With Sammy Hagar, Van Halen produced four multi-Platinum, chart-topping albums and a string of massive singles. But the Red Rocker says one key song was left out of the band’s catalogue after Alex Van Halen unfairly dismissed it.

Hagar’s arrival to replace David Lee Roth came after the band had already begun expanding its use of keyboards—most notably on “Jump,” which had been recorded and released during the Roth era on the album 1984. Once inside the group, Hagar says he continued to encourage Eddie Van Halen to explore that direction further, helping pave the way for more keyboard-driven material in the Hagar-fronted period.

While Eddie Van Halen remained the band’s primary songwriter — he once described himself as both the group’s spark plug and engine — Hagar was also contributing ideas of his own. The guitarist was energized by the creative dynamic Hagar brought into the fold, but his brother, drummer Alex Van Halen, proved a stumbling block when Hagar pitched his song “Eagles Fly.”

“I showed them that song, and Eddie’s going, ‘Wow, wow, wow,’” Hagar told Total Rock. “And Alex goes, ‘Yeah, yeah. It sounds like John Denver, it’s cool,’ and moved on.”

But the drummer’s assessment would come back to haunt him. In 1987, Hagar was working on what would become I Never Said Goodbye, his ninth solo album and first since joining Van Halen. The record saw Eddie Van Halen acting as co-producer alongside Hagar and David Thoener (AC/DC, David Bowie, Kiss), with Eddie contributing bass throughout the sessions. Together, the trio resurrected “Eagles Fly,” transforming it from a stripped-back acoustic idea into a polished, contemporary power ballad.

“When it came out, Alex heard it, and he goes, ‘Hey, why the fuck didn’t we put that on a Van Halen record?’” Hagar recalled. “I went, ‘Well, Al, if you don’t remember, I can remember you said it sounded like John Denver’ — because I was playing it on acoustic guitar.”

The song has since become a personal favorite of Hagar’s, and he has suggested its origins reflect the broader creative tensions within the band at the time.

“I had a vision,” he said, though he added, “it wasn’t a dream. I was wide awake, and I had a feeling I was in a special place. Eddie loved it.”

At the time, Hagar says Alex Van Halen was resistant to him bringing outside ideas into the band unless they fit a strict internal division of labor.

“He was about his brother writing the music, and me writing the lyrics and the vocals,” Hagar said.

The dispute over “Eagles Fly” has since become one of several lingering “what-if” moments from the Hagar era — particularly given the commercial dominance of the band’s first album with him on vocals, 5150.

In hindsight, Hagar’s frustration appears less about a single rejected song and more about how songwriting authority was distributed within the band at the time — an internal balance that often sat uneasily alongside its commercial peak.

Elsewhere, Hagar has continued to revisit his Van Halen years in interviews, while guitarist Joe Satriani has also reflected on Eddie Van Halen’s playing and influence, highlighting aspects of his technique that he found particularly singular and difficult to replicate.

Van Halen had a rule: No one in the band played on anyone else’s records.

So how did Eddie Van Halen end up delivering one of the most famous guest electric guitar solos of all time on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”?

According to the guitarist, everyone else in the band was out of town, and he figured no one would mind — or even notice — if he made one exception. Speaking years later, Van Halen explained why he broke the band’s longstanding policy against outside sessions, why he never accepted payment for the performance, how he rearranged part of the song before recording his iconic solo and why those last-minute changes left Steve Lukather and the Thriller team scrambling behind the scenes.

Released in 1982, “Beat It” became one of the biggest singles of the decade and helped propel Michael Jackson’s Thriller to historic success. Producer Quincy Jones enlisted Toto guitarist Steve Lukather — who tracked the song’s now-iconic opening riff and much of the album — before calling on Van Halen, then rock’s biggest guitar hero, to record the solo.

Speaking on Piers Morgan Live alongside LL Cool J, Van Halen was asked why he hadn’t been paid for the session.

“Well, I didn’t ask for anything,” he replied.

“It was about 20 minutes out of my life,” he said. “Quincy had called me up and asked me if I wanted to do it, and the honest-to-God truth, it was the band’s policy that we didn’t do things outside of the band at the time.”

Even so, he figured he could quietly make an exception.

“Everybody’s out of town, so I had no one to ask,” he said laughing. “I figured, who’s going to know if I play on this black kid’s record?”

He was joking, of course. “Beat It” became a worldwide smash, with estimated sales exceeding 10 million copies, and Van Halen’s unmistakable solo became one of its defining moments. Alex Van Halen has since suggested the appearance only heightened tensions within the band, calling it one of the factors that contributed to David Lee Roth’s departure and eventual solo career with Steve Vai.

Despite describing the session as little more than 20 minutes of work, Eddie said he did far more than simply improvise a solo.

“The funniest thing of all was I actually rearranged the song,” he explained. “The section they wanted me to solo over had no chord changes underneath it, so I had to rearrange the song. And then Michael came in, and I said, ‘Oh, I hope you don’t mind, I changed your song,’ and he listened and went, ‘No, I really like that high, fast stuff you do!’”

According to Lukather, those last-minute changes created a major headache behind the scenes.

Speaking on the Roundtable with Drew podcast, he recalled that Van Halen’s decision to move the solo required engineers to physically edit the two-inch master tape, damaging the SMPTE time code that kept the various recordings synchronized.

“We had to make the song backward,” he said. “Quincy had cut another version with Michael’s vocals quintupled; they really worked hard on that vocal. Then they sent the tape up to Ed’s house to Donn [Landee, his engineer], and they cut the two-inch tape, which fucked the SMPTE code, which means they couldn’t sync up the master.

“So they had a two-inch tape with Michael’s pristine vocals, and then Ed decided he wanted the solo [somewhere else], so he put it together and sent it back to him, and it wouldn’t sync back up.”

Lukather said reconstructing the master became an exhausting process. Along the way, his own quadruple-tracked rhythm guitars — “I had to make this right for Eddie,” he quipped — were reduced to a double-track, while a Marshall stack was swapped for a Fender Deluxe to give the track a warmer sound better suited to Jackson’s R&B audience.

When Van Halen reflected on Jackson during his Piers Morgan Live appearance — recorded four years after the singer’s death — he also pushed back against the allegations that had surrounded the pop icon.

“He was a sweet guy, is all I know,” he said. “He got accused of a lot of things, [but] I think he wanted to remain a kid himself.”

Lukather, meanwhile, remains part of the conversation surrounding Eddie Van Halen's musical legacy. Although he has insisted he won't play on what is expected to become the final Van Halen album, he has been working with Alex Van Halen as the drummer continues developing the project. Steve Vai has also praised the quality of Eddie's unreleased material, further fueling anticipation for the long-rumored release.

Most fans know Joe Satriani as the guitarist David Lee Roth and Alex Van Halen approached for the post–Eddie Van Halen tribute tour that never got off the ground.

But according to Satriani, Roth first tried to recruit him decades earlier — for a band that would play Van Halen songs while Eddie was still alive and active.

Speaking to Thinking About Guitar, Satriani recalled receiving a call from Roth in the mid-’90s.

“In the mid ’90s, David Lee Roth called me; he wanted to put together a band to do Van Halen songs,” the guitarist says. “He went on and on about how we were the only guys who could really do it right, and he had all these crazy plans.”

It’s unclear exactly when the conversation took place. Roth briefly reunited with Van Halen in 1996 before the band moved on with Gary Cherone, whose stint as frontman led to the release of Van Halen III in 1998.

Whatever the timing, Satriani says he immediately questioned the premise.

“I said, ‘But Dave, Ed’s still alive! He’s still making amazing records. He’s still on tour. What guitar player would ever try to imitate him while he’s still working? It makes no sense.’

“‘Of course, I said, ‘Look, I’m not the guy.’”

For Satriani, stepping into Eddie Van Halen’s role while the guitarist was still recording and performing was unthinkable. As a lifelong admirer of Eddie’s electric guitar work, he had no interest in trying to recreate it while its creator was still actively pushing the instrument forward.

The idea resurfaced years later under very different circumstances.

Following Eddie Van Halen’s death on October 6, 2020, Satriani was contacted by Roth and Alex Van Halen about participating in a tribute project honoring the late guitarist. Reports later emerged that former Metallica bass guitarist Jason Newsted had also been approached, though the project ultimately stalled. Alex Van Halen would later place the blame on Roth.

“When he and Alex called me after Ed had passed away, it made a little bit more sense,” Satriani says. “Even though I tried to convince them I was not the person who could do it justice.”

