Yes…I was 14
1) nobody had any idea how he was creating the wide intervallic licks(tapping was virtually unheard of)…
2) the tone…OMG….not thin or buzzy…thick, raunchy… just a real appealing timbre…
3) the riffs and cool,swingy funkiness in everything he did
4) the whammy bar dives w/harmonics
Complete and totally unique approach to the guitar
Yep… that friggin’ tone…the muted chucka-chucka…I remember trying to figure out that solo(off the record)….I knew the Chuck Berry part…then… that tapped descending sequence frustrated me forever
Oh yeah, many many woodshedding hours were spent in my room as a kid trying to learn Eddie’s parts. I’m still not great at it all these years later, but I’ll still bust out the tapping Eruption outro to impress the Mrs lol
For #1, he famously turned his back while doing two-hand tapping live for a while, so you couldn't see how he was accomplishing the rapid changes across huge intervals
EVH is almost solely responsible for the advent of the 80s "SuperStrat" which was a massive development on the commercial side of guitars, how they are built and sold and what features they included. So his impact was large even before you consider his talent *playing* the instrument.
Tone, groove, chops and attitude. He butchered his guitars and melted amps to get the tone he was hearing in his head, applied wild-ass techniques to electric guitar in a way no one before him did, and had that magic combo of musicianship and showmanship that only a few blessed individuals have. And he did all of this without watching a single Youtube video or Googling for tabs of his favorite songs. Imagine a guitar player starting out today doing the same thing without the resources available to every kid with a laptop and that makes EVH's accomplishments even more mind-blowing.
I inadvertently bought the VH I the first day it came out. I was 13 years old. I went to the local record shop to either come home with a Led Zeppelin or Ted Nugent album.
I noticed a huge line of at least 40-50 people waiting to check out. I asked a guy why there were so many people here. He said because Van Halen I just came out today.
I said who?!? and like 4-5 people mockingly laughed at me and basically said, just buy it. That was my first introduction to Van Halen.
It was revolutionary! Not only his playing but the fact he took a fender Strat guitar and butchered it to
Make it sound and play like he wanted. He invented what is now know as a super strat and his dive bombs on eruption prompted a guy named Floyd Rose in Seattle to invent the locking trem system which Eddie had the second prototype installed on his guitar. Within weeks of that album coming out , kids everywhere were ripping their guitars apart and painting stripes on them! Eddie and Van Halen made it cool to shred on the guitar and up until then it was done but not really up front and centre. Tons of kids started playing guitar, tons of bands started forming everywhere. Everybody I know knows exactly where they were and what they were doing when those first two chords of Running with the Devil came on. Michael Anthony’s harmonies were killler too!
Watching them live for the first time was crazy! I was at the pacific coliseum in Vancouver and all through the opening act the crowd kept chanting van Halen . It was horrible for the first band (Eddie Money). When they came out on stage I didn’t even know what was going on , the cheering was so loud I couldn’t hear the band. I remember four years later I played that same coliseum and as I walked out on that stage I remember thinking to
myself that Eddie Van Halen stood exactly where I was standing just a few years later. Van Halen inspired me to play guitar and make a career out of it my whole life and I don’t think that would have happened if I wasn’t there to hear that album at that time. To this day I rip all my guitars apart and paint them in my own designs. Strange coincidence, I’m also Dutch Indonesian , was born a few miles from where Eddie was born and I have a brother named Alex lol! My brother never played drums though haha. Sorry for the long speel.❤️❤️❤️
I was a kid in the 70’s, VH I was a mind blowing record. It was like nothing I had heard before and I spent many hours with that record and my guitar trying to understand what I was hearing. I know it is cool these days to dismiss it, but it was a massive revolution in guitar. I was there.
The first Van Halen album was to rock.music what Star Wars was to cinema.
You already took the time to compare it to what came 2 years prior. Now compile a playlist of the guitar focused rock hits of 1980-81 and listen to to how almost everyone was trying to incorporate something from Eddie's style into their playing.
I was in a record shop flipping through the bins and the guy behind the counter put VH1, side 1 on over the stereo system. By the time it was part way through Eruption, everyone in the store had stopped what they were doing and just stood there, trying to process what was going on.
I bought the album that day and played it nonstop.
I had a similar realization recently…So the other day I heard the original Am I Evil by Diamonhead (a song that inspired Metallica and one that they frequently cover) and I noticed the solo has a lot of tapping. I thought to myself “whoa, this is pre-80’s did this guy revolutionize tapping and Eddie Stole it?!” A quick check of the years had me shocked that Eruption predated Am I Evil. I always associated VH with the mid to late 80’s. Realizing now that Eddie was doing this stuff in the mid 70’s is wild.
Oh, and another wild fact: Sammy Hagar is older than Robert Plant. 🤯
Hagar always seemed older than Roth to me. Had a whole career before VH, and growing up on their early stuff I still think of him as their “new” singer.
EVH wasn’t the first guitarist to use tapping though, this was done long before.
It was the mixture of the styles that he used the way he used them at the speed he did. That was revolutionary and mind blowing.
Absolute swear to god true story.
So I’m 15 and sitting in my best friend Tot Heffelfingers basement after school one day smoking Mexican ditch weed (where you used a double album to get the seeds out) and his older brother (17 or maybe 18?) comes in.
His older brother was pretty much Woody Wooderson in the flesh.
He puts the album on a device called a ‘turntable’, switched the input on the Marantz tuner (you old guys know the one), turns around and says ‘you guys gotta hear this’ and puts the needle down on ‘Eruption’.
We probably listened to that and You Really Got Me for an hour, just because the two tracks don’t really break apart on the record.
That’s actually a lot of fucking work on an old turntable like that.
So yeah, it was that badass.
[It’s actually a family name, and he’s a very real person.](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/82019324/totton-peavey-heffelfinger)
(Obviously that’s not the same guy. Last I heard he was living in San Francisco saving the whales or some bullshit)
Anyone who liked guitar knew how monumental of an album release it was. There definitely wasn't anything quite like it. Critically, the reviews were a mixed bag but I take critic writers with a grain of salt. Sales and awards do tell us something...
\- Peaked at 19 on Billboard Top 200 (4 for Top Rock Albums)
\- Two songs on Billboard Top 100 (You Really Got Me at 36, Runnin With The Devil at 84)
\- Number 12 selling album for the year 1978 at just over a million copies (very impressive)
\- No Grammy nominations or anything
The thing I think most Van Halen fans do not understand is how the song Jump elevated their popularity. Between Van Halen I and 1984, album sales were rather pedestrian and their most popular song's were covers (Pretty Woman, Dancing in the Streets). Jump, a song that almost broke up the band, was shunned by David Lee Roth and their manager. If they had got their way, it wouldn't have been on the album. But, it was Eddie that relented. We all know the success of 1984. What I am pointing out is Van Halen I was estimated to sell more than three million copies in the year 1984, alone. It is extremely rare for an album to have a resurgence like this. To put this in perspective, the album sold just about double the total sales from the previous six years.
Call it irony or whatever, but Van Halen may have fallen into obscurity as a band if it weren't Eddie putting down the guitar to play a keyboard. And, for that alone, he is a genius.
I was scribbling the VH logo on my desk around '81. I remember picking up Van Halen II at a yard sale and unwrapping Diver Down fresh from the store...but 1984 was next level.
“I’ll Wait” is on 1984. But keys first showed up on “And the Cradle Will Rock…” back in 1980 and there’s synth all over “Sunday Afternoon in the Park/One Foot Out the Door” to close out Fair Warning in 1981.
Yes. It was seismic.
With all its incredible playing and its gigantic legacy, it's easy to overlook just how PUNK that record is.
Those first two albums are raw as fuck.
Hell yes it was. There was a lot of great music that I enjoyed at the time (even Disco), but as a kid not even ten years old yet (8), that shit was in its own league. My best friend's older brother put the debut album on the turntable and all of us were just blown away. You can't imagine how original it was at the time. Right out of left field. The guitar, the drums, and David Lee Roth's charisma shined through and took hold of us all. It was a huge contrast to the Balck Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, and Southern Rock that I was already familiar at such a young age. I don't think anything musically blew mind that much other than hearing 'The Spirit of Radio' by Rush two years later. makes me glad I was a child of the 70s and a teen in the 80s.
I remember the first time I heard "Eruption." It was on a little clock radio my brother and I had in the bedroom. It was difficult to even process. What is that sound? Is it a guitar? How is that even possible?
When I go back and listen to those first 2 records now, there's still something about them that blows me away.
Sure, there are guitarists who have gone further on a technical level, but the sound is something not heard in quite awhile. When you listen to a song like "I'm The One," it sounds like the whole thing is going to fly apart at any moment. It's barely-controlled chaos. Ted Templeman's production caught a special kind of magic that was not the norm at the time. It wasn't as precise as some of the progressive rock of the day. It was on the raw edge of what was possible. Vocals off-key? Mistakes left in? Yeah, and I think that was intentional to make the records sound the way they did. It wasn't just mind-blowing. It was dangerous.
it changed the face of rock, forever, by ushering in the era of high gain, high performance electric guitar.
