Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, (born January 26, 1955) is a virtuoso guitarist, classically-trained pianist, and founding member of the hard rock band Van Halen.
Childhood
Edward, commonly referred to as Eddie, was born in Nijmegen, Netherlands to a Dutch father (Jan) and an Indonesian mother (Eugina). The Dutch Roman Catholic Van Halen family moved to Pasadena, California from Holland in 1962. Eddie Van Halen immediately started classical piano training and won talent competitions as a child (although during a radio interview he said that he cannot read music). Eddie claims that one of the first things his parents did upon arriving in America was to seek out a piano teacher for him and his older brother, Van Halen drummer Alex Van Halen.
Initially, Alex began playing the guitar while Eddie studied piano. According to Eddie, while he was delivering newspapers to pay for his drum kit, Alex would practice on them. It was when Eddie heard Alex's mastery of the Surfaris drum solo in the song "Wipe Out" that he got annoyed that his brother had overtaken his ability and decided to switch and begin learning how to play the electric guitar.
Eddie was around age twelve when he started playing guitar. He was so committed to the instrument that he played it all day, every day. Sometimes, he would even skip school to stay at home and practice. Eddie claimed that he had learned almost all of Eric Clapton's solos in the band Cream "note for note" by age 14, though in other interviews he claims that in fact he could never learn to play the solos precisely and would therefore modify them to suit his style.
In an April 1996 interview with Guitar World, when asked about how he went from playing his first open G chord to playing "Eruption", Eddie replied:
"Practice. I used to sit on the edge of my bed with a six-pack of Schlitz Malt talls. My brother would go out at 7 P.M. to party and get laid, and when he'd come back at 3 A.M., I would still be sitting in the same place, playing guitar. I did that for years — I still do that."
His main influence was Eric Clapton. He has also acknowledged the influence of fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth, of whom he has said: "He's the best in my book."
Formation of Van Halen
The initial incarnation of "Van Halen" manifested around the time Ed graduated from high school and was a three-piece consisting of Ed, Alex, and bass player Mark Stone - a friend from high school. However, the band was not performing under the name "Van Halen", but under the name "Mammoth". In this lineup, Ed played lead guitar and sang lead vocal. They had no P.A. system of their own, so they rented one from David Lee Roth, who had auditioned for the band, but had failed as he was not an accomplished vocalist at the time. David charged Mammoth $50 a night to rent his P.A. system. After a year playing with this lineup, Ed became frustrated singing lead vocals, and figured they could save money by letting David Lee Roth into the band because he had the P.A. system. Eventually Roth agreed to join the band.
Bassist Mike Anthony first saw Mammoth performing at the same festival as his band "Snake", which he fronted. A year or so later Ed and Alex realized they needed a new bassist as Mark Stone had a hard time with the instrument and couldn't remember all the songs the band was covering. Michael Anthony was called over to David Lee Roth's Dad's house to jam (at this time the band rehearsed in Roth's Dad's basement). Anthony accepted because he knew Mammoth was playing well-known clubs in Pasadena while Snake was just playing local parties. Roth was not at this first jam of what would eventually become the first incarnation of "Van Halen", but Ed, Alex, and Michael Anthony jammed late into the night and when it was all over Michael Anthony was the new bass player for Mammoth. At first Anthony thought he would just play bass but eventually he was asked to sing backup vocals and this became a trademark of the Van Halen sound. Roth is typically accredited with eventually suggesting the band simply call itself Van Halen (although the name "Rat Salad" -- the name of a Black Sabbath song -- was also considered). With this lineup (Ed, Alex, Anthony, and Roth) Van Halen started playing clubs in Pasadena and Hollywood more frequently and to increasingly greater audiences.
Van Halen quickly developed a "following" or a legion of fans who made it a point to see the band play wherever they happened to be performing. For Van Halen's part, they worked hard to increase their popularity through self promotion: before each gig they would pass out flyers at local high schools in Pasadena and the vicinity. Van Halen fans soon became notorious for being rowdy; at an audition for a club in Pasadena the band was denied because their fans were too rowdy. At a backyard barbecue where Van Halen were performing the police were called in to break up the party but were met by a mob of Van Halen fans who flipped over police cars and handcuffed one officer to a tree.
Van Halen's appearance also helped boost their popularity. When they played before audiences in Pasadena everyone thought they were a Hollywood band because of the way Dave dressed and behaved on stage. When they performed in Hollywood everyone thought they were from Pasadena because Ed, Alex, and Anthony were always in jeans and T-shirts.