Rather than take the role himself, Satriani suggested two guitarists he felt would be better suited to the challenge: his former student Steve Vai and Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt. In the end, the project never materialized.

Satriani would eventually find himself playing Van Halen music onstage, albeit in a different setting. In 2024, he joined Sammy Hagar’s Best of All Worlds tour, performing material spanning Hagar’s tenure with the band and the broader Van Halen catalog. While Hagar says Satch isn’t the best man for the job, he credits him with bringing “his own thing to the music.”

The tour was widely praised by fans and critics alike, but Satriani’s latest recollection reveals that his connection to Van Halen’s legacy almost began nearly 30 years earlier — thanks to an unexpected phone call from Roth and a proposal he simply couldn’t get behind.

There’s no doubt Eddie Van Halen was one of the most influential guitarists of his generation. Although he has his detractors, Van Halen’s playing helped ignite an electric guitar revolution built on virtuosity that came to dominate the 1980s.

But Van Halen believed many of the guitarists who followed in his wake misunderstood what he was actually doing. Speaking with Dweezil Zappa for a 1995 Guitar Player interview, he argued that an emphasis on speed and flash missed the point of his playing, which — at its core — was about feel, not technical display.

“I’ve influenced a batch of people in a certain period of time, and I think those people missed my point,” he said. “They took what they learned from me and made it very sterile and too calculated, too typewriter-perfect. I won’t name any names.

“People got sick of that type of flash guitar playing, whereas I never considered what I did flash. It was natural to me. I still play the same.”

Van Halen acknowledged that he, too, was shaped by earlier players, most notably Eric Clapton. But even as he absorbed those influences, he insisted his own playing quickly moved in a direction rooted less in imitation than in instinct.

“Eric Clapton was my god and everybody else’s,” he said. “I said that once in an interview: ‘That’s the guy I grew up on, but I don’t play anything like him.’ And it came back to haunt me. They took it like I was being an uppity prick about it. I didn’t mean that at all. I just meant that if you listen to Clapton and listen to me, it’s two completely different styles, even though he’s the guy I grew up on.“

Nevertheless, Van Halen took one rule from Clapton: a solo should tell a story.

“The shit he does… he spoke when he played,” he said of Clapton. “After having grown up on that, I thought that every time I solo I should make it like that too.”

By the end of the 1980s and into the early ’90s, guitar music began shifting away from the excesses of shred toward a more stripped-down aesthetic associated with grunge and alternative rock. Van Halen viewed that change not as a rejection of his era but as part of a recurring cycle in popular music.

Nevertheless, he found the results uninspiring.

“Nowadays it’s almost like solos are interchangeable. You can put a disc on and listen to a solo on one song and you might as well put it in any song because they don’t mean anything. It’s basically just beating off, and there’s no point to it.

“I think the reason why people play the way they do now is because it all broke down. Where could guitar have gone from where people in the ’80s took it? It was so flash it got ridiculous. So shit — the natural thing is to break it down to the lowest common denominator and start over.”

Ed wasn’t dismissive of newer players as a group, however. Even artists who stood outside technical orthodoxy, like Kurt Cobain, could still be making meaningful musical statements.

“He was still speaking,” Van Halen said of the Nirvana guitarist — a point that Joe Satriani recently made. “He was still expressing himself through one string or one note or whatever. But some people’s lack of technique doesn’t work.”

Ultimately, Van Halen saw the ebb and flow of guitar styles as cyclical rather than permanent — an ongoing reset between extremes of complexity and simplicity.

“The natural thing is to break it down to the lowest common denominator and start over,” he said. “And it’s just gonna build right back up. It’s almost like every ten years it happens. This is phase two of disco and punk. We survived the first one, and we’re going to survive this one too.”

The old adage goes that you should never meet your heroes; it’s sure to bring only disappointment.

But the friendship between Eddie Van Halen and Eric Clapton reveals another useful proverb about heroes: Never piss them off; they might tell you what they really think of you.

Although he’s an icon to millions of guitarists today, Eddie Van Halen was relatively unknown when Jas Obrecht interviewed him for Guitar Player’s November 1978 issue. Van Halen, the self-titled debut album from his band, had come out the previous February, but no one had interviewed the guitarist before Obrecht, who delivered essential insights into Eddie’s background, techniques and musical influences.

Among the first things the public ever learned about Eddie Van Halen was the key influence behind his furiously fast, technically precise but melodic electric guitar work.

“I’d say the main one, believe it or not, was Eric Clapton. I mean, I know I don’t sound like him.”

It was a surprising revelation, given that his style was much more raw and aggressive, as well as technical — “more like Hendrix or Blackmore,” Obrecht suggested.

“Yeah, I know,” Eddie replied. “I don’t know why, because Hendrix I like, but I was never into him like I was Clapton.

“And Clapton, man, I know every fuckin’ solo he ever played, note for note, still to this day.

“I used to sit down and learn that stuff note for note [off the record] The live stuff, like ’Spoonful,’ ‘I’m So Glad’ live — all that stuff.”

As Van Halen’s fame grew, Eddie and Clapton eventually crossed paths, hung out and formed a friendly relationship. Although there seemed to be not a drop of blues in Eddie’s highly technical shred guitar work, Clapton — who by this point was deeply wedded to the blues and Fender Stratocasters — suggested there was something innate about the younger guitarist’s sensibilities.

"If Eddie Van Halen likes the way I play, then assumedly, he must like what I liked,” he told Guitar Player in our July 1985 issue. “But if he can recognize all of that and still do what he does, then we have to accept that he's on to something that we're not really clear about. Because he couldn't be doing what he does and recognize Robert Johnson without there being something valid going on.”

It was high praise — an affirmation from an older, established guitar hero that Eddie’s transformational shred guitar work was rooted in the same bedrock from which Clapton’s own muscular and fluidly melodic blues-rock style came.

“He is very fast, and to my ears, a lot of the time he kind of goes over the top,” Clapton continued. “But that's because I'm a more simple player. Maybe I would play like that if I had the technique.

“I’ve heard that he slowed down records of mine to learn the solos. That's dedication! I don't know quite how to respond to that.”

Clapton’s comments might seem like a whole-hearted endorsement of Van Halen and his devotion to the blues. But below the surface, Clapton was harboring profound doubts about Eddie’s understanding of the genre. Roughly two years earlier, he’d been incensed after hearing a tribute song on Brian May’s 1983 Star Fleet Project mini-album. Titled “Blues Breaker,” the nearly 13-minute track featured May and Van Halen going to town on a medium-tempo blues workout that was tagged “Dedicated to EC”

Clapton wasn’t at all pleased by what he heard. While he’d held his tongue when speaking with Guitar Player in 1985, he vented his feelings when interviewed by Musician magazine shorty after, in 1986.

“It was so horrible, and they dedicated it to me,” he said. “They sent me a copy, and I put it on expecting something, and, you know, I was almost insulted that they should send this to me because they both… they can't play! They took turns to play solos and just went head at it with everything they knew. And there was no dynamics, no build up, no sensitivity. I was very disappointed.

“The thing is,” he added, “if [Van Halen] wants to play blues, he has to look at it as a style. It's got rules. It's like Japanese Kabuki theater or something. It's got certain things which you do and other things which you don't do.”

More personal, however, were his comments about Eddie’s obsession with his music. Contrary to his earlier statements to Guitar Player, Clapton felt that, despite studying his work so closely, Eddie had somehow never grasped the essence of the music from which Clapton himself drew.

“Eddie Van Halen went over the top,” he said. “It's crazy for him to have learned that much from me. I mean, he could have just been aware of what I was doing and then said, ‘Oh yeah, well, that's a bit like Buddy Guy,’ or, ‘That's a bit like so, and so.’ Put it all in perspective. To get obsessive about one person…

“If he was that tuned into me and missed that point, then he missed the whole point.”

Harsh as Clapton’s comments were, what tends to get overlooked were his negative appraisals of his own youthful attitude toward blues stated elsewhere in the interview. He cited his ignorance of Sonny Boy Williamson’s blues back when Clapton was a member of the Yardbirds. Clapton says he thought every 12-bar blues was the same.

“But every 12-bar blues is different,” he told Musician. “Sonny Boy Williamson would have an intro on certain songs, and if you didn't know that, then he would be disgusted with you.

“And I know this from experience because he was disgusted with me, because that was my attitude.”