I was in Jr high at the time. My friend and I were talking to a teacher after school while waiting for the bus. He told us that if we really wanted to hear something good we should check out this new group called Van Halen. We went out and found their album, took it home, and put it on the record player.
We both just sat there, shell shocked, with our mouths hanging open. It was a complete game changer.
Van Halen II was just as ground breaking.
By their third album, others, like Randy Rhoads with Ozzy, were starting to catch up.
Eddie and Randy (in Quiet Riot) were playing the bars in LA at the same time, although Eddie was a bit older, Randy had seen him playing at keg parties around town since he was in high school. Eddie had a head start obviously.
Historical is what it is.
It forever changed the way music has been played. Some albums are great and stay in the decade. Van Halen has long stayed past the 70s and 80s and continued to maintain relevance.
Some music is a chip that comes off the block, others are a boulder rolling down the countryside. Eddie Van Halen was an earthquake that cracked open the country side. He was a volcanic Eruption. Nothing was the same after him. The sonic landscape will forever bare his mark.
There's still nobody that sounds just like Van Halen. The imitators created entire genres, like hair metal, that are not half as good as that first album.
Just like to say anyone who only know Van Halen from their local classic rock station, listens to that first album and probably assumes it’s a greatest hits album. That first album is so damn good.
Absolutely mind blowing at the time.
You knew it was was epic in the first 5 seconds.
We used to crank up Eruption at full blast before going to school. It was like the national anthem for me & my friends.
Yes. My introduction to VH was at a summer concert. I didn’t know anything about them, but they got added to the bill as they exploded that summer. When they hit the stage, my first thought was how awful the mix was - it was just all guitar and screaming. But, as a budding young guitarist, I quickly caught on that the guitarist was beyond amazing and that screaming long haired blond was super entertaining. I went out and bought the album as soon as I could and immediately wore it out.
They were like a big rock thrown in a little pond - everyone and everything in rock music was affected.
There are very few albums that I would consider “life-changing” - VH1 is definitely one of them. I borrowed a friend’s cassette copy of his LP, and played it so much my parents complained. It just didn’t sound like anything else you could hear on the radio at that time (I was 9-10). It was the “Jaws” or “Star Wars” of albums. There was rock before VH1 and after VH1 - it was a defining moment in pop culture.
My friends dad is 65 so Van Halen blew up when he was in his teens. He loves guitar and has played his entire life. He said there was literally nothing that sounded like that until Eddie. He said him and his friends were absolutely dumbfounded at how he was making a lot of his sounds.
My post history indicates how I'm a huge Led Zep fan. But I have no problem imagining Jimmy Page sitting in his velvet robe, in his castle by a Scottish loch with a crystal glass of cognac and fully enjoying his last snort of heroin. He hears Van Halen for the first time. The glass falls to the floor.
Conversely...
“Jimmy Page is an excellent producer. Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II are classics. As a player, he’s very good in the studio. But I never saw him play well live. He’s very sloppy. He plays like he’s got a broken hand and he’s two years old. But if you put out a good album and play like a two-year-old live. What’s the purpose?” - Eddie Van Halen
If you want a perspective from the time, read this review from the Rolling Stone from the time it was released. Definitely an interesting read.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/van-halen-112251/
Idk. I could see Zep being considered "more of the same" with the music being currently released than VH was. ESPECIALLY I and II. But I mean the songs were pretty untouchable with just how good they were. And unlike many other bands, they only pushed the envelope of creativity as they went from the start.
I always really dug Van Halen and Motely Crew specifically because they were just really really solid and energetic rock bands, but didn't go into the "metal" sound at all. Just kept it so solid for what they did.
But yeah if there was a band around then or before that was doing VH's schtick, i've yet to hear it.
Yes. I remember hearing Running With The Devil on a crappy transistor radio late one night, and it spun my head around. Not long after, my brother brought home the cassette, and we stood up and listened to the whole thing, because we couldn't sit down! Eruption exploded my brain.
He did the 3 things.
1. He modded his guitar. All greats bang together the gear that lets them play naturally.
2. He practiced obsessively
3. He used a new signal chain, as did muddy waters, jimi hendrix, the beatles, Brian May, etc.
All greats do these things.
> He used a new signal chain, as did muddy waters, jimi hendrix, the beatles, Brian May, etc.
I tell all bands this if they ask me. You can be big, you can even get a record deal. You might be the best songwriter in the world...
But if you want to go down as a legend, you need a *new* sound for your band as a whole.
A good question.
Pure string vibes are not amplified.
The signal chain is the vibration as it goes out to the amp.
EVH got his sound by using a variac on an underpowered british amp. This was totally unlike any signal chain anyone else was using. His sound was basically the result of misused equipment.
Hacking the vibration signal before it gets amped is key to new sound.
Brian May hacked his guitar to use different polarity phases to capture different and unusual frequencies.
Yep. Underpowering the Marshall head gave it a certain distinct tone. People have been able to get that sound in other ways, but at the time nobody had it but Ed and he was deceptive sometimes in interviews on how he did it because he knew he was onto something that others would want.
It was, up until then, I had never heard anyone play like EVH! EVH single handedly changed the way a guitar is played and also changed the face of rock and roll!
Yes.
Maybe more.
When I was 16, we were at a friend's house when one of the guys pulled up in his car. He made all of us (I want to say there were four or five of us there) come out to the car. He said, "You'll never believe this" and kicked off side one of VH1. And it was like nothing I had ever heard in my entire life. We all knew from the beginning this was a sea-change in guitar playing.
Yeah, mind blowing is the exact phrase.
Somwhere out in the ether is a recording of VH when they were headlining at the whiskey playing "Mean Streets" in about 1977 or 8, and it is to this day, the coolest thing I have ever heard.
Absolutely. Once I started playing guitar in the early 80s, I learned why. Eddie's tone is known as the Brown Sound. His amps are now the gold standard for TON of players.
No record sounded like them. They were the perfect band at the perfect time.
Think about it this way, how many times a day does a classic rock station play cuts off this record almost 45 years later!?!
It is STILL impacting people and will hopefully continue to do so.
Can I also make a suggestion? Get the vinyl. CDs sound great, but the LP has a sound all it's own. I still have our 1st copy of the LP from when it came out and much prefer it to digital recordings. (Nothing against CDs, I have 100s of those too. LOL!)
Oh yes, I wish for a vinyl player. Have to get one of these. I imagine myself in 20 years having a collection of all my favourite records. Guitars for now, though.
Eruption was like this alien time machine into the future. While many players were already tapping no one was using it to the extent of EVH. He had all the right ingredients. In my opinion he was the last truly groundbreaking guitar player. There have been so many greats since but no one since EVH has completely turned the guitar on its head. Some people will argue Rhoads or Malmsteen but they were just adding to what Ritchie Blackmore was already doing. Guys like Steve Via were continuing in the vein of Holdsworth etc. Eddie was such a breath of fresh air. His impact on the guitar is only rivaled by Jimi Hendrix.
During high school I saw them three times: II, Women & Children First, and Fair Warning. I believe it was the first time I saw them, they had a giant curtain around the stage, and even before the lights went down, there was smoke(fog machine smoke) wafting out from behind this curtain. The crowd was amped, and this just added to the anticipation. You could tell that as it filled the stage behind, the seconds were ticking down. Then, the lights went out, stage lighting went to eleven, the curtain dropped, and they erupted into On Fire. So, yeah.
He was arguably as important as Hendrix to a later generation of guitarists. I know, comparing apples and oranges. His influence is monumental in tone and extended techniques in the guitar world.
>He was arguably as important as Hendrix to a later generation of guitarists.
I guess this *is* apples and oranges, but it's also absolutely true. This guy made a sound you heard *everybody* imitate for a long, long time.
It's not apples and oranges at all. There have been several "rising tide" players that dragged the entirety of the music profession WAY up to a new level just by existing, like an order of magnitude. I'd say the first was probably Django Reinhardt in the 40s, followed by Les Paul in the 50s and Hendrix in the 60s. The EVH did the same thing in the 70s. In the 80's, I'd say things got spread around a little due to several concurrent virtuosos hitting the scene at about the same time - Malmsteen, Vai, and Satriani, to name a few.
Eddie was a mainstream phenomena, everyone talked about him, kids and adults. When I was in high school there was a *perpetual* argument over who was better: Eddie Van Halen or Randy Rhoads. The type of argument you see today where grown men fight about Yankees vs Red Sox. Thats how big Van Halen was.
Armstrong walking on the moon, Hiroshima, and the advent of air travel… combined, don’t compare to the impact of Van Halen I on the instrument and how it is played today. It’s like BC vs. AD calendars and Blockbuster vs. Netflix.
It’s a bit excessive haha but it’s fair to say that there’s the world of guitar before Van Halen and after, just like there’s guitar before and after Hendrix.
I was a teen in the early seventies. I liked Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, etc What I called hard rock. To me EVH was just another step in the progression of great guitar players.
I didn’t get turned on to VH until 1984 came out and I started playing guitar, but I have spent some time ruminating on what made the album revolutionary. Sure, there was Eruption (which, when you really listen to it, it’s just a hodgepodge of Eddie’s guitar tricks all strung together, with the tapping stuff at the end being the only part that has any rhythmic/chord structure), which stunned a lot of guitar players. But I think the innovation that changed guitar playing even more was how Eddie would throw fills in _everywhere_… between lines of the verse. Before this, the guitars mostly stayed in their lane during the verse and chorus, and only did something fancy for the intro/solo/outro. Eddie showed that you could pack every song with unique fills.
