He was a new kind of guitar hero.
The outpouring of riffs, joyous virtuosity and innovation made him a legend. Yes, we’re talking about revered guitarist Eddie Van Halen, the man who pioneered a two-finger tapping technique. Van Halen was king of the hill when he emerged, not only as a guitarist but as a songwriter and an arranger.
Sadly, he recently passed away—but we’re taking you back to 1986 to pay a tribute to a great man whose fingers tapped the dizzying solo you’re about to see.
For Eddie’s family, music was a way to bring food to the table.
In case you didn’t know, the Van Halen family is from the Netherlands.
Eddie’s father was a musician too—he played clarinet, saxophone and the piano. While on tour in Indonesia, his dad married an Indonesian-born lady, and things didn’t go quite well back in his come country. Prejudice against his wife and the overall unemployment, drove Van Halen senior away from home, and the family moved to California.
It happened in 1962, and Eddie was seven at the time.
he had an older brother, and none of them spoke English well. Luckily, music is a universal language, and Eddie began to play the piano. His older brother Alex played the guitar, and their father used to take him with to play at weddings.
Alex and Eddie formed their first band in 1964.
It was called the Broken Combs, and that’s was when they realized that Eddie was passionate about the guitar—and that Alex had a better feel for percussion.
Then they recruited Michael Anthony on bass and changed their name to Mammoth until they finally became Van Halen.
The rest is history—and what an incredible story it is!
The famous tapping technique is exactly that: tapping the strings up the neck.
It’s a two-handed technique that made Van Halen famous and had been used in solos before, but never to this degree.
The famous guitarist explained it all in a 1987 interview:
“I remember seeing people stretching one note and hitting the note once. I said: ‘Well, nobody is really capitalizing on that.’”
He also added that he “hasn’t really seen anyone get into that as far as they could, because it is a totally different sound.”
Well, Eddie got into it and opened a whole spectrum of new possibilities for guitar players. The way he played it made the guitar sound different—sometimes like a synthesizer and sometimes even a piano. It changed rock music in the ‘80s.
If you want to win over a talent show audience, play the “Eruption” solo.
The video is from Van Halen’s 1986 concert at New Haven’s Veterans Memoriam Coliseum.
It begins with Eddie coming on stage, the audience cheering and screaming his name.
Van Halen plays the solo effortlessly, and you can clearly see why’s considered to be one of the greatest guitarists of all time.
Keep in mind that he never learned to read notes!
For those who don’t know, Van Halen also did Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” arrangement.
He played that solo we all remember quite well, and he rearranged the song to make it sound more like a rock song. Van Halen’s last concert was in Los Angeles, in 2015.
Later in 2019, it was announced that the famous musician was battling throat cancer, and he passed away on Oct. 6, 2020—exactly five years after that last hometown gig.
Rest in peace, Eddie, your fans will miss you a lot.
Check out the full performance in the link below:
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