Jump

I was never really a fan of Van Halen as a teenager.  I thought lead singer David Lee Roth was ridiculous, and I never thought much of their original songs - and they seemed to be more intent on butchering Kinks and Roy Orbison songs (though, award them points for their thoughtful re-imagination of Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing In the Streets").  But I never questioned or failed to acknowledge Eddie Van Halen's abilities as a guitarist, and he certainly came up with sounds that the British guitarists Creem magazine once dubbed the Unholy Three - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page - could never have imagined.  (And they were all innovators who had done time in the Yardbirds.)   Eddie Van Halen just as certainly must have gotten American guitar heroes such as Stephen Stills, Steve Cropper and Joe Walsh take notice.

Van Halen, who died this past week of cancer at 65, could be excessive, but in the process, he proved that a guitarist could still come up with something new and fresh in the days of disco and New Wave when everyone thought the possibilities of rock guitar had been played out.  It is a lesson that reverberates today, a time when young people are fleeing guitar music like vampires from a cross to seek comfort in electronic sounds emanating from computer mainframes.  Eddie, his brother Alex on drums, Roth, and Michael Anthony on bass kept rock and roll going in the late seventies and early eighties at a time when it seemed to be in trouble, and Eddie proved that rock in general and heavy metal in particular still had - and still have - many possibilities when you get back to basics and remember the same rudimentary chords that allowed it to be spawned from the blues in the first place.  And while Van Halen the band later became a parody of itself - the replacement of Roth with Sammy Hagar, which generated a great deal of hopeful anticipation given Hagar's own pedigree as an established rocker only to be replaced with an equally large disillusionment once the new lineup began making records - it didn't matter.  Eddie Van Halen's greatest contribution to rock and roll was that there would always something in rock that hasn't been done before and that those same chords hold numerous possibilities still.  RIP. 😢