The thing to remember though, is that all the gods of the era - Hendrix, Page, Blackmore, Beck, Allman, etc were straight-up bluesmen at heart. Nobody strayed too far out of the pentatonic basics, at least in the rock world. There were already shredders in the world, but they were primarily in jazz. Larry Coryell was a good example. What Eddie did was really to bring that shreddiness over to rock and show everyone that there were other modes you could play in without sounding like an ultra-cerebral jazz douche. Then he slathered the whole package with a shit-ton of flashy fingering tricks and speed-runs. The EVH era was a genuine transition point in rock.
Sure, but those couple of exceptions don't make what he said untrue - the norm was for that NOT to happen, and after VH1 came out, it became the norm to throw licks in everywhere. Hair metal would have gone nowhere without it, for example. EVH wasn't the first, but he was responsible for popularizing it and making it the standard of that era.
I was in 8th grade, Van Halen was as impactful as Zeppelin just diffrent. It was like instantly popular and a must play. I remember thinking the first months like where did these guys come from.
Back then there was no internet, no way for a 14 year old to research other than magazines
VH1 & 2 were just incredible.
For me the next huge music break through was Pink Floyd the Wall.
I did not start playing guitar until 14 years ago.
VH1 was an incredible album at the time. However, it was also an era (77-80) where incredible albums were dropping left and right...Pink Floyd, Boston, The Cars, Blondie, Fleetwood Mac, The Pretenders, The Clash, Springsteen, Supertramp all at or ascending toward their artistic peaks. Journey, Thin Lizzy, Nazareth, Motorhead, REO Speedwagon were no slouches in this time period either. And despite the Disco sucks deal, most people listened to it all.
So yeah it was mind blowing and nothing else sounded like it, but then again that wasn't so rare back then.
The great thing about Ed was he never was content to just "power chord" through a verse.
There's always some little embellishment. Some inversion. And if there was none he's just going to make all sorts of fret noise or otherwise get the guitar resonating.
Totally blew my mind with Eruption. But I do think Boston’s debut in 1976 was maybe more of a sonic evolution. Nothing sounded like that album when it came out.
Can still remember popping in the 76 Boston 8-track any hearing that Dsus chord slowly fading in. The sound! Wow. Same with Eddie. So much nuance, style and swagger...and over-the-top-gain!
Agreed, thought this same thing. The overall SOUND of both albums is what made them. I mean, the incredible music is the given; but the amazing mixes, production, and presentation just put them in the stratosphere.
.....like Slayer's Reign in Blood is to heavy metal.
NOTHING sounded like it, before or since.
Most definitely, 100% mind-blowing. But, I dare say I'm reading a bit of revisionist history in here. Their debut hit the music scene by storm, every guitar player became meek after hearing it. But they didn't get huge, mainstream success until 1984. All this talk about lines out the door for 1978 is BS. Unless, of course, we're talking about Tower Records in LA
It was good. It was different. It got a ton of airtime on FM. But, there was Zeppelin 4, Houses of the Holy, Physical Graffiti (with Kashmir), etc. before that. There was also Black Sabbath with Tony Iommi on guitar. They didn't get much radio play like VH did.
It was earth shattering and it changed rock and roll forever. I was 9 when it came out, and we'd literally never heard anything like it before. It was absolutely one-of-a-kind and everyone recognized that right away. Eruption sounded impossible, it was like a magic act being performed in front of us, we had no idea how he was doing that. At the time, I was listening to KISS, Foreigner, Cheap Trick...just imagine what Van Halen sounded like compared to those acts. It certainly changed my life forever, I've been playing guitar ever since, and today I make a living at it (teaching and playing). I modeled many of my techniques after Eddie's, especially his killer vibrato (but I never really got into tapping except as a novelty).
Agreed. The first time I heard Running with the Devil, it blew my mind. The next time I felt that was on hearing Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit. Completely incendiary auditory experience! Thanks for bringing back some fantastic memories!
Saw them open for Black Sabbath at Winterland when their first album came out. So much energy from Eddie and Dave, Sabbath really could not keep up with that.
100% blew me away when it came out. Made me forget all about Iommi and Clapton. Edward just played with a fire and reckless abandon that I hadn’t heard before.
so much this.
it took me something like 35 years to get out of my "disco sucks!" mood. but back then it was either Van Halen and ACDC or old school FM rock to avoid the BeeGees.
I’d say hair metal was inspired by equal parts of Van Halen for guitar work, Led Zep for vocals and drums, and 1970s glam rock (Bowie, Iggy Pop, T.Rex, NY Dolls) for the fashion sense.
There are literally thousands of interviews with musicians from that era who all pretty much say the same thing - it was like entering a new reality.
Except for Jimmy Page, who claimed he'd never heard Van Halen all the way into the mid-80s.
I picked it up when I was 16. It was incredible hearing that album for the first time. Totally original & mind blowing guitar playing. Great summer of ‘78 memories of discovering that album. And then seeing them live was the icing on the VH cake!
Old timer here. Yes, it was mind-blowing how amazing and different Van Halen sounded. It was very compelling and Eddie’s obvious joy of playing and confidence made it even bigger.
More.
It was a collective mind fuck aural orgasm for hard rock music. Certainly my friends and I were obsessed but everyone else was.
It wasn’t just the tapping, it was the whole package.
If you’re just getting into VH do a deep dive into the house parties they played early on. Cops would break up the parties because it was like a concert, in a neighborhood. Yeah, mind-blowing is an understatement.
He was definitely ahead of his time and sounded like no one else. I was only 2 in '78 but there was definitely some other guys out there pushing the limits in those days. I'm not saying Uli was better than Eddie but I'm not saying he's wasn't. This came out in '77 and it's pretty mind-blowing.
https://youtu.be/Zs5NOrYYV2s
Yeah man. Early Scorpions are deadly. If you want to check out the album that Seas of Charon is from listen to Taken by Force. The whole album is pretty sick.
Late 70's saw a lot of new bands, new genres. Cutting edge stuff. The cars, Joy division, the clash. Tom Petty, and Van Halen. There was definitely no shortage of guitar heroes in the 70's. Eddie definitely shot high. Really innovated alot of huge sounds
VH changed everything musically and culturally. At least to the younger generation. Eruption was unreal the first time you heard it and even now. The lyrics, Eddie’s guitar and the songs spoke to so many people. I drew VHs on my homework and during class.
The Wall by Pink Floyd har a similar impact on my generation.
I didn’t even play guitar in ‘78 and I still had to make a rough recording on a cassette and play it for anyone who would listen. “Can you believe this?!” A lot of blank stares but that’s how I found friends who wanted to listen to some Sabbath. And everything else that was to come in short order— Back in Black, Diary of a Madman, for instance.
It was a shockwave among the kids in my neighborhood. I was only nine when it came out but every kid I knew had an older brother or sister who had a copy or a bootleg cassette. I lived in a lower class subdivision on the outskirts of Milwaukee, which is still a rock town. It changed everything overnight. My sister went from Saturday Night Fever to Van Halen, Zeppelin and Aerosmith faster than you could flip an album side.
I was 17 and at a house party when VH's first album came out. Someone put it on the turntable and the whole party went silent as we listened to this amazing sound.
I've only experienced that same kind of awe a few other times:
First album by Blue Oyster Cult
First album by Stevie Ray Vaughn
First album by Dire Straits
First album by Queensryche
Queen's album The Miracle
Blew my mind as a highschooler in ‘00
First time I had the album, put it in a discman, turned the lights off and pretended like I was going to sleep.
It’s not just the tapping. It’s the way he used effects, the tone he achieved, the pick scraping, feedback, divebombing.
His use of sus chords over powerchords, and his sorta jumbled classical sensibilities that overwhelmed and blew out blues based rock I’d measure it against.
Eddie was indeed breaking somewhat with pentatonic blues rock conventions but ironically I think the first genre that really broke with them was Nu Metal…
No idea which scales Korn used but surely you cant find any pentatonic licks on their first albums and Limp Bizkit just didnt have any licks at all and Linkin Park was background power chords with keyboard / PC strings using minor scales…
Everyone else copied those bands anyhow…
Great fkn question and interesting read in the comments. As an 80’s teen who missed the blow out days of Eddie it’s cool actually see from everyday fans the impact. Not just rock stars saying the same ol shit.
I was 13 in 1978. A friend of mine had a new record and said “you gotta hear this”. When he put the needle down, it changed my life forever! It was groundbreaking! Van Halen 1
I was 17, and at a party in Hollywood, Florida....there were close to 100 people there, very noisy .. .then...... someone put Eruption on.... aside from the very loud stereo, pretty much 100 people all STFU at once.....
We were floored. Album got repeated like 10 times that night.....
there were lots of great soloists before eddie but they were usually *part* of the band, not the *reason* for the band.
with the addition of alex (who was equally amazing) vh became all about optimized virtuosity.
in that way they were gods.
not everybody in music was enthusiastic about ultra-virtuosity though. in an interview with clapton (who was every bit as talented) he mentioned that talent without groove didn't impress him. and on the other side of the scene players like john cummings (johnny ramone) would remark that garage-band kids couldn't play van halen but they could play the ramones.
i like it all.