There are bootleg recordings of many of Van Halen's early shows where they would play original material (some of which made it onto the band's first two albums) along with cover versions including songs by Deep Purple, Cream and ZZ Top. Roth has been known to say they tried to cover and write songs people could dance to in order to boost popularity. However, Roth's penchant for wanting to play cover songs purportedly annoyed Ed (especially on the album Diver Down: Ed and Dave apparently argued a lot over whether or not Dancing In The Streets - which Dave liked and Ed didn't - would make it on the album).
In 1976 Gene Simmons saw Van Halen performing at an L.A. club and decided he wanted to record some of the material they were playing. Eventually Simmons flew the band to Electric Ladyland studios in New York to record a demo. The songs on this demo were "House of Pain" and "Runnin' With the Devil". Ed disliked his playing on the demo because he wasn't using his own equipment and had to overdub guitar parts, which he had never done before. Ultimately Van Halen ended up with a demo tape but no recording contract. As Simmons was getting back with his band Kiss, he decided to forgo any more involvement with the band.
A year later, in 1977, Mo Ostin and Ted Templeman of Warner Bros. records saw Van Halen performing at the Starwood in Hollywood. Although there were few people in the audience that night, the two were so impressed with Van Halen that within a week they offerd them a recording contract with Warner Bros. records, which Van Halen signed. In October of that year, Van Halen entered Sunset Sound Recorders studio and recorded their first album, Van Halen.
Innovation
Van Halen's self-titled debut album was released on February 10, 1978 and became recognized as a ground-breaking hard rock masterpiece almost immediately.
Sound and technique
Edward Van Halen's approach to the guitar involved several distinctive components. One new aspect of his playing has been his guitar tone, the "brown sound." Van Halen achieved his distinctive tone by using a stock 100-watt Marshall amp, a Variac to lower the voltage of the amp to get high gain distortion at lower volumes, and a "Frankenstrat" guitar Van Halen constructed using a vintage Gibson humbucker pickup rewound by Seymour Duncan. His innovative two-handed tapping techniques, use of harmonics, speed, melodicism, and rhythmic sensibility influenced an entire generation of guitarists. It is of interest to note that Van Halen uses the index finger of his right hand to 'tap', not the middle finger used by many '80's shredders.
In support of his large variety of two-handed tapping techniques, Van Halen also holds a patent for a flip-out support device which attaches to the rear of the electric guitar. This device enables the user to play the guitar in a manner similar to the piano by orienting the face of the guitar upward instead of forward.
Before the release of Van Halen's eponymous first album, Eddie would often play solos and his more complex riffs with his back to the live audience. This was done at the advice of his bandmates to prevent any guitar players from stealing his style and technique before the album came out in 1978. Eddie was actually not the first to use this method. Blues guitarist Robert Johnson often performed hidden or at an extreme angle for the same reason.
Tuning
Though rarely discussed, one of the most distinctive aspects of Van Halen's sound was Eddie Van Halen's tuning of the guitar. Before Van Halen, most distorted, metal-oriented rock consciously avoided the use of the major third interval in guitar chords, creating instead the signature power chord of the genre. When run through a distorted amplifier, the rapid beating of the major third on a conventionally tuned guitar is distracting and somewhat dissonant.
Van Halen developed a technique of flattening his B string slightly so that the interval between the open G and B is a perfect, beatless third. This consonant third was almost unheard of in distorted-guitar rock and allowed Van Halen to use major chords in a way that mixed classic hard rock power with "happy" pop. The effect is pronounced on songs such as "Runnin' With the Devil", "Unchained", and "Where Have All the Good Times Gone?".
With the B string flattened the correct amount, chords in some positions on the guitar have perfect thirds, but in other positions the flat B string creates out-of-tune intervals. As Eddie once remarked to Guitar Player, "A guitar is just theoretically built wrong. Each string is an interval of fourths, and then the B string is off. Theoretically, that's not right. If you tune an open E chord in the first position and it's perfectly in tune, and then you hit a barre chord an octave higher, it's out of tune. The B string is always a motherfucker to keep in tune all the time! So I have to retune for certain songs. And when I use the Floyd onstage, I have to unclamp it and do it real quick. But with a standard-vibrato guitar, I can tune it while I'm playing."
Use of Floyd Rose system
A crucial component of Van Halen's personal style is his use of the fulcrum vibrato for electric guitars. Developed in the mid-20th century, early versions of this device allowed the guitarist to impart a vibrato (slight, wavering pitch change) to a chord or single string via movement of the bar with the picking hand. Pressure on the bar, attached to the guitar's bridge, slackened the strings and momentarily lowered the pitch. This vibrato device is often mistakenly referred to as a tremolo (due to an early Fender nomenclature error), as the tremolo is a variable volume effect.
Typical versions of this device are prone to tuning problems, and are generally finicky, unstable, and limited in their pitch-changing capability. Leo Fender's development of the fulcrum vibrato for his Stratocaster line of guitars in the 1950s imparted greater tuning stability and range, and this was exploited by guitarists in the Surf music genre, as well as by other artists such as Jimi Hendrix, who could not overcome the Fender vibrato's shortcomings.
