The official site for Tim's legendary Zeppelin reviews
Eddie Van Halen
It is with a heavy heart that we hear of the loss of one of the greatest guitarists of all time. A true innovator and maverick of the instrument that forged his own path (and incidentally Van Halen is my second favorite band of all time). And I am one of the rare people that like Van Halen and Van Hagar equally. Eruption will always be considered one of the greatest masterpieces of electric guitar history. When that came out in the 70s nobody sounded like that. Eddie’s tone had the mysterious “brown sound” that guitarists have been trying to copy for decades. His fretboard acrobatics were mind blowing and really took guitar playing to the next level.Now Eddie did and said some douche bag things ...... Firing David Lee Roth multiple times, firing Sammy Hagar multiple times, replacing Mike Anthony with his 16-year-old son on bass, hiring Gary Cherrone , trying to make Mike Anthony an employee rather than a bandmember , and my personal favorite .......claiming he taught Mike Anthony all of the bass parts which is totally ridiculous.It is no secret that he was extremely hard to work with or work for but so was David Lee Roth. Many musical genius/talents are hard to work with. For example, my favorite singer of all time Sebastian Bach (extremely hard to work with and also a douche bag in his own right in many ways but I still love him).Eddie wrote so many great riffs and he actually wrote or co-wrote many of the songs as well. Let us not forget his awesome keyboard work which was extremely underrated in my opinion. He was absolutely a true musician with incredible talent.So RIP young Eddie . You will continue to inspire young budding guitarists for decades to come.