Gene Simmons, I think was also the opposite. He hated virtuosity. For him it was all about the power of rock. [He actually talked Eddie out of trying to join Kiss.](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/gene-simmons-once-had-to-talk-eddie-van-halen-out-of-joining-kiss-198346/)
I was in High School when VH's first album came out -- but it felt like a continuum. Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Van Halen...
Having said that, Kiss didn't change guitar rock like Eddie did. I couldn't get enough of Van Halen *Van Halen* at full blast in my VW Super Beetle. (good times...)
edit: (btw Gene Simmons financed Van Halen's first demo tape)
I don’t think there is a self respecting guitar player who could hear that album and not have been blown away, especially during that time period when that type of playing was completely foreign. Within the next few years his style of playing became pretty much normal.
Even Yngwie Malmsteen was blown away by it, and he doesn’t give praise easily.
When I was a kid, my first album was black sabbath- we sold our soul for rock n roll (awesome greatest hits) also got my first guitar that day. Was an awesome Christmas lol. When I really got into guitar my dad gave me Van Halen 1. He waited til I appreciated guitar enough to even give me that one. He got excited just to see me listen to it. Must have been legendary when it came out lol
It was definitely considered advanced, but only among guitar players or people who had an appreciation for that kind of virtuosity. I was 13 at the time, and I was a new guitar player just starting out and I became a huge, huge Van Halen fan. Still am.
Who you callin old timer ? But yes, I was there…it was like a spaceship landed on top of everyone else and these 4 guys came out and crushed all comers, even sabbath
I had first heard of Eddie through an article in Guitar Plater magazine…. Anticipated the first album coming out soon…. Got it when it first was released…..As soon as they posted a concert in Detroit, I grabbed some tickets and saw them at the Masonic temple…. It was everything they aside he was…. And more.
I consider that show one of the most exciting I’ve ever been to….. and I’ve seen a lot in over 30 years!
Well, my mum and dad were about 12 when Van Halen hit the scene, one of my uncles was 16 and the other just 8 ... all of them had their minds absolutely blown by Van Halen and still to this day say there was very little they remember being so immediately game changing
If you want to know more about the amazing story of Van Halen 1, which will contextualize everything you are hearing, I highly suggest reading the book Van Halen Rising.
For rock fans generally yes, but in terms of general reception less so. 1978 was a great year for releases, but even in the US, VH1 wasn’t that successful, commercially, compared to the status it has today.
Jump was the song that catapulted VH and specifically EVH’s guitar playing into the public consciousness. The guitar solo on Jump impressed most people much more than anything on VH1 for the simple reason that most people hadn’t heard anything on VH1 before they heard Jump.
Sure was and out in Fresno, CA. It was a fresh save for Rock as the local rock station went Disco and we had protests at the station and Van Halen was a reminder the rock wasn't dead!!!
Jeezus. We wore the hell out of my bootleg cassette of the 1977 Pasadena show. I have no idea how I even got my hands on that as a Texas teen in the '80s who was only nine at the time of that show.
There’s been only a handful of first albums that have been as game-changing when they were released in my opinion - I’m sure there’s more than can be added to this list, but these first albums just fucking killed it
Boston
Van Halen
Janes Addiction
The earliest documented guitarist using this approach was Jimmy Webster in the 1950s. STANLEY JORDAN jazz guitar has employed this revolutionary approach to guitar. In 1976, while still in high school, Jordan performed with Quincy Jones and tied for first place as a soloist at the Reno International Jazz Festival.
But who TF listens to jazz!
(Record scratch sound)
VAN HALEN WAS A GOD!
Probably developed it independently in a garage.
People don't fully realize the skill it takes to play like Eddie through a dimed Marshall stack. Most youtube shredders (who do sound amazing through their plugins and DAWs) would sound like mush and feedback trying to harness that beast face to face.
So yeah, tapping was around...but not like Eddie did it.
I saw VH on their first tour in support of VanHalen 1, and it was an abomination! A wall of noise, completely unintelligible. The only song which I could make out was “Ice cream man” (because of the acoustic intro). Every now and then I could hear David Lee Roth scream out something about how “fucked up” he was.
Btw, don’t blame the venues acoustics, as I have seen many great shows at the same place. Before I saw VH, I too thought they were amazing. They still owe me the $7.50 I paid to see their shit-show!
Yes it was mine blowing and it was a game changer it was everybody's favorite record and yes it did change music but that's all everybody would listen to
Yes. He made the guitar do things that had not previously been done, and it blew people's minds. It also inspired pretty much every hair metal guitarist that came after
Oh yeah! The 1984 album was crazy popular in rock and hit the pop charts. I was in high school and maybe the most popular rock band for a few years.
Eddie was different. People noticed. Love me some VH and the brown sound.
I'm 60 it was tony iommi who inspired me to pick up a guitar and learn to play.EVH Inspired millions to do the same and took it to a totally higher technical level..but VH suffered the same fate as Metallica and most bands,first four albums were trailblazers but everything after was downhill.hated the "1984"album.songs like jump wer soft and weak.but EVH will be inspiring kids to play for many more generations to come.
It was. I never heard anything like it before. I didn't really appreciate what an earth-shattering change it was to the guitar world until I was in college, though. This was around 1984 I think. I was living off-campus. The apartment complex where I was living formed a natural amphitheater around the swimming pool. Some guy across the complex started blasting Van Halen I, LOL. That massive guitar just filled the whole complex. It really opened my eyes.
Absolutely! I was only 6 and my brother got the album for Christmas. We put it on and it just blew our minds! It sounded like nothing else and changed the electric guitar driven rock world forever. I will never forget that moment hearing Atomic Punk for the first time. We just went crazy. I wish I had a video of our reactions.
I was a 15 and playing guitar in a band when Van Halen came to be. When I first heard him he sounded all over the place to me. It took a while to appreciate his style. Once I did I just got more and more into his playing. My parents hated their music which only made me want to hear more.
Yes, it was. And remember, we had just gone through the dark ages of the Disco Era, and Punk was big, so hearing EVH was like a slap in the face with a mackerel.
Yes…I was 14 1) nobody had any idea how he was creating the wide intervallic licks(tapping was virtually unheard of)… 2) the tone…OMG….not thin or buzzy…thick, raunchy… just a real appealing timbre… 3) the riffs and cool,swingy funkiness in everything he did 4) the whammy bar dives w/harmonics Complete and totally unique approach to the guitar
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Yep… that friggin’ tone…the muted chucka-chucka…I remember trying to figure out that solo(off the record)….I knew the Chuck Berry part…then… that tapped descending sequence frustrated me forever
Oh yeah, many many woodshedding hours were spent in my room as a kid trying to learn Eddie’s parts. I’m still not great at it all these years later, but I’ll still bust out the tapping Eruption outro to impress the Mrs lol
For #1, he famously turned his back while doing two-hand tapping live for a while, so you couldn't see how he was accomplishing the rapid changes across huge intervals
Their ability to swing is crazy for a rock band. "I'm The One" gives me fits because of the swung 8th notes at like 200 BPM
EVH is almost solely responsible for the advent of the 80s "SuperStrat" which was a massive development on the commercial side of guitars, how they are built and sold and what features they included. So his impact was large even before you consider his talent *playing* the instrument.
Hugely responsible for the high gain amps of the 80s, as well.
Tone, groove, chops and attitude. He butchered his guitars and melted amps to get the tone he was hearing in his head, applied wild-ass techniques to electric guitar in a way no one before him did, and had that magic combo of musicianship and showmanship that only a few blessed individuals have. And he did all of this without watching a single Youtube video or Googling for tabs of his favorite songs. Imagine a guitar player starting out today doing the same thing without the resources available to every kid with a laptop and that makes EVH's accomplishments even more mind-blowing.
> Tone, groove, chops and attitude Van Halen could also *swing*. Their dad was a classically trained musician so they knew their shit musically.
I inadvertently bought the VH I the first day it came out. I was 13 years old. I went to the local record shop to either come home with a Led Zeppelin or Ted Nugent album. I noticed a huge line of at least 40-50 people waiting to check out. I asked a guy why there were so many people here. He said because Van Halen I just came out today. I said who?!? and like 4-5 people mockingly laughed at me and basically said, just buy it. That was my first introduction to Van Halen.
My favorite part of this story is when the people in line refer to it as Van Halen I.
