My grievances with Eddie Van Halen

The man of the hour himself. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

I know that sounds bad. And it is. 

Talking smack about Eddie Van Halen is on the same level as blasphemy in almost every music circle, but especially in the world of people who really care about who should truly be considered the 'greatest' guitarist in history. I completely understand why that rank should be handed over to Mr. Eddie Van Halen, by all means he is an incredibly technically proficient player that deserves to be lauded a bit and has made great contributions to 80s metal music (don't quote me on that).

However, that is all he really is--technically proficient.  Through all the Van Halen song's I've heard, I recognize the fact that Eddie Van Halen completely made the band in times good and bad and, if any of the members were to be entirely forgotten by society, Eddie would not be one of them. Through all the good and bad Van Halen songs my dad has subjected me to sitting through in the car, and all the ones I've subjected myself to listening to, most of the guitar playing has failed to actually move me.

Sure, listening to those songs makes you think Eddie Van Halen could have shredded for the rest of time uninterrupted, but in the category of stirring emotions they don't do a damn thing. The closest I've gotten to that is "Dance the Night Away", but any feeling on that one is purely the responsibility of the vocal performance, and not Eddie's guitar.

Eddie Van Halen, in all his technical proficiency, can't play with any feeling. I listen to any Van Halen song pre-Hagar, and all I can hear is a man playing solely for the purpose of showing off that he is better then anybody else on the scene, that he is above you in every way--he wouldn't know feeling if feeling bit him in the ass.  It all comes across as quite pompous and snobby, how most of this man's legacy is being a complete show off both in studio and on stage.

On every single Van Halen album up to 1984, there is at least one one-minute spot dedicated to Eddie showing off his skill on the guitar--and if that isn't self-congratulating, I don't know what is. On Diver Down alone there are three, and none of them are particularly...anything, really. Just another obligatory spot for Eddie to take care of his compulsive need to show off. And sure, Diver Down was a rushed album and needed filler, which would be excusable if this was a special case, but this is the case for every single album from the golden age of his career. 

Even in the actual radio hit songs themselves, most of the solos he plays are reserved for shredding and showing off. "Hot For Teacher",  "Panama", "You Really Got Me", "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love", Michael Jackson's "Beat It", etc. It even goes so far as to show off on the acoustic guitar on "Little Guitars (intro)", an instrument definitely not typically associated with the metal genre. At some point you've got to admit that this is all just bland and at points even tiring to listen to.

I won't go so far as to call Van Halen boring lest I get hung in the streets, but I think you can see what I'm getting at here. And sure, every guitarist has the right to show off from time to time, but there comes a point in your career where you have to actually play with feeling, or at least do something else. This tough decision came in the Sammy Hagar era, and can you guess what Eddie did? Something else. 

Of course, the Sammy Hagar era was a low point for everybody involved, but mostly for the loyal Van Halen fans who expected the same heavy metal they were used to and looking forward to. This conversation isn't about that. But, since Eddie couldn't find it in himself to play a guitar solo that would actually work to stir people's emotions, the drop in quality affected him too. I do think if Eddie actually had that capability, Hagar Van Halen would've been a lot less 80s cheese and a little bit less soulless. 

That's the word, soulless. That is what Eddie Van Halen's guitar playing is. No matter if the solo is one minute or fifteen seconds, it is completely devoid of anything human, it is ice cold and unmoving, it is dead air. Something is moving in that dead air, but it is just as soulless as the space it inhabits and you are only impressed by it because it is something bigger then yourself, something you could never imagine being. 

Eddie Van Halen was the kind of person who talked smack about Jimmy Page for the public to hear. Now, I'm all for talking smack about Jimmy Page, but Eddie talked smack about Page for the fact that he was a good studio player but a sloppy live player. I'd take a sloppy live player who was a good studio player over an insanely monotonous perfectionist any day of the week.

Now yes, while Jimmy Page did become a sloppy live player in the later years, in part due to debilitating heroin and alcohol addiction, his sloppy solos were designed to stir up any kind of emotion you had rested in you. These were designed to be experimental, rough, edgy. Why else would you bow a guitar, anyway? Certainly not for perfectionism. Jimmy also had something Eddie didn't which was soul. Through it all, even in the days of the treacherous In Through the Out Door, Jimmy could work a guitar any which way he wanted and pull out any kind of sound to call up any kind of emotion in tandem with Robert Plant's vocals. Try getting Eddie to do that with David Lee Roth.

If you want to take a look at short solos, take "Bron-Yr-Aur" off of Physical Graffiti and put that up against something like "Intruder" or "Eruption". Or take something like the "What is and What Should Never Be" , "Thank You", or  even "Scarlet" (The Rolling Stones)'s guitar work if you want to hear something in context. 

Even people who aren't considered virtuosos on the guitar have better, more beautiful, more emotionally charged instrumentals and solos then Eddie could ever dream of creating. Just take a look at Peter Frampton's "Penny for your Thoughts" or the guitar work on Joan Baez's version of "Farewell, Angelina". You don't have to be a better guitar player then Eddie Van Halen to be a better guitar player then Eddie Van Halen.

People like Jimmy Page, Peter Frampton and Joan Baez know how to work their instruments and stir up emotions, to make the guitar something more powerful then just a toy to show off on, more then something to hold over other musician's heads and tease them with.

Hell, even Gary Richrath's solos in "Time for Me to Fly" and "Keep on Loving You" are more powerful than anything Eddie ever made.  I've also heard more emotion p

acked into 9-20 minute long songs, too. Pink Floyd's "Dogs", Yes's "Starship Trooper", Emerson, Lake & Palmer's "Take a Pebble". Being from the close-enough-to-punk generation he was, I wouldn't be surprised if Eddie also talked smack about those bands, too.

 Eddie Van Halen's guitar playing was more like Eric Clapton's then anybody else's. Sterile and emotionless, as lauded as he is, he will never be able to create an intrinsically poignant piece of music, no matter how much you want to believe he could. He was just a young, pompous, self-congratulating showoff, the very kind of thing critics dissed Led Zeppelin for being. Led Zeppelin, and everybody else, had pounds more emotion then Eddie.