Taken within context, Clapton’s comments are a critique on what guitarists tend to get wrong about playing the blues, and they're spoken from the experience of someone who made the same mistakes. Clapton was playing the mentor trying to help his student avoid his errors.

But the full extent of his treatise was missed if you focused solely on his comments about “Blues Breaker.” Eddie did. He was hurt, but he still hoped to remain friends with Clapton. Some years after, at a party in New York City, Eddie attempted to patch things up. He was reportedly drunk. Clapton — newly sober — came off as dismissive. Eddie was furious. “Forget that teabag,” he said.

That ballsack.

Eddie was still hurt a few years later when he sat down for an interview conducted by Dweezil Zappa in Guitar Player's March 1995 issue. Nearly 20 years after he praised Clapton in our pages, Ed offered a new assessment of his hero.

“I grew up on Clapton, but — don't hate me, Eric! — it's like he doesn't do that anymore. Now when he solos, to me it's like he's pissing up a rope. Excuse my French.

“Listen to his early solos, all the Cream stuff like ‘Sunshine of Your Love.’” Here Eddie played a flurry of Clapton licks. “The shit he does… he spoke when he played.

“And, like, ‘Born Under a Bad Sign’ — the end of that solo was great. After having grown up on that, I thought that every time I solo I should make it like that too.”

Clapton might have agreed with some of that, including the part about pissing up a rope. At the end of his Musician interview, he offered a revealing self-critique.

“I always overplay,” he said. “Whenever I listen back to stuff, I'm always disappointed. I mean, I hate listening to cassettes of shows. I listen sometimes, and think I could have done three notes to those 10. Just halved it and made it more meaningful. But it's very difficult.”

“It’s very difficult” — Van Halen and Clapton might have built something from that small patch of common understanding. They never spoke again.

As the Kinks' rhythm and lead guitarist, Dave Davies inspired a generation of players with his innovative use of power chords and distortion.

Pete Townshend often cited the group as a major influence, and was motivated particularly by Davies’ aggressive rhythm playing and distorted tone. The Who guitarist admitted that “You Really Got Me” inspired him to write “I Can’t Explain” in a similar style. Meanwhile, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton all took note of Davies' use of distortion, which was far more aggressive than what anyone had been doing in rock.

But Davies’ influence wasn’t limited to guitarists of rock’s 1960s wave. Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi cited him as an early influence on the heavy, down-tuned riffs that defined Sabbath’s sound and acknowledged the importance of the Kinks in creating the blueprint for heavy guitar riffing. The Kinks even inspired Al Di Meola to write a jazz-fusion classic.

And then there’s Eddie Van Halen, who was a fan of the group’s straightforward but powerful approach to rock. Van Halen famously covered two songs by the Kinks: "You Really Got Me," which the California-based hard rockers released as their 1978 debut single, and "Where Have All the Good Times Gone,“ which appeared on their 1982 album, Diver Down.

To be clear, Davies appreciates that he and his brother Ray had an impact on rock and, particularly, rock guitarists.

“It’s always very flattering for people to copy you, but it’s only music, isn’t it? It is an important vehicle, but we shouldn’t take it too seriously,” Davies told Guitar Player in our March 1990 issue. “We’ve been copied more than a lot of people would care to admit. Ray’s music has impressed upon and influenced a lot of people in many different ways, but that’s good.

But, with that said, Davies wasn’t a fan of Van Halen’s take on the Kinks’ classic.

“When I first heard Van Halen’s version of ‘You Really Got Me,’ I laughed,” he said. “It just seemed so exaggerated. It really misses the point of the whole meaning of the song: four working-class guys, struggling to do something different. In the original record, you can sense that in its energy, the roughness. It’s very impure.

“The Van Halen thing; it’s very accomplished and flashy, but what does it mean?

“Whereas when the Stranglers did ‘All Day and All of the Night,’ I thought it was much more respectful, because they actually tried to get a similar snare drum sound and guitar sound, which I thought was strange. I can’t imagine anybody wanting to do that anyway.”

He laughed. “But at least it seemed more respectful to the original concept and feeling. Even the solo was like the original solo, which I thought was really nice and sweet.”

In the same interview, Davies also addressed claims that Jimmy Page had played the electric guitar solos on those early Kinks sides. Davies, who said he was all of 16 years old when he cut those solos in spring 1963, blamed Page's claim on a penchant for myth-building.

“You see, Jimmy Page was a friend of [producer] Shel Talmy’s, and was a session player who used to hang around and hope that he could get in on sessions,” he said. “And we locked him out.

“But he learned a lot, you know, like the many other people who wouldn’t admit borrowing from the Kinks. And I suppose when he became successful himself, all credit due to him, his ego was so inflated he probably thought he invented the bloody instrument anyway, being carried along on that crystal and glamour.

"It’s all an illusion, building your ego up, and eventually something’s going to pop it like a balloon and you’re back flat down on your ass again. Which is what happened, didn’t it?

“And I suppose it was a bit unfortunate of him; I thought he did me a great injustice by saying that. Besides, I can’t see anybody crazy enough to play a solo like the one on ‘You Really Got Me’ anyway.”

Sammy Hagar has spent decades sharing stages and studios with some of rock’s most celebrated musicians, including Ronnie Montrose and Joe Satriani. But when the conversation turns to Eddie Van Halen, he still struggles to find an equal.

As Hagar prepares to bring his Best of All Worlds tour back for a limited summer run — featuring Satriani, bass guitarist Michael Anthony and drummer Kenny Aronoff — the singer has been reflecting on his years with Van Halen and on the impact the guitarist continues to have on musicians years after his death in 2020.

For Hagar, Van Halen wasn’t simply a groundbreaking guitarist. He was a transformational figure whose influence extended far beyond the instrument itself.

“I can’t imagine where guitar players would be without Eddie,” Hagar says. “He just took a fuckin’ hard left, man, and we’re going to outer space. There were great guitar players before him: Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix.

“I mean, Hendrix kind of did the same thing — he got that whammy bar in there and changed everything. But Eddie took the whammy bar and the hammer and the frickin’ tapping.

“But it wasn’t just the innovation of what he did; he was a great musician. He was a master. He was fuckin’ Beethoven — he was that unique. He belongs in that category.”

Hagar argues that Van Halen’s impact is often reduced to flashy technique when it should be measured by his broader contribution to modern music.

“People call him a rock god — he’s a music god, in my opinion,” he says. “When I bring keyboard players into the band now and they have to learn ‘Right Now’ and some of his keyboard parts, they’re holding their heads in their hands and saying, ‘Fuck! This guy played keyboards just as unique as he played guitar.’

“And on guitar, Joe [Satriani]’s going, ‘Wow, this chording!’”

In fact, Hagar believes Van Halen’s influence helped keep the guitar relevant at a time when electronic instruments were increasingly dominating popular music.

“So I can’t imagine where guitar players would be without Eddie,” he says. “I think they probably would’ve come and gone and we’d be listening to electronic music. I think Eddie saved guitar players — he saved us so we could continue and compete with those damn keyboards and electronic instruments and Pro Tools and all that crap.”

Hagar’s admiration isn’t limited to Van Halen’s playing. He says the guitarist fundamentally changed him as a songwriter and vocalist during their decade together.

“I just loved working with him,” Hagar says. “I don’t know how many songs we wrote together, but it made me a better musician. I expanded my lyrical abilities.”

He points to songs like “Love Walks In” and “Black and Blue” as examples of the unexpected places Van Halen’s music could take him creatively.

“Like when he was playing ‘Love Walks In’ on piano — stuff came out of my mouth I would never have sung,” Hagar says. “The way his playing inspired a lyric and the words that fit melodically, rhythmically within the song, just writing with him was crazy.

“I remember when we wrote ‘Black and Blue’ — it’s the most syncopated lyric/guitar thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I would never write a song like that without Eddie.”

According to Hagar, Van Halen’s writing only became more adventurous as the years went on.

While many fans still point to the band’s earliest recordings as the guitarist’s creative peak, Hagar believes some of his most sophisticated work arrived later.

“So many people think the early stuff was his best stuff,” he says. “Well, no, that was just the first time you heard him. It was so fresh and new when you heard ‘Eruption’ or ‘Spanish Fly’ or these intros on these songs.

“Was that the best stuff? It was his simplest stuff.”

Hagar points to “Can’t Stop Loving You,” from 1995’s Balance, as one example of the complexity Van Halen was exploring during the band’s later years.

