The smell of electronics, the feel of hair on my shoulders, the cramp in the forearm from too many riffs, the girls who would bring us french fries and Jack Daniels in the parking lot out back.

Edward Van Halen redefined guitar in the same year that the Sex Pistols released “Never Mind the Bollocks…” and the soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever” cemented disco’s temporary top-dog status. I believe he single-handedly inspired countless lads to pick up the axe and learn to coax sounds from it.

Edward Van Halen was something of a Bruce Lee. He was original, unorthodox, and pissed a lot of traditional types off. But he was a true original, a pioneer, an innovator, even an inventor. His music brought a lot of joy into my life, and I am grateful for the memories of what it felt like to strap on a Strat copy, dial the knobs all the way up, and watch the faces of 18-year old girls when the waterfall of notes came pouring out of a distorted amp.

Rest in peace, Edward. There was nobody like you.

I’ll leave y’all with one of Eddie’s obscure tracks, a song he played on for his then-girlfriend, Nicolette Larson, one of the cute hippie chicks who had a hit right around the time Van Halen was getting ready to break. I include it here because it doesn’t represent the guitar god who filled stadiums and inspired imitators. It represents the babyfaced musician with the goofy grin who was doing something nice for his girlfriend.

~ S.K. Orr