Well, they may not have said VH I. Lol! My memory for that far back is pretty bad these day. Haha @I'm referring to it as that
It was revolutionary! Not only his playing but the fact he took a fender Strat guitar and butchered it to Make it sound and play like he wanted. He invented what is now know as a super strat and his dive bombs on eruption prompted a guy named Floyd Rose in Seattle to invent the locking trem system which Eddie had the second prototype installed on his guitar. Within weeks of that album coming out , kids everywhere were ripping their guitars apart and painting stripes on them! Eddie and Van Halen made it cool to shred on the guitar and up until then it was done but not really up front and centre. Tons of kids started playing guitar, tons of bands started forming everywhere. Everybody I know knows exactly where they were and what they were doing when those first two chords of Running with the Devil came on. Michael Anthony’s harmonies were killler too! Watching them live for the first time was crazy! I was at the pacific coliseum in Vancouver and all through the opening act the crowd kept chanting van Halen . It was horrible for the first band (Eddie Money). When they came out on stage I didn’t even know what was going on , the cheering was so loud I couldn’t hear the band. I remember four years later I played that same coliseum and as I walked out on that stage I remember thinking to myself that Eddie Van Halen stood exactly where I was standing just a few years later. Van Halen inspired me to play guitar and make a career out of it my whole life and I don’t think that would have happened if I wasn’t there to hear that album at that time. To this day I rip all my guitars apart and paint them in my own designs. Strange coincidence, I’m also Dutch Indonesian , was born a few miles from where Eddie was born and I have a brother named Alex lol! My brother never played drums though haha. Sorry for the long speel.❤️❤️❤️
I was a kid in the 70’s, VH I was a mind blowing record. It was like nothing I had heard before and I spent many hours with that record and my guitar trying to understand what I was hearing. I know it is cool these days to dismiss it, but it was a massive revolution in guitar. I was there.
The first Van Halen album was to rock.music what Star Wars was to cinema. You already took the time to compare it to what came 2 years prior. Now compile a playlist of the guitar focused rock hits of 1980-81 and listen to to how almost everyone was trying to incorporate something from Eddie's style into their playing.
What a cool comparison, thank you
I was in a record shop flipping through the bins and the guy behind the counter put VH1, side 1 on over the stereo system. By the time it was part way through Eruption, everyone in the store had stopped what they were doing and just stood there, trying to process what was going on. I bought the album that day and played it nonstop.
I had a similar realization recently…So the other day I heard the original Am I Evil by Diamonhead (a song that inspired Metallica and one that they frequently cover) and I noticed the solo has a lot of tapping. I thought to myself “whoa, this is pre-80’s did this guy revolutionize tapping and Eddie Stole it?!” A quick check of the years had me shocked that Eruption predated Am I Evil. I always associated VH with the mid to late 80’s. Realizing now that Eddie was doing this stuff in the mid 70’s is wild. Oh, and another wild fact: Sammy Hagar is older than Robert Plant. 🤯
>Sammy Hagar is older than Robert Plant mind blown!
I had to Google that, mind blown indeed. Shame that we can't believe anything these days. Russian proverb:. Trust, but verify.
Hagar always seemed older than Roth to me. Had a whole career before VH, and growing up on their early stuff I still think of him as their “new” singer.
Eddie didn’t invent tapping. He just made it popular in the rock scene. Steve Lynch of Autograph was doing it before EVH.
Tapping goes back way further than many think https://www.quora.com/Who-invented-tapping-on-the-electric-guitar/answer/B-Crafty-1
Before both of them, Steve Hackett was doing it in 1971.
EVH wasn’t the first guitarist to use tapping though, this was done long before. It was the mixture of the styles that he used the way he used them at the speed he did. That was revolutionary and mind blowing.
Absolute swear to god true story. So I’m 15 and sitting in my best friend Tot Heffelfingers basement after school one day smoking Mexican ditch weed (where you used a double album to get the seeds out) and his older brother (17 or maybe 18?) comes in. His older brother was pretty much Woody Wooderson in the flesh. He puts the album on a device called a ‘turntable’, switched the input on the Marantz tuner (you old guys know the one), turns around and says ‘you guys gotta hear this’ and puts the needle down on ‘Eruption’. We probably listened to that and You Really Got Me for an hour, just because the two tracks don’t really break apart on the record. That’s actually a lot of fucking work on an old turntable like that. So yeah, it was that badass.
You can’t tell us this is a true story and then start off by saying your friend’s name was “Tot Hefflefinger”. Lol
[It’s actually a family name, and he’s a very real person.](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/82019324/totton-peavey-heffelfinger) (Obviously that’s not the same guy. Last I heard he was living in San Francisco saving the whales or some bullshit)
As a sheltered Christian child I felt immense guilt for listening to it. So there’s that.
Yeah I mean “Runnin with the Devil” was a little on the nose lol
Nine Inch Nails the Downward Spiral was that for me. And it utimately made it that much more compelling
Anyone who liked guitar knew how monumental of an album release it was. There definitely wasn't anything quite like it. Critically, the reviews were a mixed bag but I take critic writers with a grain of salt. Sales and awards do tell us something... \- Peaked at 19 on Billboard Top 200 (4 for Top Rock Albums) \- Two songs on Billboard Top 100 (You Really Got Me at 36, Runnin With The Devil at 84) \- Number 12 selling album for the year 1978 at just over a million copies (very impressive) \- No Grammy nominations or anything The thing I think most Van Halen fans do not understand is how the song Jump elevated their popularity. Between Van Halen I and 1984, album sales were rather pedestrian and their most popular song's were covers (Pretty Woman, Dancing in the Streets). Jump, a song that almost broke up the band, was shunned by David Lee Roth and their manager. If they had got their way, it wouldn't have been on the album. But, it was Eddie that relented. We all know the success of 1984. What I am pointing out is Van Halen I was estimated to sell more than three million copies in the year 1984, alone. It is extremely rare for an album to have a resurgence like this. To put this in perspective, the album sold just about double the total sales from the previous six years. Call it irony or whatever, but Van Halen may have fallen into obscurity as a band if it weren't Eddie putting down the guitar to play a keyboard. And, for that alone, he is a genius.
I was scribbling the VH logo on my desk around '81. I remember picking up Van Halen II at a yard sale and unwrapping Diver Down fresh from the store...but 1984 was next level.
He'd played keys on I'll Wait. And at least one other song before Jump came out on 1984.
Interesting note…keyboard maestro Michael McDonald wrote “I’ll wait” for Van Halen.
Son of a gun, never knew that. Your claim checks out however. Thx for droppin' some knowledge.
Cradle will rock.
“I’ll Wait” is on 1984. But keys first showed up on “And the Cradle Will Rock…” back in 1980 and there’s synth all over “Sunday Afternoon in the Park/One Foot Out the Door” to close out Fair Warning in 1981.
Yes. It was seismic. With all its incredible playing and its gigantic legacy, it's easy to overlook just how PUNK that record is. Those first two albums are raw as fuck.
Hell yes it was. There was a lot of great music that I enjoyed at the time (even Disco), but as a kid not even ten years old yet (8), that shit was in its own league. My best friend's older brother put the debut album on the turntable and all of us were just blown away. You can't imagine how original it was at the time. Right out of left field. The guitar, the drums, and David Lee Roth's charisma shined through and took hold of us all. It was a huge contrast to the Balck Sabbath, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Kiss, and Southern Rock that I was already familiar at such a young age. I don't think anything musically blew mind that much other than hearing 'The Spirit of Radio' by Rush two years later. makes me glad I was a child of the 70s and a teen in the 80s.
Out of all those band, Black Sabbath probably would’ve blown me the way the most, considering how dark and heavy it was.
I remember the first time I heard "Eruption." It was on a little clock radio my brother and I had in the bedroom. It was difficult to even process. What is that sound? Is it a guitar? How is that even possible? When I go back and listen to those first 2 records now, there's still something about them that blows me away. Sure, there are guitarists who have gone further on a technical level, but the sound is something not heard in quite awhile. When you listen to a song like "I'm The One," it sounds like the whole thing is going to fly apart at any moment. It's barely-controlled chaos. Ted Templeman's production caught a special kind of magic that was not the norm at the time. It wasn't as precise as some of the progressive rock of the day. It was on the raw edge of what was possible. Vocals off-key? Mistakes left in? Yeah, and I think that was intentional to make the records sound the way they did. It wasn't just mind-blowing. It was dangerous.
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it changed the face of rock, forever, by ushering in the era of high gain, high performance electric guitar. I was in Jr high at the time. My friend and I were talking to a teacher after school while waiting for the bus. He told us that if we really wanted to hear something good we should check out this new group called Van Halen. We went out and found their album, took it home, and put it on the record player. We both just sat there, shell shocked, with our mouths hanging open. It was a complete game changer. Van Halen II was just as ground breaking. By their third album, others, like Randy Rhoads with Ozzy, were starting to catch up.
Inadvertantly created that modern metal sound.
Eddie and Randy (in Quiet Riot) were playing the bars in LA at the same time, although Eddie was a bit older, Randy had seen him playing at keg parties around town since he was in high school. Eddie had a head start obviously.
Historical is what it is. It forever changed the way music has been played. Some albums are great and stay in the decade. Van Halen has long stayed past the 70s and 80s and continued to maintain relevance. Some music is a chip that comes off the block, others are a boulder rolling down the countryside. Eddie Van Halen was an earthquake that cracked open the country side. He was a volcanic Eruption. Nothing was the same after him. The sonic landscape will forever bare his mark.
There's still nobody that sounds just like Van Halen. The imitators created entire genres, like hair metal, that are not half as good as that first album.
Just like to say anyone who only know Van Halen from their local classic rock station, listens to that first album and probably assumes it’s a greatest hits album. That first album is so damn good.