“When we play that song now, Joe looks at me and goes, ‘Wow, what a piece of music! Every single bar is different. It just keeps changing.’ And this is Joe Satriani. This isn’t some kid that’s just learning how to play guitar.”

The increasingly intricate music sometimes left Hagar wondering whether his bandmate was deliberately trying to challenge him.

“I was always joking that in the later years, Ed was trying to fuck me up,” he says with a laugh. “The way he started writing music. It was like he was saying, ‘Sing to this, asshole.’

“Like he was just trying to stretch me out until either I did it or I said, ‘I quit. I can’t do that. Make that an instrumental.’ But I did it.”

More than three decades after joining Van Halen, Hagar remains convinced that the experience represented the artistic high-water mark of his career.

“It was an honor being able to play with Eddie,” he says. “It made me a better musician. It made me a better writer. It made me a better singer, without a doubt. I did my best vocals ever with Van Halen.

“The peak of my life and my career pinnacle? Van Halen, without a doubt. Do I think I’m ever gonna be bigger than that again? Fuck no! I might be richer, but I ain’t gonna be more famous.”

Few guitarists have shaped rock music more profoundly than Eddie Van Halen. But according to Jesus and Mary Chain co-founder William Reid, that influence came with a downside.

“I can’t stand Eddie Van Halen’s guitar playing,” Reid says. “I think he ruined rock guitar all through the ’80s and ’90s because so many people copied him.”

Reid made the remarks during a recent interview with Stereogum alongside his brother and bandmate, Jim Reid. The conversation began with a discussion about simplicity, creativity and the virtues of working within limitations, but eventually turned to the late Van Halen guitarist and the impact he had on generations of electric guitar players.

“Not having a lot of equipment forces you to be more inventive,” Jim Reid says. “I can play guitar, but only just. It’s kinda deliberate. I play guitar to the level I need to.

“Sometimes knowing too much about making music gets in the way, and it ends up back to Eddie Van Halen again.”

William Reid was even less charitable.

“I think guitar players should never learn scales,” he says before describing Van Halen as one of “the worst guitar players in the world.”

“I can’t stand Eddie Van Halen’s guitar playing. I think he ruined rock guitar all through the ’80s and ’90s because so many people copied him. And I just couldn’t get any of that playing as fast as you fucking can and cramming as many notes in one second as you could.”

It’s a remarkable criticism of a guitarist whose influence remains virtually unmatched in rock. Following the release of Van Halen in 1978 and the groundbreaking instrumental “Eruption,” Van Halen inspired countless players to rethink what could be done on the instrument, ushering in an era of technical innovation that dominated guitar culture throughout the 1980s.

Yet Reid’s criticism isn’t really aimed at Van Halen’s abilities as a player. Rather, it’s directed at the wave of imitators who followed in his wake and embraced speed and technical prowess as ends in themselves.

As an example of the kind of musician he admires, Reid pointed to Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook.

“I listen to Peter Hook’s bass riffs,” he says, “and I think that’s a thousand times better than anything Eddie Van Halen could ever conjure up.”

The comparison underscores a divide that has existed in rock music for decades. On one side are players who push the technical boundaries of the instrument. On the other are musicians who place a higher value on mood, melody and memorable parts than sheer virtuosity.

The Jesus and Mary Chain have long belonged to the latter camp. Formed in Scotland in 1983, the band became one of alternative rock’s most influential acts, helping lay the groundwork for the shoegaze movement with its blend of pop melodies, feedback and noise.

Whether fans agree with Reid or not, his comments are a reminder that one of rock’s oldest arguments remains unresolved: Is great guitar playing about technical achievement, or about creating something unforgettable with the fewest possible notes?

Steve Lukather is always a blast to chat with. And as the man who has held down Toto’s proverbial fort — along with thousands of iconic sessions — dialed in with Guitar Player to catch up, he was in rare form.

“What do you wanna know?” Luke asks, laughing. “I don’t know, man. What can I possibly tell you right now?”

Lukather, of course, knows that the world is wondering about the project he’s working on with Alex Van Halen. Rumors have ranged from Luke taking his old pal Eddie Van Halen’s place to the duo writing new music.

The facts, most of which Luke isn’t allowed to talk about, reveal that none of the above are true. What this project really comes down to is a brother and a close friend working together to pay their respects to an electric guitar legend via music.

With that said, Luke is not playing guitar on a new Van Halen album. In fact, this isn’t a Van Halen album at all, and as of now, Luke isn’t playing a lick of guitar but co-producing.

“I’m telling you, this is not throwaway shit,” Lukather says of the tracks Eddie Van Halen left behind. “When I heard them, I said to Al, ‘How fucking come you didn’t use these?’ And the answer was because nobody could write to it. So if you think this is a bunch of throwaway crap that we’re trying to Mickey Mouse together to suck the dollar out of poor, unsuspecting Van Halen fans, it’s not.”

Lukather admits that he doesn’t know what the project will be called. “Those are Alex Van Halen questions,” he says. “I’m just here to be his sidekick, and somebody that he’s gotten very close with since Ed’s death.”

Though Lukather’s relationship with the Van Halens goes back further than that. “We’ve always been pals,” Lukather says. “It’s like Al’s missing a piece of himself. That’s how I feel. He looks at me as somebody he trusts, and who was close with Ed.”

For Lukather, the reward comes via the process. “I don’t have ulterior motives,” he says. “This is not about money. This is about love of the guys and trying to help. I’m not gonna be involved in an obvious way. So, I wish people would get the fuck off my back!” he says with a laugh.

And even if Lukather was asked to play guitar, which he isn’t, he doesn’t feel he’s the person for the job. “I’m not qualified,” he says. “Call Dweezil — he plays that shit. Call Nuno! I can name 10 guys, like Vai or Satch. I’m nowhere near qualified to start dabbling in the Van Halen world.”

What did you think about the initial rumors that you were taking over as guitarist of Van Halen?

Well, first off, that’s the most ridiculous and humorous thing I’ve ever heard. I am no more qualified to try and play like Ed Van Halen than I am to be the first man to tug my dick on the planet. [laughs] I don’t know how anybody could think that would even be a reality. Honestly, it’s laughable. I don’t play… I couldn’t… I don’t play like Ed. It’s crazy.

How far back do you and Alex go?

We’ve been friends for 45 years. I mean, I was close friends with the Van Halens, but I really love all the guys. The only guy I don’t know is David Lee Roth. I met him once or twice, but very briefly. I’ve just always been a fan since the beginning, you know? What can I say?

What are you and Alex actually working on?

Well, being a fan isn’t what it’s about. Alex needs some help. He came to me and said, “Look, I need some help with this.” I went, “How can I help?” But there’s no need for another guitar player.

Meaning you’re not playing guitar on this?

First off, Eddie played some of the most amazing shit I’ve ever heard. And it’s not pieces on the floor that have to be snapped back together and try to Mickey Mouse something together that might be sellable. These are fucking finished tracks with Ed and Al, and Ed’s playing bass on a lot of it. That’s all I can say right now because it’s a much bigger picture, and it’s Alex’s story to tell.

You can’t reveal the nature of the music, but can you expand on your role?

I am there 100 percent to be his co-producer and help him through the technical aspects. I’m not gonna play. There’s not gonna be any Lukather or Toto fingerprints on a Van Halen thing. I can fucking promise you that. I’m there to be Al’s wingman, and go, “How can I help you do this?” I’m there to go, “Want me to help you do some vocals? How do we do these mixes?” It’s about making sure that there’s quality control from somebody he trusts.

Does being a friend and a contemporary make you the right person for the job?

I can listen to stuff, and go, “I know Ed wouldn’t like that.” I can say, “I think Ed would dig that,” you know? I’m just being that third ear.

Is Wolfgang involved?

I’m hoping that Al is gonna ask Wolf to be involved on some level. I haven’t talked to Wolf in a long time. It’s sad, actually. I’d like to, you know? We sort of just got busy, and we haven’t. But I think what he’s doing is wonderful. I think he’s an incredible musician. I think if anybody is gonna play anything that’s needed, he would be qualified to do so. But there really isn’t a need for other players to come in at this point.

Surely, listening to this stuff has to be a reminder of Ed’s greatness.

We all did the tapping thing when it first came out because it was an amazing trick to learn. And after a while, guys like Satch and Steve Vai did it their own way because all the guys were doing a very derivative and obviously Van Halen thing. It just got a little tired.