The Fender vibrato unit still suffered from a lack of tuning stability that would not be addressed until the late 1970s by Floyd Rose. The key to Rose's innovation was the introduction of a string clamp located near the nut of a guitar's neck; these new systems are referred to as double-locking vibrato units, and the clamp unit referred to as a 'locking nut'. This device allowed Van Halen far greater latitude in vibrato use than was possible with previous designs, and without the dramatic loss in tuning stability. With a proper setup and periodic maintenance, the double-locking vibrato is an extremely stable and reliable device.
Consequently, Van Halen was able to pioneer a whole new level of expressiveness with the vibrato unit, expanding greatly on techniques only hinted at by earlier players such as Jimi Hendrix. His music incorporated a vast array of never-before-heard guitar sounds, such as shrieks, growls, dive-bombs, chirps, squeals and grunts.
Van Halen went on to collaborate with Floyd Rose on improvements to Rose's device. Among Van Halen's suggestions were the supplemental tuner knobs on the vibrato unit itself which allow the player to fine-tune the pitch of the guitar after the locking nut was engaged: these fine-tuners are now a feature on virtually all such vibrato systems.
Though Rose incorporated many of Van Halen's suggestions, he was slow to give credit for the guitarist's technical contributions, ultimately resulting in a degree of animosity between the two former collaborators.
More recently, Van Halen designed and patented the D-Tuna device, which enables a player to quickly detune the lowest string on a Floyd Rose vibrato-equipped guitar down a full step, extending the effective tonal range of the guitar.
Ever practical, Van Halen plays with a non-floating vibrato configuration that allows lowering of pitch only; he shuns the full floating configuration due to its inherent lack of tuning stability. The floating vibrato configuration is particularly susceptible to tuning degradation when a broken string sets the unit into imbalance on its pivot point; typically, the tuning will go sharp from the loss of tension previously supplied by the broken string.
To counter this, Van Halen's vibrato unit is configured (by slightly over-tensioning the return springs) to rest on the surface of the guitar when not in use. This serves as a stopping point for the fulcrum rotation, thereby compensating for any loss of tension due to a broken string.
Van Halen's agility with guitar vibrato systems is a distinctive and often imitated aspect of his playing style, and is also a large part of his influence and legacy.
Expansion
Later Van Halen albums such as Fair Warning and Diver Down displayed Eddie's prowess on keyboards, which were featured most prominently on the landmark album 1984, and in particular, Edward's keyboard work on "Jump", the group's only song to reach the top of the Billboard singles chart.
Edward Van Halen also played a role in getting R&B videos played on MTV. He was called in by Quincy Jones to play guitar on the song Beat It, from Michael Jackson's famous 1982 album, "Thriller", and his solo was recorded in one take.
The combination of Jackson's pop sensibilities, Quincy Jones' production and Van Halen's guitar work melded several genres of music, and helped each to find new fans. Concurrently, Van Halen's song Jump was played in discos, inner-city R&B clubs, and on rock radio.
Van Halen did soundtrack work for movies such as Back To The Future, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Twister, Wild Life, and Lethal Weapon 3, and has recorded with Brian May, Dweezil Zappa, Jeff Porcaro, Roger Waters, and Thomas Dolby. He built his trademark red and white striped "Frankenstrat" guitar (originally black and white) by hand, using an imperfect body and a used neck picked up at a discount.
Personality conflicts within Van Halen
Though they worked together successfully, Eddie Van Halen and original vocalist David Lee Roth never got on well on a personal level, with Van Halen's reclusive virtuosity-obsessed persona clashing with Roth's good-timin' frontman shtick. Roth often flubbed the words to VH songs live (or did not bother to sing them at all), which led to further clashes with Eddie.
According to Gene Simmons' book Kiss And Make Up, Van Halen approached Simmons in 1982 about possibly joining KISS as a replacement for Ace Frehley, who was suffering from severe substance abuse problems. Eddie did so because his personality conflicts with Roth were worsening, and Eddie wanted out. Depending on the source this information is obtained from the story is likely to be different however it is rumoured Roth disliked Eddie's use of keyboards on the 1984 album of the same name.
Simmons persuaded Eddie to return to Van Halen, and KISS went on to have several troubled recordings and tours with Vinnie Vincent (Vincent Cusano), who had played on the KISS Creatures Of The Night album.
Roth's 1985 solo EP, Crazy From The Heat, was not well-received by the rest of the band (though it produced a minor hit in his cover of the Beach Boys' classic "California Girls") and led to his acrimonious departure from Van Halen later that year; Roth stating in Kerrang! magazine in early 1986 that "Eddie Van Halen isn't happy unless he's unhappy."
