There haven’t been many guitarists who have come out since the 1980s who haven’t looked up to Eddie Van Halen in some capacity. Even if an aspiring musician didn’t know how to play a single scale, the silhouette of Eddie shredding a solo every time he stepped out onstage was enough to inspire excitement in anyone with a steady pulse. Although Van Halen may have been one of a kind, there was one guitarist who was solely responsible for his decision to pick up a guitar.
Before he had even started on guitar, though, Eddie was already being taught the inner workings of music. Being raised by a musical father, Van Halen would find himself playing various standards as his family moved from the Netherlands to America, playing songs that featured various jazzy changes.
Once the musician landed on American soil, it was all about the music coming out of England. While the early days of rock and roll had come and gone with the rise of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, artists like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles were making songs that were a lot more sophisticated than the average blues shuffle.
Although Van Halen would be influenced by The Kinks, as evidenced by their version of the song ‘You Really Got Me’, he wouldn’t find his true calling until he got used to the British blues of Cream. Storming out of The Yardbirds, Eric Clapton would begin to reinvent the idea of a guitar hero, working off Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce to create some of the most awe-inspiring guitar solos the world has ever seen.
While Jimi Hendrix was on the rise around the same time, Van Halen maintained that Clapton was the reason why he wanted a guitar in the first place. When talking about Clapton’s influence, the guitarist would talk about the power of ‘Slowhand’s guitar solos, telling Rolling Stone, “His solos were melodic and memorable – and that’s what guitar solos should be, part of the song. I could hum them to you. He made me pick up a guitar. I would literally slow down those records and learn every lick, and bottom line, it’s all blues-based.”
Even though Van Halen would get stuck playing the drums when he got started, it wasn’t until his brother Alex got behind his kit that the guitar maestro was born. After learning every lick that he could from Clapton, though, the ‘Jump’ musician started to twist the guitar to suit his own needs, creating solos that became standalone musical pieces like ‘Eruption’ and ‘Cathedral’.
While the band wouldn’t be genuinely solidified until David Lee Roth and Michael Anthony joined the fold, Van Halen would continue to innovate how people played guitar. Even though his idol stood firmly in the blues mould for most of his career, he would experiment with any genre he could get his hands on, whether that was pulling from the jazz world while jamming with Allen Holdsworth or creating kaleidoscopic blends of both keyboard and guitar on tracks like ‘Jump’ or ‘And the Cradle Will Rock’.
Even though Eddie may have gone off of Clapton in his solo years, he considered those core records with Cream a permanent fixture of his musical upbringing, explaining, “I respect him for everything he’s done and is still doing –but what inspired me, what made me pick up a guitar, was his early stuff. I could play some of those solos now – they’re permanently imprinted on my brain”.
DELHI, 10 December 2023: India’s Ministry of Tourism is hosting a three-day musical festival, ‘Krishnaveni Sangeetha Neerajanam’ in Vijayawada City on the banks of River Krishna from 10 to 12 December. Vijayawada, formerly known as Bezawada, is the second-largest city in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, located on the banks of the Krishna River. The city is home to the important Hindu shrine of Kanaka Durga Temple (Wikipedia). The musical festival is co-organised by the Ministry of Tourism, Government […]