But that’s not what Ed was trying to do—Ed was trying to fill out a three-piece band. The intricacy between his lead and rhythm playing at the same time was pretty peerless, man. There’s not a lot of guys who could make the racket that Eddie Van Halen did, man. It changed the world.

You won’t be disappointed in the playing; I can tell you that. Ask Steve Vai. I think somebody asked him, and Steve may have heard a few things that I’ve heard. I think he said something in the press about it. But with Ed, man, I felt the same way you did when you heard him. It was jaw-dropping, and it still is.

For all the mythology surrounding Van Halen’s rise, David Lee Roth says the band’s earliest songs were born in a space barely big enough for two people.

Speaking during a recent solo appearance at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Pennsylvania, the singer became visibly emotional as he recalled the tiny room where he and Eddie Van Halen first learned how to write songs together — a place so cramped, he said, that “our knees would touch.”

The memory resonated with Roth because it reminded him of his own upbringing.

“My dad was just starting in school on the GI Bill when I happened,” Roth told the audience. “Back in 1954, the Fender Stratocaster was released, and so was I.”

For much of his childhood, Roth said, his family lived in student housing that was “about the size of the drum riser here.” His own corner of the apartment was little more than a washer-and-dryer space outfitted with cinder blocks and a foam cushion.

Years later, he encountered something remarkably similar when he first visited Eddie’s home.

“When I first walked into Ed’s, it wasn’t even a room,” Roth recalled. “It was identical to the way I grew up.”

According to Roth, you had to walk through the space to get from the backyard to the kitchen. Officially it was Eddie’s room, but in reality it was little more than a small alcove.

“The beginnings of every song we sing to you tonight, I started with Ed,” Roth said.

Eddie would sit there with an electric guitar that he couldn’t plug into an amplifier because his mother wouldn’t allow it.

“So I would have to listen to the electric guitar without an amp,” Roth remembered. “And it’d be so close that our knees would touch.”

For hours at a time, the pair would hunch over a small cassette recorder documenting riffs and ideas.

“Those first couple of years, God, how many hours did I spend leaning over like this?” Roth said. “Tape recorded on a Sony little thing with the push buttons and the cassette player. Take it home, write the lyrics and bring it back and go, ‘I think it’s a song about ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’ or something. What do you got next?’”

The future rock stars were hardly living large. Roth joked that when one of them suggested having a cigarette, it usually meant sharing a single one.

“‘Hey, you wanna have a cigarette?’ He’d go, ‘Yeah,’” Roth recalled. “And that’s what we would have. The two of us, one cigarette.”

That arrangement often led to arguments.

“‘Don’t fuckin’ hotbox it. You’re lipping it.’ ‘No, fuck you, too.’ ‘Oh, fuck you twice.’”

The singer laughed as he remembered the constant friction.

“There was friction early, and we loved it.”

What struck Roth, however, was how completely that dynamic survived success.

Roughly 30 years later, he and Eddie reunited to write the two new songs that appeared on Van Halen’s 1996 Best Of Volume I collection: “Can’t Get This Stuff No More” and “Me Wise Magic.”

By then, Roth said, both men were living in what he jokingly called “tombs with a view,” and Eddie had built a multimillion-dollar recording studio packed with state-of-the-art equipment.

Yet when it came time to write, the guitarist instinctively recreated the conditions that had sparked their earliest collaborations.

Roth remembered sitting in the middle of the enormous studio reading a paperback while waiting for Eddie to arrive.

“When he came in, he put a cigarette in his mouth, came over, brought a chair right in front of me, and sat down in it and scooted forward till our knees touched,” Roth said.

“That’s how I wrote the last two songs. Full circle.”

When Van Halen reunited with original frontman David Lee Roth in 2006, the long-awaited comeback came with an unexpected twist: bassist Michael Anthony — a member of the band since its earliest days — was nowhere in the lineup.

In his place was a new addition to the Van Halen family: Wolfgang Van Halen, the teenage son of guitarist Eddie Van Halen. The move sparked immediate backlash from some fans, many of whom viewed it as nepotism. But according to drummer Alex Van Halen, Anthony wasn’t pushed out — he simply stopped responding.

Speaking recently to the Brazilian outlet KazaGastão, Alex said the band did reach out to its longtime bass guitarist before moving forward.

“People think there were family influences in how he [Wolfgang] became part of the band, which is simply not true,” he said. “Ed and I, as usual, were in the studio alone, because nobody else tolerated it. They’d rather be at the beach.

“We did call Mike, because we owed him that. We did call him, and he just didn’t answer. I’m not mad at Mike, but we had the same manager. Come on — you’ve gotta work for this.”

According to Alex, Wolfgang’s arrival came about naturally while he and Eddie were working in the studio.

“Nobody showed up,” he recalled. “One day Ed and I were playing, and this bass comes in. It had a nice feel to it. Behind the curtain it was Wolf.”

Wolfgang would go on to play bass on the band’s final studio album, A Different Kind of Truth, released in 2012. He later said his presence also helped bring the group back to the stage, noting that playing with his son was “one of [Eddie’s] favorite things.”

Since his father’s death in 2020, however, Wolfgang has largely avoided leaning on the Van Halen legacy. Apart from appearances such as the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert, he has focused on his own project, Mammoth WVH.

Alex says that independence has been intentional.

“He’s very careful that he doesn’t want to be Ed Jr,” the drummer said. “He was in a very tough spot. He could have just continued with the Van Halen stuff, but he decided he was his own man.”

Wolfgang himself has stressed that his musical approach differs from his father’s. Speaking in 2024, he said, “I approach guitar playing more as a producer and more as a drummer than a guitar player. Rhythm is always the first thing for me, and melody is the second. It’s more about songwriting when it comes to Mammoth. Not every song needs a solo.”

Meanwhile, Alex has been working on unreleased Van Halen material recorded with Eddie before his death. The project, reportedly being developed with guitarist Steve Lukather, is intended as a follow-up to A Different Kind of Truth. It’s not yet clear whether Wolfgang will take part or who will provide vocals, though guitarist Steve Vai — who has heard some of the archive recordings — has suggested the music is promising.

Steve Vai once found himself sitting in Eddie Van Halen’s home studio, surrounded by shelves of tapes the guitarist had recorded on his own — a private archive that may soon be heard by the public.

The material, Vai recalls, was extraordinary.

“I was up at Edward’s house once, in his studio,” Vai tells us via Zoom. “He invited me. He had a room filled with tapes, and he was pulling them out and we were listening. He would just sit and record and play.

“And I’m listening to this stuff and, I’ll tell you, nobody plays like they do when they’re sitting in their room alone. It was a whole library of tapes, and it was such great stuff.”

The experience prompted Vai to ask Van Halen a question he’d long wondered about.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you make a solo record?’” Vai recalls. “But he always felt that Van Halen was his solo records.”

Now Vai is among those eager to hear what may emerge from Van Halen’s vaults, which his brother Alex Van Halen is currently reviewing with help from Steve Lukather.

“So I’m sure there’s a lot there to play with, and it’ll be great,” Vai says. “And I’m really glad Alex is working with Luke. More than anybody I knew through the years, Luke and Edward were like this.” Vai crosses his fingers. “So that’s the best guy to help with this.”

Alex Van Halen has acknowledged that he and Lukather are going through recordings his brother left behind after his death in 2020 at age 65. No details have been shared about what may be released or when.

Vai, of course, has plenty on his plate to keep him occupied until the Van Halen material becomes available for public consumption. He’s currently on the road with the SatchVai Band, his new endeavor with longtime friend — and former guitar teacher — Joe Satriani. They’ve released three songs so far and have completed a full album, though no release date has been announced. The tour wraps May 30 in Virginia.

Five weeks later, Vai will be in Europe with Beat, the all-star quartet featuring co-guitarist Adrian Belew, bass guitarist Tony Levin and drummer Danny Carey of Tool, performing music from the early-’80s era of King Crimson.

The group launched in 2024, and Vai says its popularity has surpassed all expectations.

“I took the gig because I loved the music, and I’m just attracted to virtually impossible challenges — and Robert Fripp guitar parts, that’s a virtually impossible challenge,” says Vai, who has received both Fripp’s blessing and valuable input along the way.

“The big surprise I discovered when we got out there was this: It’s not the musicians who are the attraction, although there’s some of that. It’s the music. It’s the way the music is supported by those fans. They are fiercely supportive. The music was the boss, and that music is beloved. So the turnout was a surprise and a delight.”

