Eddie Van Halen

Edward Lodewijk Van Halen (Dutch: [ˈɛdʋɑrt ˈloːdəʋɛjk vɑnˈhaːlə(n)]; born January 26, 1955) is a Dutch-American musician, songwriter, producer, and inventor. He is the main songwriter and founder—with brother and drummer Alex Van Halen, bassist Mark Stone, and singer David Lee Roth—of the American hard rock band Van Halen. In 2012, he was voted number one in a Guitar World magazine reader's poll for "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".[1]

In this Dutch name, the family name is Van Halen, not Halen.
Eddie Van Halen
Van Halen performing in the late 1970s with his Frankenstrat
Background information
Birth nameEdward Lodewijk van Halen
Born (1955-01-26) January 26, 1955
Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Occupation(s)
  • Musician
  • songwriter
  • producer
  • arranger
  • guitarist
Years active1972–present
Websitevhnd.com
Musical career
OriginPasadena, California, U.S.
Genres
InstrumentsGuitar
Labels
Associated acts
Nationality
Spouse(s)
ChildrenWolfgang Van Halen
Parents
  • Jan van Halen (father)
  • Eugenia van Halen (mother)
RelativesAlex Van Halen (brother)

Early life

Born in Amsterdam,[2] Netherlands, Edward Lodewijk van Halen is the son of Jan van Halen and Eugenia van Halen (née van Beers). Jan van Halen was a Dutch clarinetist, saxophonist, and pianist, and Eugenia van Halen was an Indo (Eurasian) from Rangkasbitung on the island of Java in Indonesia.[3][4] The family eventually resettled in Nijmegen. [5]

We came here with approximately $50 and a piano, and we didn't speak the language. Now look where we are. If that’s not the American dream, what is?[6]

In February 1962, the Van Halen family moved from the Netherlands to the United States, settling in Pasadena, California.[4] Both Eddie and his older brother, Alex van Halen, are naturalized U.S. citizens.[7] The brothers learned to play the piano as children starting at the age of six.[8][9] They commuted from Pasadena to San Pedro to study with an elderly piano teacher, Stasys "Stanley" Kalvaitis.[10]

Van Halen revealed in an interview that he has never been able to read music. Instead, he learned from watching and listening. During recitals of Bach or Mozart, he would improvise. From 1964 through 1967, he won first place in the annual piano competition held at Long Beach City College.[10] Afterward, the judges would comment that he had an interesting interpretation of the classical piece. Van Halen's view was, "What? I thought I was playing it correctly!" However, according to one interview, playing the piano did not prove to be challenging or interesting to him.[11] Consequently, while Alex began playing the guitar, Eddie bought a drum kit and began practicing for hours every day.

After Eddie heard Alex's performance of The Surfaris' drum solo in the song "Wipe Out", he decided to switch instruments and began learning how to play the electric guitar. According to Eddie, as a teen, he would often practice while walking around at home with his guitar strapped on or sitting in his room for hours with the door locked.[12][13]

Eddie and Alex formed their first band with three other boys, calling themselves The Broken Combs, performing at lunchtime at Hamilton Elementary School in Pasadena, where Eddie was in the fourth grade. Eddie would later say that this was when he first felt the desire to become a professional musician.[14]

Eddie has described supergroup Cream's "I'm So Glad" on Goodbye Cream to be "mind-blowing".[15] He once claimed that he had learned almost all of Eric Clapton's solos in the band Cream "note for note. ... I've always said Eric Clapton was my main influence," Van Halen said, "but Jimmy Page was actually more the way I am, in a reckless-abandon kind of way."[16]

Van Halen
Main article: Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen in 2015

Eddie and Alex Van Halen formed a band in 1972.[17] In 1974, the band changed its name to Van Halen,[18] and Van Halen became a staple of the Los Angeles music scene during the mid-1970s, playing at well-known clubs like the Whisky a Go Go.[19] In 1977, Warner Bros. Records offered the band a recording contract.[20]