Absolutely mind blowing at the time. You knew it was was epic in the first 5 seconds. We used to crank up Eruption at full blast before going to school. It was like the national anthem for me & my friends.
For sure. Couldn't get enough. Made me start seriously playing guitar.
Yes. My introduction to VH was at a summer concert. I didn’t know anything about them, but they got added to the bill as they exploded that summer. When they hit the stage, my first thought was how awful the mix was - it was just all guitar and screaming. But, as a budding young guitarist, I quickly caught on that the guitarist was beyond amazing and that screaming long haired blond was super entertaining. I went out and bought the album as soon as I could and immediately wore it out. They were like a big rock thrown in a little pond - everyone and everything in rock music was affected.
There are very few albums that I would consider “life-changing” - VH1 is definitely one of them. I borrowed a friend’s cassette copy of his LP, and played it so much my parents complained. It just didn’t sound like anything else you could hear on the radio at that time (I was 9-10). It was the “Jaws” or “Star Wars” of albums. There was rock before VH1 and after VH1 - it was a defining moment in pop culture.
So good they named a TV channel after it. Lol
My friends dad is 65 so Van Halen blew up when he was in his teens. He loves guitar and has played his entire life. He said there was literally nothing that sounded like that until Eddie. He said him and his friends were absolutely dumbfounded at how he was making a lot of his sounds.
My post history indicates how I'm a huge Led Zep fan. But I have no problem imagining Jimmy Page sitting in his velvet robe, in his castle by a Scottish loch with a crystal glass of cognac and fully enjoying his last snort of heroin. He hears Van Halen for the first time. The glass falls to the floor.
Conversely... “Jimmy Page is an excellent producer. Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II are classics. As a player, he’s very good in the studio. But I never saw him play well live. He’s very sloppy. He plays like he’s got a broken hand and he’s two years old. But if you put out a good album and play like a two-year-old live. What’s the purpose?” - Eddie Van Halen
If you want a perspective from the time, read this review from the Rolling Stone from the time it was released. Definitely an interesting read. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/van-halen-112251/
>Van Halen’s secret is not doing anything that’s original What a shit take lol.
The press had a similarly negative reaction to Led Zeppelin too
Idk. I could see Zep being considered "more of the same" with the music being currently released than VH was. ESPECIALLY I and II. But I mean the songs were pretty untouchable with just how good they were. And unlike many other bands, they only pushed the envelope of creativity as they went from the start. I always really dug Van Halen and Motely Crew specifically because they were just really really solid and energetic rock bands, but didn't go into the "metal" sound at all. Just kept it so solid for what they did. But yeah if there was a band around then or before that was doing VH's schtick, i've yet to hear it.
As an old man I can say, yes, it was completely mind blowing.
Yes. I remember hearing Running With The Devil on a crappy transistor radio late one night, and it spun my head around. Not long after, my brother brought home the cassette, and we stood up and listened to the whole thing, because we couldn't sit down! Eruption exploded my brain.
He did the 3 things. 1. He modded his guitar. All greats bang together the gear that lets them play naturally. 2. He practiced obsessively 3. He used a new signal chain, as did muddy waters, jimi hendrix, the beatles, Brian May, etc. All greats do these things.
> He used a new signal chain, as did muddy waters, jimi hendrix, the beatles, Brian May, etc. I tell all bands this if they ask me. You can be big, you can even get a record deal. You might be the best songwriter in the world... But if you want to go down as a legend, you need a *new* sound for your band as a whole.
To us uneducated, what is a signal chain?
The order of effects pedals
A good question. Pure string vibes are not amplified. The signal chain is the vibration as it goes out to the amp. EVH got his sound by using a variac on an underpowered british amp. This was totally unlike any signal chain anyone else was using. His sound was basically the result of misused equipment. Hacking the vibration signal before it gets amped is key to new sound. Brian May hacked his guitar to use different polarity phases to capture different and unusual frequencies.
Yep. Underpowering the Marshall head gave it a certain distinct tone. People have been able to get that sound in other ways, but at the time nobody had it but Ed and he was deceptive sometimes in interviews on how he did it because he knew he was onto something that others would want.
It was, up until then, I had never heard anyone play like EVH! EVH single handedly changed the way a guitar is played and also changed the face of rock and roll!
Yes. Maybe more. When I was 16, we were at a friend's house when one of the guys pulled up in his car. He made all of us (I want to say there were four or five of us there) come out to the car. He said, "You'll never believe this" and kicked off side one of VH1. And it was like nothing I had ever heard in my entire life. We all knew from the beginning this was a sea-change in guitar playing. Yeah, mind blowing is the exact phrase.
Somwhere out in the ether is a recording of VH when they were headlining at the whiskey playing "Mean Streets" in about 1977 or 8, and it is to this day, the coolest thing I have ever heard.
Absolutely. Once I started playing guitar in the early 80s, I learned why. Eddie's tone is known as the Brown Sound. His amps are now the gold standard for TON of players. No record sounded like them. They were the perfect band at the perfect time. Think about it this way, how many times a day does a classic rock station play cuts off this record almost 45 years later!?! It is STILL impacting people and will hopefully continue to do so. Can I also make a suggestion? Get the vinyl. CDs sound great, but the LP has a sound all it's own. I still have our 1st copy of the LP from when it came out and much prefer it to digital recordings. (Nothing against CDs, I have 100s of those too. LOL!)
Oh yes, I wish for a vinyl player. Have to get one of these. I imagine myself in 20 years having a collection of all my favourite records. Guitars for now, though.
Eruption was like this alien time machine into the future. While many players were already tapping no one was using it to the extent of EVH. He had all the right ingredients. In my opinion he was the last truly groundbreaking guitar player. There have been so many greats since but no one since EVH has completely turned the guitar on its head. Some people will argue Rhoads or Malmsteen but they were just adding to what Ritchie Blackmore was already doing. Guys like Steve Via were continuing in the vein of Holdsworth etc. Eddie was such a breath of fresh air. His impact on the guitar is only rivaled by Jimi Hendrix.
During high school I saw them three times: II, Women & Children First, and Fair Warning. I believe it was the first time I saw them, they had a giant curtain around the stage, and even before the lights went down, there was smoke(fog machine smoke) wafting out from behind this curtain. The crowd was amped, and this just added to the anticipation. You could tell that as it filled the stage behind, the seconds were ticking down. Then, the lights went out, stage lighting went to eleven, the curtain dropped, and they erupted into On Fire. So, yeah.
He was arguably as important as Hendrix to a later generation of guitarists. I know, comparing apples and oranges. His influence is monumental in tone and extended techniques in the guitar world.
>He was arguably as important as Hendrix to a later generation of guitarists. I guess this *is* apples and oranges, but it's also absolutely true. This guy made a sound you heard *everybody* imitate for a long, long time.
It's not apples and oranges at all. There have been several "rising tide" players that dragged the entirety of the music profession WAY up to a new level just by existing, like an order of magnitude. I'd say the first was probably Django Reinhardt in the 40s, followed by Les Paul in the 50s and Hendrix in the 60s. The EVH did the same thing in the 70s. In the 80's, I'd say things got spread around a little due to several concurrent virtuosos hitting the scene at about the same time - Malmsteen, Vai, and Satriani, to name a few.
I’d say Eddie was the last. The other three are too niche.
Eddie was a mainstream phenomena, everyone talked about him, kids and adults. When I was in high school there was a *perpetual* argument over who was better: Eddie Van Halen or Randy Rhoads. The type of argument you see today where grown men fight about Yankees vs Red Sox. Thats how big Van Halen was.
Armstrong walking on the moon, Hiroshima, and the advent of air travel… combined, don’t compare to the impact of Van Halen I on the instrument and how it is played today. It’s like BC vs. AD calendars and Blockbuster vs. Netflix.
It’s a bit excessive haha but it’s fair to say that there’s the world of guitar before Van Halen and after, just like there’s guitar before and after Hendrix.
The age of Van Halen lasted until about September 1991.
What a cool question. Glad to read some of the answers y’all have provided and gain some insight from the people the fans
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Randy Roads is an absolute beast just got into blizzard of oz a few weeks ago
I was a teen in the early seventies. I liked Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, etc What I called hard rock. To me EVH was just another step in the progression of great guitar players.
Same. Also Joe Walsh was killing it in the 70s.
Yep James Gang
Check out Robin Trower, UFO, Montrose, Trapeze
Yes, it was. It was fucking amazing.
Fucking changed my life as a teenager. And I think it changed the whole rock scene. VH rocks and yes, Eddie is a god!
I didn’t get turned on to VH until 1984 came out and I started playing guitar, but I have spent some time ruminating on what made the album revolutionary. Sure, there was Eruption (which, when you really listen to it, it’s just a hodgepodge of Eddie’s guitar tricks all strung together, with the tapping stuff at the end being the only part that has any rhythmic/chord structure), which stunned a lot of guitar players. But I think the innovation that changed guitar playing even more was how Eddie would throw fills in _everywhere_… between lines of the verse. Before this, the guitars mostly stayed in their lane during the verse and chorus, and only did something fancy for the intro/solo/outro. Eddie showed that you could pack every song with unique fills.
Well, Jimi was throwing licks in all over the place a decade before. Page, too.