Vai and company have already taken Beat around North America, South America and Japan. The upcoming European run will wrap July 27. A Beat Live album from the tour’s early legs was released in September.

“We’re hoping some more Beat stuff will happen after that,” Vai says — which, of course, raises the prospect of the band creating music of its own, an idea that leaves the guitarist somewhat ambivalent.

“Well, that’s an interesting question that comes up,” Vai acknowledges. “It comes up in my mind and everybody’s. And of course it can happen. We could sit and start writing things.

“But I’m not quite sure how I feel about that, because in Beat I feel like a dutiful soldier. That’s my role. I’m here to do my best to deliver Robert Fripp’s notes to the fans who love this music. Of course there are some of my notes in there, but they’re not my songs, and they’re not my musical DNA.

“So I’m trying to figure out: If I start writing for this, how does that square with King Crimson music — and then what is Beat? I don’t know yet, but it’s something to think about, and maybe there’s an answer in there someplace.”

Vai adds that after focusing on SatchVai and Beat, he’ll be eager to return to his own work. On his docket are an acoustic-and-vocal album and, he says, “three or four” albums drawn from sessions with the Metropole Orchestra in the Netherlands and the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra in Finland. He also has a piece to compose that will be performed during the summer of 2027 in The Hague, and he’ll host a Creamsicle Sunset cruise on the Rhine River around the same time.

Valerie Bertinelli still remembers the moment she first noticed the man she would eventually marry — long before she knew anything about his music.

“I look at it, and I’m like, ‘That guitar player’s really fucking cute,’” she recalled of seeing Eddie Van Halen before attending a 1980 concert in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Speaking on Ted Danson’s Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast (via People), Bertinelli said she had never even heard of Van Halen at the time.

“I was into Elton John and Linda Ronstadt,” she said.

Her brother had tried to prepare her by giving her an eight-track tape of the band before the show — but it didn’t take.

By then, Van Halen had already released three albums and was becoming one of the biggest rock acts in the world, while Eddie was changing the game for electric guitarists. Bertinelli, meanwhile, was already a household name thanks to the hit TV sitcom One Day at a Time, which she joined in 1975 at age 15.

Still, nothing prepared her for meeting guitarist Eddie Van Halen backstage.

“He was the epitome of shy,” she said.

But onstage, the dynamic shifted quickly.

“I was invited to sit on the side of the stage, and Ed kept winking at me and making eyes at me,” she recalled. “He would go over and change his guitars, and we ended up going back to their hotel that night.”

What followed was an immediate, intense connection.

“I was crushing on this guy big time,” she said. “I was 20. He was 25. We went back to the hotel. We talked. We hung out by the outdoor pool.”

When the band left town, he promised to call her.

“He didn’t call for three days,” she said. “And I was getting really anxious.”

When he finally did, she didn’t hesitate.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you move in with me?’ And he moved in with me. And eight months later we were married.”

Their son, Wolfgang, would be born 10 years later. But by then, Bertinelli says, the relationship had already been shaped by a much darker undercurrent.

“We had amazing, good times and really tragic, scary, hard times because we were both drinking, using drugs in the ’80s,” she said. “And then I stopped, and he didn’t.”

Despite therapy and efforts to stabilize their lives, the marriage eventually unraveled.

“We loved each other dearly, but at a certain point, after Wolfie got to a certain age, I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’”

She also reflected on Van Halen’s long struggle with addiction and smoking — habits that would later contribute to his declining health.

“He used a lot of different tools that were soothing but harmful to his body,” she said. “A lot of us use different tools in our toolbox for trauma that numb feelings we don’t want to feel.”

In 2000, Eddie underwent surgery that removed part of his tongue as part of cancer treatment.

“The doctor said, ‘You know this is because you smoke, right?’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Ed, God, you better stop smoking.’”

Eddie Van Halen died of throat cancer in October 2020.

But his influence — and the music he helped create — continues to resonate. His brother Alex is currently working on a new Van Halen project using recordings made before his death.

He’s worth an estimated $245 million — but Sting says his children shouldn’t expect to inherit it.

The former Police bass guitarist and frontman believes leaving large fortunes to kids can actually do more harm than good.

“I think the worst thing you can do to a kid is to say, ‘You don't have to work,’” Sting says in an interview with journalist Mark Phillips on CBS Sunday Morning. “That's a form of abuse that I hope I'm never guilty of.”

Sting, whose career with Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland helped make The Police one of the biggest bands of the 1980s, says he wants his six children to build their own lives and careers without relying on his wealth.

The band’s five studio albums have sold more than 75 million copies worldwide, helping the singer — born Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner — build a fortune estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars.

But he says financial independence matters more than inheritance.

“All of my kids have been blessed with this extraordinary work ethic, whether it's the DNA of it or whether I've said to them, ‘I’m paying for your education. You've got shoes on your feet. Go to work!’”

“I think there's a kindness there and a trust in them that they will make their own way,” Sting adds. “They're tough, my kids.”

When asked whether his children ever complain about his approach, he jokes: “No — not to my face, they don't.”

Sting first shared his stance publicly in a 2014 interview with The Daily Mail.

“I certainly don't want to leave them trust funds that are albatrosses round their necks,” he said. “They have to work. All my kids know that and they rarely ask me for anything, which I really respect and appreciate.”

“Obviously, if they were in trouble I would help them,” he added. “But I’ve never really had to do that. They have the work ethic that makes them want to succeed on their own merit.”

The 74-year-old musician has two children from his marriage to actress Frances Tomelty — Joe, 49, and Fuchsia, 44 — and four children with producer Trudie Styler: Mickey, 42; Jake, 40; Eliot, 35; and Giacomo, 30.

Sting isn’t the only rock star to embrace a hands-off philosophy with his children. Dave Grohl has similarly said his daughter Violet Grohl built her growing music career without help from him.

The exact value of Sting’s estate could also be affected by an ongoing royalties dispute involving Summers and Copeland. The two musicians have argued they are owed roughly $2 million for their role in shaping Sting’s songs in the studio.

Summers has been particularly outspoken about the group’s biggest hit, “Every Breath You Take.” He says the track was nearly removed from the band’s 1983 album Synchronicity before he devised the electric-guitar riff that became its defining hook.

One night in 1983, Eddie Van Halen got drunk in a beachfront Malibu rental and began experimenting on a pristine white Yamaha grand piano that wasn’t his. The instrument belonged to composer Marvin Hamlisch.

Armed with forks, knives, screwdrivers, and even batteries, he scraped the strings, played slide across them, and recorded the eerie noises. He also left lit cigarettes on the instrument, scorching its glossy white finish.

“So I wasted his fuckin' piano,” Eddie later admitted to Guitar Player. “There were cigarette burns all over it. They had to restring it.”

The incident might sound extreme, but for Eddie it was almost routine. The guitarist had a long history of tearing apart instruments in pursuit of new sounds.

His 1975 Ibanez Destroyer provides a famous example. After using the electric guitar on defining Van Halen hits like “Runnin' With the Devil” and “You Really Got Me,” Ed modified the guitar with a chainsaw, cutting a large V-shaped notch into the body below the bridge. The modification drastically altered the tone, and the guitar never sounded the same.

He even ruined pickups — including a Gibson “Patent Applied For” humbucker — while trying to pot them with wax to stop high-volume squealing.

But Hamlisch’s piano may have been Eddie’s most punishing act of destruction. Hamlisch was a famed composer and conductor who wrote for stage and screen, including the Barbra Streisand hit “The Way We Were,” from the film of the same name.

Because he was often away from his beachfront home in Malibu, Hamlisch made the property available for rental. That’s how Eddie and his wife, Valerie Bertinelli, came to live there during the spring and summer of 1983.

“Everything was white — white piano, white carpet,” Ed recalled in Guitar Player’s March 1995 issue. “We had to leave a huge deposit for cleaning the place.”

Ed likely blew that deposit — and maybe more — during a late-night experiment on Hamlisch’s Yamaha grand.

“I got drunk one night — actually more than one night — and I started dickin' around on this piano,” Ed said. “I don't know what possessed me to do this, but I went in the kitchen, grabbed forks and knives, and started scraping the strings and doing harmonics on the strings. I used screwdrivers and batteries, trying to play slide on the strings. I let a tape roll and recorded it all.”

Hamlisch may have been none the wiser: Eddie reportedly had the piano repaired without his knowledge.

Ed dubbed the recording “Strung Out,” a reference to both his state of mind and the piano’s condition. The tape sat in the vault until the recording of Van Halen’s Balance in 1995, when producer Bruce Fairbairn approached Ed looking for an intro for the track “Not Enough.”