Upon its release, Van Halen reached No. 19 on the Billboard pop music charts, becoming one of rock's most commercially successful debuts.[21] It was highly regarded as both a heavy metal and hard rock album.[22] By the early 1980s, Van Halen was one of the most successful rock acts of the time.[23] The album 1984 went five-times platinum after a year of release.[24] The lead single "Jump" became the band's first and only No. 1 pop hit and garnered them a Grammy nomination.[25]

The band won the 1992 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal for the album For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.[26] As of March 2019, the band is 20th on the RIAA list of best-selling artists in the United States; it has sold 56 million albums in the States[27][28] and more than 80 million worldwide.[29][30] Additionally, Van Halen has charted 13 number-one hits in the history of Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart. VH1 ranked the band seventh on a list of the top 100 hard rock artists of all time.[31] In January 2007, Van Halen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[32] Eddie Van Halen has received acclaim for his guitar work in the band.[33][34]

Other work

Eddie Van Halen has been involved in several projects outside of his eponymous band.

In 1976, both Ed and his brother Alex recorded three demos with KISS bassist Gene Simmons. Christine Sixteen, Tunnel of Love, and Got Love For Sale were recorded and eventually wound up on Gene's 2017 boxset, "the Vault."

In 1978, he played on, "Can't Get Away From You" which was featured on the first album by Nicolette Larson called, "Nicolette (album)". Ed is not credited.

In 1982, he played the guitar solo in Michael Jackson's "Beat It."[35]

In 1983, he played guitar and sang backing vocals on Brian May's solo album Star Fleet Project.

In 1984, both Ed and David Lee Roth are featured in the intro for a Frank Sinatra music video called, "L.A. Is My Lady."

In September of 1984, he recorded a solo song called, "Donut City" for the film The Wild Life.

In 1987, he played bass guitar on Sammy Hagar's solo album I Never Said Goodbye. He also provided a guitar solo on the album's track "Eagles Fly".

In 1994, he co-wrote the riff of a song with Black Sabbath members, Tony Martin, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, called "Evil Eye" on the Cross Purposes album, but he was not credited due to record company restrictions.[36]

In 1996, he and his brother, Alex, performed "Respect the Wind" from Twister: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack.

In 1998, he played the guitar solo on Roger Waters's song Lost Boys Calling for the soundtrack of The Legend of 1900.

In 2003 he recorded, "Joy to the World" with Toto guitarist Steve Lukather. The song is featured on Lukather's, "Santamental" Christmas album.

In 2005, he performed on the Jimi Hendrix cover tune "If Six Was Nine" from the album The State of Things by David Garfield and Friends.

In 2006, he recorded two new instrumental tracks ("Rise" and "Catherine") which debuted in a pornographic feature entitled Sacred Sin. The feature was directed by well-known adult film director Michael Ninn, a friend of Eddie's.[37][38]

In 2009, he had a cameo role in the season seven premiere of the sitcom Two and a Half Men, in which he played the main riff from "As Is" from A Different Kind of Truth.[39]

In 2009, he performed on two songs, "Not Leaving You Tonight" and "We're the Greatest", on LL Cool J's album Authentic.[40]

Style and influence

Van Halen's approach to the guitar has influenced an entire generation of guitarists. Van Halen, like many rock guitarists, has never fully learned to read music.[41]

Tapping
Main article: Tapping
Eddie Van Halen using the tapping technique.

The 1978 instrumental "Eruption" by Van Halen, which was voted No. 2 in Guitar World's readers poll of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos",[42][43] showcased a solo technique called tapping, using both left and right hands on the guitar neck. Although Van Halen popularized tapping, he did not invent the tapping technique, which had been used infrequently by various guitarists. Steve Hackett, lead guitarist with Genesis in the 1970s, is said by MusicRadar to be "widely credited with inventing two-handed tapping" and was an influence on Van Halen.[44] When asked about this, Hackett said, "Eddie and I have never spoken about it, but yes, he has credited me with tapping... Eddie is a fine player, of course, and he's the one who named the technique."[45]

