Not quite a prog guitarist, but Eddie was responsible for a huge explosion of interest by young players (mostly teenage boys) who wanted to pick up the 6 string!! 

Eddie single-handedly helped turn Kramer guitar company into a massive brand, introduced the locking tremolo to the masses etc.  

Worth discussing.  RIP Eddie.

Biggest loss in guitar rock since the death of Hendrix.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vhnd.com%2F2014%2F03%2F31%2Fpainting-guitar%2F&psig=AOvVaw1KcUdilyT5qBzbPe8I_v5e&ust=1602100723567000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCMCXjrbgoOwCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAq" rel="nofollow">

Rest now.

https://ultimateclassicrock.com/eddie-van-halen-allan-holdsworth-jam/" rel="nofollow - https://ultimateclassicrock.com/eddie-van-halen-allan-holdsworth-jam/

Part of the sound track of my youth. You will be missed Eddie. 

It's a shame Holdsworth didn't like Road Games, it's actually a terrific album and one of his most unsafe, non-latibule projects.

RIP...and Cheers Eddie.

After all, you were married to VB during her prime.

Oh, and you played a mean guitar!

Terrible news....wow

RIP....The GOAT!

RIP

a Mick toastie to you Eddie.. and my list of greatest blow thy speakers song list wouldn't be complete without something from him.. and it is damn well complete let me tell you. 

Micky tested.. Micky approved..

apparently Sabbath were not happy when so many people were turning up to see the support band and not them 

^^^ the infamous tour where Sabbath came off as choir boys in comparison.

it was a BS on the edge of the precipice, no wonder they were easy prey 

Been listening to Van halen since I read the news, I can't believe it, been listening to this band since i was a kid... I'm shocked and sad (an understatement). 

Same here. And I still regularly listen to their albums (especially their first six). Sad news.

RIP

Still though, RIP, man! You really did get the shredding ball rolling.

Van Halen was the band of my childhood and teen years before I discovered prog rock.

But I never stopped liking, or listening to, Van Halen. I've bought all the albums multiple times, even the most recent batch of remasters. I was hoping they'd do more one more album.

Whether you think Eddie Van Halen was a big deal or not, it's the end of an era.

That is patently untrue. Go ask any young guitarist. Many of them start playing because of Eddie, to this day.

It wasn't just his soloing innovations--  his compositions, riffs & rhythms could be as good as his lead performances.

siLLy puPPy wrote: Honestly, he hasn't been relevant in the guitar world since the 80s.

Neither has Jeff Beck. 

Not this guy. I loved it. Still do! Oberheim OB-Xa, man. Sounds awesome.

Well yeah but when i mean relevant i mean innovative actually. Probably a better word. Even the youth go to the earliest albums. Do you really think anyone was inspired by OU812?

To be more specific, Eddie will ALWAYS be relevant but what IS true is that his top dog status was dethroned in the 80s when guitarists like Yngwie Malmsteen, Steve Vai, Marty Friedman and many others who were much more creative pretty much made him seem tame in comparison.

True dat. Everyone has an expiration date but we still love and admire them at their creative peak. Eddie VH will be loved forever for his early Van Halen years.

Prog he was not, but that doesn't matter. I was still blown away the first time I heard Eddie play.

Never heard anything like his playing, and still haven't to this day.

Don't forget Randy Rhodes and Stevie Ray Vaughn who seemed to have become more influential and famous after their untimely deaths.

I'll go check it out when your done......I can believe it, smoking like a chimney will do it to ya. He has said it was more caused by him holding his picks in his mouth as they were made from metal and then all the studio time with all the electronic waves and gear......

I have also read the cancer had also moved to his brain, the past 3 days he had gone downhill very fast....His current wife, Valerie, Wolfgang and Alex were at his hospital bed side.

All in all pretty sad.... 

Agree with that regard for Malmsteen however he did perfect the shredding technique and surpassed VH. Randy Rhoads was much more innovative. I'm not really a Malmsteen fan although i respect him. Van Halen was more than Eddie, it was a real entertaining band and all the clashes of ego that went with it. I really wish Eddie would've done more shredding tunes like ERUPTION. He never really did anything like that ever again.

I love that so much. And this. I love this.

anyone remember the RS 2003 guitarist list...  oh my god what a sh*t storm of disbelief that unleashed.. and led Lew to create the DDD site where to give a cyber FU to RS and have real, famous and not, musicians create good lists.

a very quick summary

LOL!!  I played bass in a band in the early 1980s that performed "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love," a fine song & great fun to play!!  