“Bruce asked me if I could come up with some kind of intro for ‘Not Enough,’ the ballad, and I'm going, ‘Well, I've got some pretty twisted shit that you might like.’ He heard it and went, ‘This is great!’

“It sounds like a terrible B-flick horror soundtrack. It was all in fun.”

While staying at the house, Eddie also composed three instrumentals — including one featuring a guitar solo — for The Seduction of Gina, a movie of the week starring Bertinelli. The music was a true solo effort, with Ed playing both guitar and synthesizer.

The film’s director liked the music so much that he asked Eddie to score the entire movie. But Van Halen were busy at work on 1984 — the album that would launch them to global superstardom.

When Nuno Bettencourt met Eddie Van Halen in 1991, he quickly learned two things: his hero knew exactly who he was — and he’d read what Bettencourt had said about him in the press.

As Nuno tells SiriusXM, their encounter took place in Los Angeles shortly after Bettencourt’s band Extreme completed the recording of their breakthrough album, Pornograffitti.

“I was staying in town to produce a Dweezil Zappa album called Confessions, and on the way to the studio one day he said, ‘Hey, I’ve got to make a quick stop.’ It was at CenterStaging.”

Nuno went in with him to find Van Halen rehearsing. As soon as Eddie saw Nuno, he stopped the band.

“I was like, ‘Uh-oh, he’s gonna kick me out.’ And he came over and — other than Elton John — he’s the only guitarist or musician who’s ever kissed me on the lips.

“I thought I was special, but then I read that he did that to Kurt Cobain as well, and he did it to so-and-so, so he was a bit of a slut. He kissed everybody on the lips ‘hello.’”

Listening to Van Halen play that day, Nuno says, “I was thinking as a guitar player, ‘There it is. There’s that tone.’”

He adds that while recording Pornograffitti, he used Van Halen I and II as the reference point for his guitar sounds.

Standing there, Nuno imagined the opportunity before him.

“I was fantasizing, ‘Can you imagine everybody leaving the room and me just playing his rig, the guitar, finally sounding like Eddie Van Halen?’

“First thing he does when they take a break: ‘Come and play my rig!’ And I was like, ‘Uh-oh, did he just hear me? Did I just say that out loud?’

“And he’s like, ‘No, no, just play, man. I want to try this pedal out.’”

Eddie put his electric guitar on Nuno and crouched down to work on a pedal.

“He’s kneeling down in front of me, facing the other way, and he’s trying some pedal out. The first thing that goes through my head is something you never think about as a kid: What’s the first thing you play in front of Eddie Van Halen?

“I was panicking. And he turns around and says, ‘You gonna play?’”

Nuno launched into the guitar solo from the Pornograffitti single “Get the Funk Out.”

“I was just like, ‘I’m just gonna play something. I’m not gonna improvise and go down in flames in front of Eddie Van Halen!’

“And when I got to the part where I started doing the tapping, he turns around and stops me. I was like, ‘Uh-oh.’

“And he goes, ‘None of that silly stuff here!’”

As Nuno explains, he had recently told an interviewer, “I kind of feel silly when I tap because it’s so Eddie. Not that it was bad — embarrassing. You cannot be Eddie when you do that, right?

“So he stopped me. You think these guys who are icons don’t read magazines.”

Clearly, Eddie had.

Bettencourt adds that he was surprised when then-former Extreme singer Gary Cherone accepted the invitation to replace Sammy Hagar in 1996 and record Van Halen III. After all, the singer was not particularly enamored of the group’s music.

“The funny thing is Gary and I were still talking, and he came to me about doing it,” Nuno recalls. “Gary was not the biggest Van Halen fan. He was a Who guy, Zeppelin — you know, he loved Queen. Me and Pat [Badger, bass] were more obsessed with Van Halen.

“So it was kind of ironic that Gary ended up in Van Halen.”

Ritchie Blackmore recently grabbed headlines with a surprise livestream Q&A in which he shared a notably pessimistic view of guitar players.

What received considerably less attention were his thoughtful reflections on the late virtuoso Eddie Van Halen, whom he remembers as both extraordinarily gifted and strikingly modest.

“[He was] very humble, almost too humble,” Blackmore says. “He would often come backstage at our shows and go, ‘You don’t want to talk to me, because I’m nobody,’ and I could never understand why he would say that. He always used to underestimate himself. He basically reinvented the guitar with his hammer-on technique.”

Blackmore says he particularly admired Van Halen’s intuitive approach to the instrument. While he described Joe Satriani and Steve Morse — who joined Deep Purple following Blackmore’s 1993 departure — as “fantastic players,” he suggested that technical perfection does not necessarily equate to the highest level of musical expression.

“If you’re always playing the correct notes, there’s something wrong,” he says. “You’re not searching, you’re not reaching for anything.”

Van Halen, he adds, does not fall into that category.

Blackmore believes Eddie’s sensitive nature sometimes made it difficult for him to find common ground with the older guard of guitar greats, including himself and Eric Clapton. Van Halen was heavily inspired by Clapton and was hurt when he was rejected by him.

“Unfortunately for Eddie, he was too sensitive,” Blackmore says. “And of course the business brought him down. He started drinking because he needed to drink to socialize. He was very sensitive, and I can relate to that.”

Blackmore says much the same about Randy Rhoads, the late guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne. Although many pitted Rhoads against Van Halen for the title of world’s greatest guitar player, their rivalry was largely fictional. As Blackmore sees it, both guitarists were cut from the same cloth.

“He was almost like Eddie Van Halen; very similar attitude, very humble, which I always appreciate when I talk to people,” Blackmore says. “There’s no reason to be conceited about music.”

Blackmore has been in a particularly chatty mood lately. In addition to his online Q&A, the guitarist recently gave Guitar Player an extensive interview about his time in Rainbow to promote the new box set Rainbow — The Temple of the King 1975–1976, a nine-disc collection of recordings from his post–Deep Purple group.

During the conversation, he also reflected on his relationship with Jon Lord, describing the late keyboardist as “my best friend in the band.”

Touring rock stars have their share of strange travel stories. But few compare with the pair of security run-ins Eddie Van Halen had in 1995 when his band was on the road supporting their album Balance.

One incident was bizarre. The other was considerably more serious.

During one tour stop, security officials inspected one of Van Halen’s electric guitar cases and discovered a chainsaw inside.

When questioned, Ed explained that it was simply a tool of the trade. Van Halen’s stage production involved large wooden props and set pieces that occasionally needed to be cut or modified during load-in or teardown.

Although it may seem an odd way to transport the tool, the chainsaw fit perfectly inside the guitar case. For Ed, that kind of improvisation was second nature.

“I don't know anything about music,” he once joked. “I’m just a tinkerer.”

From Van Halen’s perspective, the chainsaw was no different from a screwdriver or soldering iron. For that matter, he once used a chainsaw to hack a large chunk out of his Ibanez Destroyer, creating the famously mutilated “Shark” guitar seen during the Women and Children First era.

Once security realized there was nothing more sinister involved, the situation ended without further trouble.

But another airport encounter didn’t go nearly as smoothly.

On April 7, 1995, Eddie was passing through security at the airport in Burbank, California, on his way to a show in Oakland. After placing his carry-on bag on the X-ray conveyor belt, he suddenly realized he’d left a loaded .25-caliber Beretta pistol inside the bag.

Van Halen had purchased the handgun as protection for himself and his family: his wife, Valerie Bertinelli, and their young son, Wolfgang Van Halen. Fans and stalkers would sometimes sit in vans outside his home for extended periods, prompting him to take precautions.

Because the band typically traveled by private jet, traditional airport security checks were rare — hence his oversight when flying commercial.

“I forgot to take it out of my bag on a commercial flight,” he said afterward. “It wasn't like I was trying to sneak it on the plane. I just totally spaced and forgot to take it out of my bag.”

He realized the problem almost immediately, but it was too late.

“It was already on the conveyor belt,” he explained. “If I would have caught it two seconds earlier, I could’ve just sent it home and not gotten in trouble for it.”

Airport police detained him for roughly half an hour and confiscated the weapon. Although the gun was legally registered and Van Halen cooperated fully with authorities, he was cited for possessing a firearm in the airport.

Van Halen ultimately pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor, paid a $1,000 fine and received one year of probation. The gun itself was ordered destroyed by the court.