George Lynch also said in an interview that he and Van Halen saw Harvey Mandel tap at the Starwood in the 1970s.[46] Van Halen also named Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin as an influence, saying in one interview with Guitar World:

I think I got the idea of tapping watching Jimmy Page do his "Heartbreaker" solo back in 1971. He was doing a pull-off to an open string, and I thought wait a minute, open string ... pull off. I can do that, but what if I use my finger as the nut and move it around? I just kind of took it and ran with it.[47]

Van Halen holds a patent for a flip-out support device that attaches to the rear of the electric guitar.[48] 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.[49][50][51]

Pickup selection

Van Halen has used a variety of pickups including Gibson PAFs, 1970s Mighty Mites, DiMarzios and Ibanez Super 70s. He was using Mighty Mite pickups in 1977 club photos, just prior to the recording of the first Van Halen album. Mighty Mite pickups were OEM pickups made by Seymour Duncan[52] and were copies of DiMarzio Super Distortion pickups. Seymour Duncan apparently rewound a Gibson PAF for Van Halen around early 1978.[53]

In an interview in Guitar World magazine in July 1985, Van Halen states that his "brown sound" is "...basically a tone, a feeling that I'm always working at ... It comes from the person. If the person doesn't even know what that type of tone I'm talking about is, they can't really work towards it, can they?" In an interview with Billboard magazine in June 2015, he states that with the expression "brown sound" he actually tried to describe the sound of his brother Alex Van Halen's snare drum, which he thought "...sounds like he’s beating on a log. It’s very organic. So it wasn’t my brown sound. It was Alex's."[54]

Patents

Van Halen is the inventor on US 4656917.[55] He is the lead inventor of US 7183475.[56] Another patent naming Van Halen as inventor is D388117.[57]

Personal life
Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli at the 1993 Emmy Awards.

On August 29, 1980, Eddie met actress Valerie Bertinelli at a Van Halen concert in Shreveport, Louisiana.[58] They married in California on April 11, 1981[59] and have one son, Wolfgang.[60]

Suffering from lingering injuries from past, high-risk, acrobatic stage antics and crashes, Van Halen underwent hip replacement surgery in November 1999, after his chronic avascular necrosis, with which he was diagnosed in 1995, became unbearable. Van Halen began receiving treatment for tongue cancer in 2000. The subsequent surgery removed roughly a third of his tongue. He was declared cancer-free in 2002.[61]

In December 2004, Van Halen attended "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott's funeral, and donated the black and yellow guitar featured on the Van Halen II album inlay, stating that it was always a favorite of Dimebag's. The guitar was put in Darrell's Kiss Kasket donated by Gene Simmons and he was buried with it.[62]

On December 5, 2005, Van Halen's wife, Valerie Bertinelli, filed for divorce in Los Angeles after four years of separation.[63] The divorce was finalized in December 2007.[64]

Van Halen has struggled with alcoholism and drug abuse. He has stated that he began smoking and drinking at age 12, and that he eventually needed alcohol to function.[65] Van Halen entered rehabilitation in 2007.[66] In a 2015 interview, Van Halen stated that he had been sober since 2008.[65]

On October 6, 2008, Van Halen proposed to his girlfriend, Janie Liszewski, an actress and stunt-woman who became Van Halen's publicist in 2007. The two married on June 27, 2009, at his Studio City estate, with his son Wolfgang and Bertinelli in attendance.[67] Eddie's brother Alex officiated the ceremony, while his son served as best man.[68]

In August 2012, Van Halen underwent an emergency surgery for a severe bout of diverticulitis.[69]

In 2019, it was revealed that Eddie has been secretly battling throat cancer over the last five years[70] and is currently in stable condition.[71]

References
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  71. {{ web|url=https://www.survivornet.com/articles/eddie-van-halen-who-is-battling-throat-cancer-is-keeping-quiet-during-quarantine-while-his-wife-spreads-some-much-needed-positivity
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