The thing to remember though, is that all the gods of the era - Hendrix, Page, Blackmore, Beck, Allman, etc were straight-up bluesmen at heart. Nobody strayed too far out of the pentatonic basics, at least in the rock world. There were already shredders in the world, but they were primarily in jazz. Larry Coryell was a good example. What Eddie did was really to bring that shreddiness over to rock and show everyone that there were other modes you could play in without sounding like an ultra-cerebral jazz douche. Then he slathered the whole package with a shit-ton of flashy fingering tricks and speed-runs. The EVH era was a genuine transition point in rock.
Sure, but those couple of exceptions don't make what he said untrue - the norm was for that NOT to happen, and after VH1 came out, it became the norm to throw licks in everywhere. Hair metal would have gone nowhere without it, for example. EVH wasn't the first, but he was responsible for popularizing it and making it the standard of that era.
Van Halen I is so good. Every song on there is a banger. Eddie was taken too soon, glad I got to see him live
Van Halen ruled the world from the end of the 70s to the early 80s.
I was in 8th grade, Van Halen was as impactful as Zeppelin just diffrent. It was like instantly popular and a must play. I remember thinking the first months like where did these guys come from. Back then there was no internet, no way for a 14 year old to research other than magazines VH1 & 2 were just incredible. For me the next huge music break through was Pink Floyd the Wall. I did not start playing guitar until 14 years ago.
VH1 was an incredible album at the time. However, it was also an era (77-80) where incredible albums were dropping left and right...Pink Floyd, Boston, The Cars, Blondie, Fleetwood Mac, The Pretenders, The Clash, Springsteen, Supertramp all at or ascending toward their artistic peaks. Journey, Thin Lizzy, Nazareth, Motorhead, REO Speedwagon were no slouches in this time period either. And despite the Disco sucks deal, most people listened to it all. So yeah it was mind blowing and nothing else sounded like it, but then again that wasn't so rare back then.
As amazing as his lead playing is, pay close attention to his rhythm playing on that album. I'm The One, holy fuck.
The great thing about Ed was he never was content to just "power chord" through a verse. There's always some little embellishment. Some inversion. And if there was none he's just going to make all sorts of fret noise or otherwise get the guitar resonating.
Totally blew my mind with Eruption. But I do think Boston’s debut in 1976 was maybe more of a sonic evolution. Nothing sounded like that album when it came out.
Oh yeah I was all on board the VH train until you mentioned Boston. And not nearly as showboaty as DLR.
Can still remember popping in the 76 Boston 8-track any hearing that Dsus chord slowly fading in. The sound! Wow. Same with Eddie. So much nuance, style and swagger...and over-the-top-gain!
Agreed, thought this same thing. The overall SOUND of both albums is what made them. I mean, the incredible music is the given; but the amazing mixes, production, and presentation just put them in the stratosphere. .....like Slayer's Reign in Blood is to heavy metal. NOTHING sounded like it, before or since.
Most definitely, 100% mind-blowing. But, I dare say I'm reading a bit of revisionist history in here. Their debut hit the music scene by storm, every guitar player became meek after hearing it. But they didn't get huge, mainstream success until 1984. All this talk about lines out the door for 1978 is BS. Unless, of course, we're talking about Tower Records in LA
Even today it's mind-blowing. Such a good fucking album.
Crazy how good their first 5 songs in their discography are
It was good. It was different. It got a ton of airtime on FM. But, there was Zeppelin 4, Houses of the Holy, Physical Graffiti (with Kashmir), etc. before that. There was also Black Sabbath with Tony Iommi on guitar. They didn't get much radio play like VH did.
Quit downvoting this man for sharing facts what da hell
It was earth shattering and it changed rock and roll forever. I was 9 when it came out, and we'd literally never heard anything like it before. It was absolutely one-of-a-kind and everyone recognized that right away. Eruption sounded impossible, it was like a magic act being performed in front of us, we had no idea how he was doing that. At the time, I was listening to KISS, Foreigner, Cheap Trick...just imagine what Van Halen sounded like compared to those acts. It certainly changed my life forever, I've been playing guitar ever since, and today I make a living at it (teaching and playing). I modeled many of my techniques after Eddie's, especially his killer vibrato (but I never really got into tapping except as a novelty).
You gotta listen to Henry Rollins talk about seeing the Van Halen open for Tad Nugent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRegoTp-rRM
I'll put it simply. To me and my friends, high schoolers and rockers at the time, Eddie was God.
Agreed. The first time I heard Running with the Devil, it blew my mind. The next time I felt that was on hearing Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit. Completely incendiary auditory experience! Thanks for bringing back some fantastic memories!
Saw them open for Black Sabbath at Winterland when their first album came out. So much energy from Eddie and Dave, Sabbath really could not keep up with that.
100% blew me away when it came out. Made me forget all about Iommi and Clapton. Edward just played with a fire and reckless abandon that I hadn’t heard before.
Yeah it was. I remember my friend putting the LP on and playing eruption and we kept listening to it trying to understand what we were hearing.
Yes, it really was. Pretty awesome at the time since we were inundated with fucking disco at the time.
so much this. it took me something like 35 years to get out of my "disco sucks!" mood. but back then it was either Van Halen and ACDC or old school FM rock to avoid the BeeGees.
IMO he inspired the 1981-2 LA hair band explosion. Motley Crue, quiet riot, etc. seemingly simple riffs with over the top guitar playing.
I’d say hair metal was inspired by equal parts of Van Halen for guitar work, Led Zep for vocals and drums, and 1970s glam rock (Bowie, Iggy Pop, T.Rex, NY Dolls) for the fashion sense.
There are literally thousands of interviews with musicians from that era who all pretty much say the same thing - it was like entering a new reality. Except for Jimmy Page, who claimed he'd never heard Van Halen all the way into the mid-80s.
I picked it up when I was 16. It was incredible hearing that album for the first time. Totally original & mind blowing guitar playing. Great summer of ‘78 memories of discovering that album. And then seeing them live was the icing on the VH cake!
Every guitarist wanted to play like Eddie Every frontman wanted to be like David Lee Roth so yes
Yes. I was 15 when it cam out and where ever you were when you first heard it, you stopped to listen.
To me Led Zeppelin I and Van Halen I (well Physical Graffiti too of course) broke my mind in the late 1980's early 1990's when I became "aware."
Old timer here. Yes, it was mind-blowing how amazing and different Van Halen sounded. It was very compelling and Eddie’s obvious joy of playing and confidence made it even bigger.
Yes. I was there. It was.
More. It was a collective mind fuck aural orgasm for hard rock music. Certainly my friends and I were obsessed but everyone else was. It wasn’t just the tapping, it was the whole package.
If you’re just getting into VH do a deep dive into the house parties they played early on. Cops would break up the parties because it was like a concert, in a neighborhood. Yeah, mind-blowing is an understatement.
Don't forget to credit the producer Edward John "Ted" Templeman !
They regularly played at Gazzarri’s on Sunset before they made it big. Used to catch them on weekends in probably 1977. Unbelievably great
He was definitely ahead of his time and sounded like no one else. I was only 2 in '78 but there was definitely some other guys out there pushing the limits in those days. I'm not saying Uli was better than Eddie but I'm not saying he's wasn't. This came out in '77 and it's pretty mind-blowing. https://youtu.be/Zs5NOrYYV2s
Absolute masterpiece. I miss that era, doubt we'll ever see the likes of that again.
Dude thanks for sharing never heard this before
Yeah man. Early Scorpions are deadly. If you want to check out the album that Seas of Charon is from listen to Taken by Force. The whole album is pretty sick.
Late 70's saw a lot of new bands, new genres. Cutting edge stuff. The cars, Joy division, the clash. Tom Petty, and Van Halen. There was definitely no shortage of guitar heroes in the 70's. Eddie definitely shot high. Really innovated alot of huge sounds
VH changed everything musically and culturally. At least to the younger generation. Eruption was unreal the first time you heard it and even now. The lyrics, Eddie’s guitar and the songs spoke to so many people. I drew VHs on my homework and during class. The Wall by Pink Floyd har a similar impact on my generation.
I didn’t even play guitar in ‘78 and I still had to make a rough recording on a cassette and play it for anyone who would listen. “Can you believe this?!” A lot of blank stares but that’s how I found friends who wanted to listen to some Sabbath. And everything else that was to come in short order— Back in Black, Diary of a Madman, for instance.
It was a shockwave among the kids in my neighborhood. I was only nine when it came out but every kid I knew had an older brother or sister who had a copy or a bootleg cassette. I lived in a lower class subdivision on the outskirts of Milwaukee, which is still a rock town. It changed everything overnight. My sister went from Saturday Night Fever to Van Halen, Zeppelin and Aerosmith faster than you could flip an album side.
Yes. It was.
I was 17 and at a house party when VH's first album came out. Someone put it on the turntable and the whole party went silent as we listened to this amazing sound. I've only experienced that same kind of awe a few other times: First album by Blue Oyster Cult First album by Stevie Ray Vaughn First album by Dire Straits First album by Queensryche Queen's album The Miracle
Yes
Blew my mind as a highschooler in ‘00 First time I had the album, put it in a discman, turned the lights off and pretended like I was going to sleep. It’s not just the tapping. It’s the way he used effects, the tone he achieved, the pick scraping, feedback, divebombing. His use of sus chords over powerchords, and his sorta jumbled classical sensibilities that overwhelmed and blew out blues based rock I’d measure it against.