The band recruited well-known rocker Sammy Hagar, with whom they recorded several multi-platinum albums throughout the late '80s and early '90s. Though the material from Hagar's period in the band wasn't as raw and edgy as earlier efforts, it was accessible to a larger audience, and each studio album during his tenure peaked at number one on the Billboard Charts.
However, personality conflicts between Van Halen and Hagar led to Hagar's departure in 1996. At the time, Van Halen stated that his sobriety made him realize how poor Hagar's work ethic was, and that both he and Roth had "LSD" ("Lead Singer Disease"). Following the band's short-lived tenure with vocalist Gary Cherone, the band briefly reunited with Hagar in 2004.
This did not last, with Hagar saying he would never work with Van Halen again.
As of early 2006, Van Halen remain inactive and without a lead singer. (David Lee Roth said reuniting with the band would be "inevitable")
Later years
The 1990s and onward proved to be a rough time for Van Halen. He battled alcoholism, lost his mother to cancer, was treated himself twice for tongue/mouth cancer, had hip replacement surgery, and separated from Valerie Bertinelli (whom he married in 1981), as his band split with their third lead singer Gary Cherone (also of Extreme).
Before Cherone joined the line-up the band reunited with original vocalist David Lee Roth to record two new songs for a greatest hits collection (Me Wise Magic and Can't Get This Stuff No More). The tracks were available on the compilation album The Best of Van Halen, Vol. 1. Due to a miscommuncation between the frontman and the rest of the band, Roth believed himself to be the permanent replacement for Hagar and that the group's next album would feature Roth. The confusion was intensified by an appearance by the original quartet as presenters during the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards. Roth's outrageous behavior and public statements that the reunion was permanent (neither he nor the public seemed to believe otherwise) led to tension within the group, and the band and Roth parted ways for the second time.
Many different reasons were given for the reunited Roth lineup's low quantity of output, although it is thought to be due to personal relationships within the band. An attempt to reunite the band with Sammy Hagar had similar results several years later resulting in only three new tracks (Learning To See, Up For Breakfast and It's About Time) being recorded and released on a second compilation, The Best of Both Worlds. It was later revealed (possibly also as a result of band squabbling) that bassist Michael Anthony did not play on the three new tracks and this was done by Eddie himself and overdubbed.
In 2004, after years of not performing, Van Halen returned on the stage with the Hagar fronted line-up. The tour ended with a rift escalating between Eddie Van Halen and Sammy Hagar, exploding on the last date of the tour, when Eddie violently smashed his guitar before leaving the stage. The tour also made clear that Van Halen had fallen into the trap of alcoholism once again, and he's been reported as performing in an alcoholic stupor by bassist Michael Anthony. Despite being told not to touch alcohol or cigarettes by his doctor after his cancer trouble it seems Eddie ignored the advice and continued his unhealthy lifestyle.
Van Halen has one son, Wolfgang William Van Halen, born March 16, 1991. Eddie named the song "316" on the album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge after the birth date of his son. He was named after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and nicknamed "Wolfie". Wolfie has played at some of his father's concerts on their struggling 2004 reunion tour with Sammy Hagar.
Eddie named his line of signature Peavey Guitars after his son, and between 1993 and 2004 was also sponsored by Peavey Electronics to use their 5150 Amplifiers, which he had a part in designing.
In 2004 the Peavey company parted ways with Van Halen, as Eddie launched an on-line sale of homebuilt and assembled Charvel guitars, sold by the name of the "EVH Art Series Guitars", while he was still contractually obliged to Peavey.
The guitars sold for big numbers on eBay, and were essentially replicas of his famous Kramer "Frankenstrat" guitars, played by Van Halen mainly during the David Lee Roth era of the band.
In 2005, Eddie and Wolfie painted a 10-foot-tall Fender Stratocaster guitar to be auctioned off on February 4, 2006 at the Dodge Theatre in Phoenix, Arizona, along with other guitars painted by celebrities. The proceeds of the auction benefited Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Arizona and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
On December 5, 2005, Valerie Bertinelli filed for divorce in Los Angeles Superior Court. The Complaint for Divorce revealed that Valerie Bertinelli and Van Halen separated on October 15, 2001. It is believed that their son lives with Valerie. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Since the 2004 tour, Eddie Van Halen has disappeared from the public eye, aside from a recent appearance at the 14th annual Elton John Academy Awards viewing dinner and after-party in West Hollywood, California, held on March 5, 2006.
Eddie Van Halen reinvented metal/rock guitar in the late 1970s. He is best known for his innovative two-handed tapping as well as combining low note riffs with chords and double-stops.
To learn more about this guitar hero visit the web sites below, one of which includes an extensive Tab collection.
