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Eddie Van Halen was the kind of outsize musician the term guitar god was invented to describe.
Below, weve rounded up some of the most legendary and unforgettable EVH stories from a lifetime of rock.
Nobodys going to find out.
Thank God, Jackson approved.
The guac didnt hit Roth.
It hit Steve Perry, though, and Steve Perry cried.
The accompanying diagram is sufficiently excellent:
Eddie Van Halen has died.
Like countless other legendary tracks, it was never meant to be on the album.
Our producer, Ted Templeman, happened to walk by and he asked, Whats that?
Lets put it on tape!
So I took one pass at it, and they put it on the record.
I didnt even play it right.
Theres a mistake at the top end of it.
To this day, whenever I hear it I always think, Man, I couldve played it better.
That day never arrived.
dimebag darrell and vinnie paul were such van halen fans that they said ‘van halen!’
to each other before every show.
rip in peace, to them all.
We just used them as noisemakers before we got signed.
Its like a miniaturized 8-track cartridge …
I mounted it in an old World War II practice bomb that I picked up in a junkyard.
(Gear nuts can view photos of Van Halens 1978 righere.)
In 2019, Van Halen accompanied his son, Wolfgang, to a Tool concert, as one does.
We destroyed the entire seventh floor of the Sheraton Inn, Van Halen recalledin a later interview.
We threw TVs out to the snow from the seventh floor.
I went into his room, grabbed the table and chair and put them in mine.
They couldnt figure it out.
Right then and there,SNLmusical director G.E.
It wasridiculoushow good it was,Smith later recalled.
Hes a master, he really is.
His ear was so good that he never bothered learning how to read music.
I fooled my teacher for six years, he said in aRolling Stoneinterview.
He never knew I couldnt read.
Id watch his fingers, and Id play it.
In a1980 interview, Van Halen expressed lots of affection for his musical dad.
My dad was one of the baddest clarinet players of his time.
He was so hot unbelievable, he raved.
My dad cries when he sees us play because he loves it.
You know hes so happy.
The WH-10s were always a problem, RHCP guitar tech Dave Leeonce explained to a Frusciante fan site.
I had just about every gearhead in SoCal on the lookout for them.
Microphones were then attached to the exhaust pipes.
The band then recorded the sound of the engine revving.
But heres a (slightly) less bummer-sounding tale from Hagars book.
(Yes, really.)
Decades later, in 2012, David Lee Roth explained that the stipulation wasnt just arbitrary rock-star excess.
It was a litmus test to see if venues could be trusted to handle the bands demanding performances.