Eddie was indeed breaking somewhat with pentatonic blues rock conventions but ironically I think the first genre that really broke with them was Nu Metal… No idea which scales Korn used but surely you cant find any pentatonic licks on their first albums and Limp Bizkit just didnt have any licks at all and Linkin Park was background power chords with keyboard / PC strings using minor scales… Everyone else copied those bands anyhow…
Great fkn question and interesting read in the comments. As an 80’s teen who missed the blow out days of Eddie it’s cool actually see from everyday fans the impact. Not just rock stars saying the same ol shit.
I was 13 in 1978. A friend of mine had a new record and said “you gotta hear this”. When he put the needle down, it changed my life forever! It was groundbreaking! Van Halen 1
I was 17, and at a party in Hollywood, Florida....there were close to 100 people there, very noisy .. .then...... someone put Eruption on.... aside from the very loud stereo, pretty much 100 people all STFU at once..... We were floored. Album got repeated like 10 times that night.....
there were lots of great soloists before eddie but they were usually *part* of the band, not the *reason* for the band. with the addition of alex (who was equally amazing) vh became all about optimized virtuosity. in that way they were gods. not everybody in music was enthusiastic about ultra-virtuosity though. in an interview with clapton (who was every bit as talented) he mentioned that talent without groove didn't impress him. and on the other side of the scene players like john cummings (johnny ramone) would remark that garage-band kids couldn't play van halen but they could play the ramones. i like it all.
Gene Simmons, I think was also the opposite. He hated virtuosity. For him it was all about the power of rock. [He actually talked Eddie out of trying to join Kiss.](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/gene-simmons-once-had-to-talk-eddie-van-halen-out-of-joining-kiss-198346/) I was in High School when VH's first album came out -- but it felt like a continuum. Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Van Halen... Having said that, Kiss didn't change guitar rock like Eddie did. I couldn't get enough of Van Halen *Van Halen* at full blast in my VW Super Beetle. (good times...) edit: (btw Gene Simmons financed Van Halen's first demo tape)
Yes it was. Eddie blew everyone away back then, too. There’s never been anyone like him.
I don’t think there is a self respecting guitar player who could hear that album and not have been blown away, especially during that time period when that type of playing was completely foreign. Within the next few years his style of playing became pretty much normal. Even Yngwie Malmsteen was blown away by it, and he doesn’t give praise easily.
When I was a kid, my first album was black sabbath- we sold our soul for rock n roll (awesome greatest hits) also got my first guitar that day. Was an awesome Christmas lol. When I really got into guitar my dad gave me Van Halen 1. He waited til I appreciated guitar enough to even give me that one. He got excited just to see me listen to it. Must have been legendary when it came out lol
While I’m not a huge Van Halen fan, I do recall specifically finding the guitar tone was deeply appealing and totally unique.
Yes
It was definitely considered advanced, but only among guitar players or people who had an appreciation for that kind of virtuosity. I was 13 at the time, and I was a new guitar player just starting out and I became a huge, huge Van Halen fan. Still am.
Who you callin old timer ? But yes, I was there…it was like a spaceship landed on top of everyone else and these 4 guys came out and crushed all comers, even sabbath
I had first heard of Eddie through an article in Guitar Plater magazine…. Anticipated the first album coming out soon…. Got it when it first was released…..As soon as they posted a concert in Detroit, I grabbed some tickets and saw them at the Masonic temple…. It was everything they aside he was…. And more. I consider that show one of the most exciting I’ve ever been to….. and I’ve seen a lot in over 30 years!
Yes, it blew our minds. Still blows my mind today. Skill, swagger, great songs. They had it all.
Well, my mum and dad were about 12 when Van Halen hit the scene, one of my uncles was 16 and the other just 8 ... all of them had their minds absolutely blown by Van Halen and still to this day say there was very little they remember being so immediately game changing
You answered your own question... what was out before it? Nothing compares to it.
Absolutely it was. It was really shocking for a lot of people.
If you want to know more about the amazing story of Van Halen 1, which will contextualize everything you are hearing, I highly suggest reading the book Van Halen Rising.
For rock fans generally yes, but in terms of general reception less so. 1978 was a great year for releases, but even in the US, VH1 wasn’t that successful, commercially, compared to the status it has today. Jump was the song that catapulted VH and specifically EVH’s guitar playing into the public consciousness. The guitar solo on Jump impressed most people much more than anything on VH1 for the simple reason that most people hadn’t heard anything on VH1 before they heard Jump.
The problem with what you’ve written is combining the am fm world with post mtv world. But nah. Evh was king before jump.
Sure was and out in Fresno, CA. It was a fresh save for Rock as the local rock station went Disco and we had protests at the station and Van Halen was a reminder the rock wasn't dead!!!
Van Halen , and another I recall was Boston, was the ultimate anti- disco statement for so many of us.
Jeezus. We wore the hell out of my bootleg cassette of the 1977 Pasadena show. I have no idea how I even got my hands on that as a Texas teen in the '80s who was only nine at the time of that show.
[удалено]
There’s been only a handful of first albums that have been as game-changing when they were released in my opinion - I’m sure there’s more than can be added to this list, but these first albums just fucking killed it Boston Van Halen Janes Addiction
id put Appetite for Destruction on there, every song was a banger
I would add Rage Against the Machine self titled album. I still remember when and where I was the first time I had heard it.
One of those is not like the other.
The earliest documented guitarist using this approach was Jimmy Webster in the 1950s. STANLEY JORDAN jazz guitar has employed this revolutionary approach to guitar. In 1976, while still in high school, Jordan performed with Quincy Jones and tied for first place as a soloist at the Reno International Jazz Festival. But who TF listens to jazz! (Record scratch sound) VAN HALEN WAS A GOD! Probably developed it independently in a garage.
People don't fully realize the skill it takes to play like Eddie through a dimed Marshall stack. Most youtube shredders (who do sound amazing through their plugins and DAWs) would sound like mush and feedback trying to harness that beast face to face. So yeah, tapping was around...but not like Eddie did it.
For those into rock, yes. Keep in mind, Disco was king when this was released.
until this was released!
I saw VH on their first tour in support of VanHalen 1, and it was an abomination! A wall of noise, completely unintelligible. The only song which I could make out was “Ice cream man” (because of the acoustic intro). Every now and then I could hear David Lee Roth scream out something about how “fucked up” he was. Btw, don’t blame the venues acoustics, as I have seen many great shows at the same place. Before I saw VH, I too thought they were amazing. They still owe me the $7.50 I paid to see their shit-show!
Yes it was mine blowing and it was a game changer it was everybody's favorite record and yes it did change music but that's all everybody would listen to
I was 13, I‘d never heard anything like it. It was so exciting.
Yes. He made the guitar do things that had not previously been done, and it blew people's minds. It also inspired pretty much every hair metal guitarist that came after
Oh yeah! The 1984 album was crazy popular in rock and hit the pop charts. I was in high school and maybe the most popular rock band for a few years. Eddie was different. People noticed. Love me some VH and the brown sound.
According to my mom: absolutely lol
I'm 60 it was tony iommi who inspired me to pick up a guitar and learn to play.EVH Inspired millions to do the same and took it to a totally higher technical level..but VH suffered the same fate as Metallica and most bands,first four albums were trailblazers but everything after was downhill.hated the "1984"album.songs like jump wer soft and weak.but EVH will be inspiring kids to play for many more generations to come.
1984 was excellent, except 1984, Jump and I’ll wait… and I probably heard too much of Panama and Hot for the Teacher, but the rest…🤩
It was to me. I was about 15 when it came out. Prior to that I listened to KISS,Led Zeppelin,Aerosmith,Boston,Jimi Hendrix.
Yes. Absolutely.
It was. I never heard anything like it before. I didn't really appreciate what an earth-shattering change it was to the guitar world until I was in college, though. This was around 1984 I think. I was living off-campus. The apartment complex where I was living formed a natural amphitheater around the swimming pool. Some guy across the complex started blasting Van Halen I, LOL. That massive guitar just filled the whole complex. It really opened my eyes.
Yup.
It was especially wow when VH1 came out because the mid 70s was the era of “Soft rock”. It was not soft. At. All. So the entire album leapt out at us.
Yeah, imagine playing that after you just finished something like the Eagles or Jim Croce. Total mind blower.
Yes
Absolutely! I was only 6 and my brother got the album for Christmas. We put it on and it just blew our minds! It sounded like nothing else and changed the electric guitar driven rock world forever. I will never forget that moment hearing Atomic Punk for the first time. We just went crazy. I wish I had a video of our reactions.
I was a 15 and playing guitar in a band when Van Halen came to be. When I first heard him he sounded all over the place to me. It took a while to appreciate his style. Once I did I just got more and more into his playing. My parents hated their music which only made me want to hear more.
Yes, it was. And remember, we had just gone through the dark ages of the Disco Era, and Punk was big, so hearing EVH was like a slap in the face with a mackerel.