Yelling HEY HEY HEY! while playing was harder than you'd think!!  

The band Van Halen was classic California good-times and fun, they really did a lot for all popular music back then!  

Many whammy dives, pinch harmonics, and two-handed tapping runs today. RIP EVH 5150.

RIP, Eddie

Only bought your first three albums, and I still only have the first one, but I'll be spinning it this w-e once it is within hand's reach.

DamoXt7942 wrote: What a sad news. I'm not a big fan of VH but love much their "cheap" video clip of Jump.

Isn't it somehow sad that for one of the most revered hard-rock guitarist like EVH, his most remembered and iconic moment is a crappy synth crappy-solo??

 

RIP EVH. As Mr Trane said, it's a shame that the clip they showed of Van Halen on GMB today was the keyboard intro to Jump. I know it's their biggest hit but don't talk about his guitar playing without showing some of it.

Oh my oh my, I couldn't believe the news!!! The guy was still young-ish, seemingly in a good shape, touring, enjoying life, 65 is WAY TOO EARLY Cancer is b*tch!

Eddie, Eddie Van Halen, he was always there, the guy who connected the dots between 70s Rock Riffing Gods and 80s Trailblazing Lightspeed Metal Extravaganza... dive bombs, pinched harmonics and SHRED had become the Alphabet of the new guitar era, it established a new standard for years to come, and influenced thousands upon thousand of young guitarists... To this day people learn intricacies of Floyd Rose with Eddie on their mind; they are still looking for that meaty, "brown", intoxicating sound, full of flanger, phaser and COOL!

But most importantly, to me, he was a symbol of his time, representing the Western youth, daring enough to push the envelope WHILE having fun in California sun, Sat morning, all weekend ahead...

He will be sorely missed and I'm very sad it happened this way, he deserved better!

Ed himself said while they were out on tour, the other guys would hit the town while he preferred to stay in his hotel room to work on his music. That's the kind of guy he was. He did coke and vodka; the former to stay awake, the latter to stay loose. And he'd stay up into the wee hours, working on new musical ideas.

And Ed and Alex smoked a lot.

YouTube just has this picture and the sound, not the actual video.

I can't embed it, but you can watch the clip in full here:

https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/musical-performance---eddie-van-halen/n9553" rel="nofollow - https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/musical-performance---eddie-van-halen/n9553

btw I love the so called 'crappy' synth solo in Jump. I do wonder sometimes if this is a prog site 

It stopped being a prog site in 1990....

I've loved that crappy synth solo since...1984! 

richardh wrote: I do wonder sometimes if this is a prog site

When I saw who said it, I wasn't surprised. 
 

Another fascinating thing about the band is that they'd record with one guitar, one bass, one drum-set, one vocal.   No rhythm overdubs: when Eddie would switch from rhythm to a solo in the studio, no second guitar track would be used.   This not only gave them a unique sound but it also meant their live sets were true to form and sounded like their records.   A rare thing in rock 'n roll.

BTW, Eddie would boil his guitar strings for 20 minutes in order to pre-stretch them and to add that 'rubbery', slinky sound he had.

I could be mistaken, but I think he only did that early on when he was finding the right gauge. Boiling strings is usually done to clean the strings of buildup after many hours of playing. Billy Sheehan does it a lot.

https://projectevh.com/2015/10/04/evh-strings-and-things/" rel="nofollow - https://projectevh.com/2015/10/04/evh-strings-and-things/

He would boil them (sometimes) to pre-stretch them.     Any guitarist will tell you new strings are extremely unstable and will extend & contract without warning, especially when one whams and bends as much as Eddie did.   He was a guitarist's guitarist, and had many tricks including "tweaking" the whammie-bar while using the Floyd Rose system he helped pioneer because the thing would throw guitars out of tune with no more than a light breeze.

^ Absolutely, they'd been making music that way since they formed.   And of course when Eddie & Alex were kids they had no choice but to play as a guitar/drums duo, creating the heart of the band's sound.

That's not how I remember it. I vividly remember seeing VH open for Sabbath in 1978. It was cool to see this new and upcoming band, who already had a buzz about them after the first album. But those at the show were there for the legends, not the newbies, and Sabbath saw it and appreciated it. As for EVH, he no doubt had a king position as guitarist for many years. Too bad he let so much of the side junk (drugs, cigs, drama) work so much against him.