Eddie Van Halen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, (born January 26, 1955 in Nijmegen, Netherlands) is a virtuoso guitarist, classically-trained pianist, and founding member of the hard rock band Van Halen.
Childhood
Edward Van Halen's family moved to Pasadena, California in 1962 and he immediately started classical piano training, and won talent competitions as a child (although during a radio interview he said that he cannot read music). Indeed, 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 brother, drummer Alex Van Halen.
Initially, Alex began playing the guitar, while Eddie played the drums. According to Van Halen lore, while Eddie was delivering newspapers to pay for his drum kit, Alex would practice playing on them. It was when Eddie heard Alex's mastery of the Surfaris drum solo in the song Wipe Out that Eddie decided to switch and begin learning how to play the electric guitar.
Eddie was around age twelve when he first started to learn guitar. He was so committed to playing the guitar, that he played it all day, everyday. Sometimes, he would even skip school to stay at home and practice. By 14, he had learned almost every Cream solo of Eric Clapton "note for note", 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", he simply 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 (of Cream), and more recently 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
In the burgeoning Los Angeles rock scene of mid-1970s, Van Halen's band was called Mammoth. After finding out that this name was taken, David Lee Roth suggested calling the band Van Halen. Another name that was used after Mammoth and before Van Halen was Rat Salad (taken from the title of a Black Sabbath instrumental off of their Paranoid album). KISS bassist Gene Simmons produced a demo tape, but Simmons' KISS commitments ?- as well as that band's growing internal problems ?- led Simmons to regretfully sever his professional ties with Van Halen when Warner Brothers became interested in the band.
Innovation
Van Halen's self-titled debut album was released on February 10, 1978 and almost immediately recognized as a ground-breaking hard rock masterpiece.
Sound and technique
Edward Van Halen's famous "brown sound" (derived from the use of a stock 100-watt Marshall amp, a few effects, a variac to lower the voltage of the amp to get high gain distortion at lower volumes, and a "Franken-Strat" guitar Van Halen constructed using a vintage Gibson humbucker pickup rewound by Seymour Duncan mounted in a Boogie Bodies body with an unfinished maple neck and fingerboard), his innovative two-handed tapping techniques, dazzling speed, graceful melodicism, and unparalleled rhythmic sensibility influenced an entire generation of guitarists.
While his prowess as a stunning soloist is well established, Van Halen is also among the greatest rhythm guitarists in rock history. Though he did not originate the two-handed tapping technique, Van Halen has credited Jimmy Page's guitar solo from the song "Heartbreaker" (Led Zeppelin II) as the inspiration for developing it. Soon after, Van Halen developed a variety of innovative two-handed techniques, which became a cornerstone of his personal style.
In support of this unusual method of playing, 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.
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 flatting 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 flatted the correct amount, chords in some positions on the guitar have perfect thirds, but in other positions the flat B string creates terribly out of tune intervals. Van Halen is quoted as saying, "...the guitar... is just theoretically built wrong. Because every string ?- the intervals are fourths, except for from G to B, which is a third, and it's always that damn B string that fucks it up. So I always tune it a little bit flat, and then when I need it in tune, I just bend it up. Because once it's sharp, you can't make it flat! Over the years, you know, it's just a feel thing, you develop a feel for when you hit a certain chord, you know how to manipulate the string to make it in tune."
Despite his wording above, Van Halen does not flat the B string for everything. "The B string is always [difficult] 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." (Quote refers to an early version of the Floyd Rose system with no fine tuners on the bridge.)
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. Early versions of this device were prone to tuning problems, and were generally finicky, unstable, and limited in their pitch-changing capability. Leo Fender's development of the fulcrum tremolo 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. However, the Fender unit still suffered from a lack of tuning stability that would not be addressed until the late 1970s by Floyd Rose.
As employed by Van Halen, the fulcrum vibrato is used in a radical new context to generate a vast array of exciting, never-before-heard guitar tones within a song context, such as shrieks, growls, dive-bombs, chirps, squeals and grunts. These were alluded to a decade earlier by Jimi Hendrix, but the poor tuning stability of the Fender unit effectively prevented him from using these extreme vibrato effects in a live context where tuning was critical.
Van Halen was key in the development of the Floyd Rose double-locking fulcrum vibrato system for electric guitars. Frustrated with the Fender-style vibrato system's inability to stay in tune under heavy use, Eddie 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 string locking clamps were enabled; these fine-tuners are now an integral feature on Floyd Rose-type 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 tremolo configuration that allows lowering of pitch only; he shuns the full floating configuration due to its inherent lack of tuning stability. The floating tremolo 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 tremolo unit is configured 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 virtually unmatched; his recorded work with the unique transposing TransTrem vibrato system on the Steinberger line of guitars has yet to be surpassed. Among Van Halen's peers, Steve Vai has similarly experimented with extending the guitar's vocabulary with the vibrato unit, although it can be argued that Vai's vibrato antics are not as groundbreaking or revolutionary as Van Halen's earliest pioneering efforts. Pantera guitarist Darrell "Dimebag" Abbott was also known to be influenced by Van Halen's use of the Floyd Rose tremolo system, incorporating and developing many of its effects in his playing style, which is nowadays often replicated by heavy metal guitar players.
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, arguably the defining rock and roll release of the 1980s.
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". 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, 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 neck picked up (used) 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, Van Halen's obsession with musical quality clashing with Roth's "showman" tendencies. 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, Eddie approached Simmons in 1982 about possibly joining KISS as a replacement for Ace Frehley, who was suffering from severe substance abuse issues. Eddie did so because his personality conflicts with Roth were worsening and Eddie wanted out. 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 well-received (though noticeably poppier and less heavy) albums throughout the late '80s and early '90s. However, personality conflicts between Eddie and Hagar led to Hagar's departure in 1996. Eddie stated at the time that his getting sober made him realise what an "asshole" Hagar 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 singerless and inactive.
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 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.
In 1994, Eddie co-wrote (uncredited) the song "Evil Eye" for Black Sabbath's Cross Purposes album.
Van Halen has one son, Wolfgang William Van Halen, born March 16, 1991. 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 and Eddie split ways, and Eddie launched EVH Art Series Guitars, a homebuilt line of his famous Charvel "Frankenstrat" guitars, personally assembled and customized by him and sold through Ebay.
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 will benefit 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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Van_Halen
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