Ironically, the trip that prompted the incident ended up being unnecessary. When his flight arrived in Oakland, he learned that singer Sammy Hagar had fallen ill, forcing the band to cancel three shows scheduled for that weekend.

“So I get arrested for the gun and didn't really even have to go,” Eddie later joked. “If Sammy had told me an hour earlier, I wouldn't have had to fly up there.”

The episode was mortifying for the guitarist, who would have preferred to keep the spotlight on his playing. Still, the story quickly spread through the rock world — and even drew a wisecrack from fellow guitar slinger Ted Nugent when he was interviewed by Guitar Player for the December 1995 issue.

When asked about Van Halen’s airport predicament, the famously outspoken Motor City Madman grinned broadly.

“That was embarrassing,” Nugent said. “You’d think a guy like Eddie would at least carry a .45.”

As a Sunset Strip contemporary of Eddie Van Halen, George Lynch witnessed the legend before the innovations — and insists the most fascinating version of Eddie came before the tapping, the whammy bar, and even Van Halen itself.

“To see it up close and personal as it was happening, in Mammoth and also early Van Halen, was mind-bending,” Lynch says. “It was insane. I'd just go to my studio or go home and get on my guitar for eight hours and go, ‘I gotta step up.’”

“I'd seen him when he was playing with a Les Paul through a [Fender] Bandmaster or Bassman… and he was still amazing. He didn't have the tapping. He didn't have the bar. And it's still insane. It wasn’t Van Halen like you think of him now. It was a different thing, ’cause he had more of the Clapton influence.”

It wasn’t the Eddie Van Halen the guitar world would come to know and be influenced by. No tapping, no dive bombs — just a blues-rooted electric guitar player with a heavy Eric Clapton influence.

“It was a little more meat-and-potatoes,” Lynch adds. “Not very many people have heard that. And that, to me, is even more interesting, from a guitar player's perspective.”

Lynch also points to a largely forgotten figure who may have pushed Eddie in those early days: Terry Kilgore, who was making his mark with Reddi Killowatt. Listen to a track like “Liquid Lady,” and strands of Eddie’s boisterous DNA are already apparent.

“They didn't have [a great frontman like] David Lee Roth, they didn't have the image, they didn't have the looks, they didn't have the songs,” Lynch says. “But they had Terry. And he was ‘fire.’”

“Terry was, I thought, maybe even better than Eddie. I think Eddie took some of the things Terry was doing.”

The two guitarists’ paths continued to cross as their careers took off.

“We used to hang out,” Lynch recalls. “When Valerie Bertinelli wasn’t around, we’d jam. We’d just sit in a hotel room and play guitar all night.”

Lynch also experienced Eddie’s generosity firsthand during the 1988 Monsters of Rock tour, when Dokken supported Van Halen on a massive 23-city North American stadium run. After Lynch began having trouble with his gear, Eddie stepped in without hesitation.

“And he was so sweet, ’cause he was like, ‘Hey, man, take anything you want of mine.’ So I did half that tour with his rig. That’s pretty insane, ’cause headliners usually don’t do stuff like that. They’re just like, ‘That’s your problem. Figure it out,’ which is fair. But he was very sweet: ‘Just take anything you want—heads, cabinets.’ I used his rig for, like, half that tour.”

“He gave my son a guitar lesson,” Lynch adds. “My kid was going to GIT, and he wanted to be a guitar player like his dad. I took him to meet Eddie at a show, and Eddie’s like, ‘You know what? You’re a guitar player? Let me show you…’ So they went back to the warmup room and he gave my son a little lesson. That was pretty cool. Who does that?”

Sammy Hagar says Eddie Van Halen exerted an exacting level of control over both his vocals and Michael Anthony’s bass parts during the recording of Balance (1995), creating an atmosphere so fraught that Hagar and producer Bruce Fairbairn decamped to Bryan Adams’ studio to complete key sessions.

The album would mark Hagar’s final full-length with the band, as tensions between the singer and both Eddie and Alex Van Halen escalated. For Anthony — who had appeared on every Van Halen release to that point — it was also the last record to feature his playing throughout; his role would be significantly reduced on 1998’s Van Halen III, and he was ultimately replaced by Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, for A Different Kind of Truth, released in 2012.

In the years since, Hagar and Anthony have remained aligned, forming the Best of All Worlds band with Joe Satriani to celebrate Eddie’s legacy — even as the making of Balance stands as one of the most strained chapters in the band’s history.

“To go into the studio and not want to be there was tough,” Hagar said in a video posted to his YouTube channel to mark the album’s 30th anniversary. “Bruce Fairbairn felt the tension between Ed and me, and Mike and Ed.”

According to Hagar, the band’s painstaking schedule — reportedly eight-hour days over three months — only deepened the fractures, with Eddie scrutinizing performances to an extreme degree.

“Mike would put a bass part down, and Ed would go in there and listen to it, kind of under a microscope,” he said. “[It was] ‘Wait, go back, let me hear that again,’ and Bruce would go, ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’ He wanted to crucify me.”

Hagar adds that his own vocals were subject to similar oversight.

“Ed was disruptive when I was trying to do the vocals,” he continued. “He’d come in before I was done and start making comments. I’d be waiting to sing, and he’d be talking to Bruce, telling him, ‘I want Sam to do this. I want Sam to do that,’ and Bruce would be arguing with him, like, ‘Ed, get out of here.’

“It really pissed me off—I’m sitting in there waiting for Ed to stop complaining about something I hadn’t even heard yet.”

Compounding matters, the band had pivoted away from its trademark live immediacy toward a more controlled, precision-driven production — an approach Hagar concedes “didn’t have the Van Halen sound like the early stuff.” The demand for tighter, more exact takes only intensified the pressure, and even Fairbairn’s patience began to wear thin.

“Bruce said, ‘Fuck this. We’re going to Canada,’” Hagar recalled. “We went up to Bryan Adams’ house, where he had a vocal booth and a bunch of great microphones. It was fucking badass.”

Working beyond Eddie’s immediate oversight, Hagar completed vocals for “Can’t Stop Lovin’ You,” “Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do),” and “Take Me Back (Deja Vu)” with greater freedom. The results, he suggests, ultimately spoke for themselves.

“I remember Ed hearing ‘Don’t Tell Me (What Love Can Do),’” Hagar said. “He hadn’t heard me when I was going to sing that song yet. He and Al had come up to the studio. I’m sitting there with Bruce, and we played the track.

“I was fucking pouring my heart. I remember Ed looking at Al, thinking, ‘Yeah, this is pretty good—we can’t poke holes in this.’”

Years later, Hagar’s strained relationship with Alex Van Halen shows little sign of easing. The singer has likened the drummer to Roger Waters in a recent broadside, while Anthony has floated the idea of an instrumental final Van Halen release.

In related news, Van Halen’s former wife Valerie Bertinelli has opened up about her marriage to Eddie, saying, “I don’t remember too much between the drugs and the alcohol.”

Speaking in a new interview, actress Valerie Bertinelli has offered a bracingly honest evaluation of her life with Eddie Van Halen during the 26 years they were married.

The couple met backstage at a Van Halen concert in Shreveport, Louisiana, on August 22, 1980. Bertinelli, then 20 and in the midst of her long-running role on the hit sitcom One Day at a Time, had seen Van Halen’s face on an eight-track tape of his group’s music and was immediately interested in him. She described it as love at first sight.

Eddie, then 25 and widely celebrated as rock’s reigning electric guitar virtuoso, was as focused as ever on guitar and his career. Nevertheless, the couple began dating and, within a year, were married.

But Bertinelli says it was too much too soon.

“We grew up together. We got married far too young, but I don’t know how else we would have done it,” she says in a chat on The Bossticks podcast that aired March 19.

“Our lives were insane.”

Between her acting career and Van Halen’s devotion to guitar, his band, recording, and touring, life was chaotic.

“We waited 10 years to have Wolfie,” she says of their son, Wolfgang, who was born in 1991. “We went through a lot in those 10 years—basically the ‘80s, which I don’t remember too much of between the drugs and the alcohol.

“It was fun. You know what? I’m not gonna lie, it was a lot of fun… but I would never — I would not do it again.”

Although their relationship had its problems and eventually ended in divorce in 2007, Bertinelli says her feelings for Van Halen remained strong and grew in the years before his death in 2020, when he was fighting cancer.

“I love him dearly,” she says. “I just love the father of my son that I knew since I was 20. He would always be one of my dearest friends ’cause he was just — he was Ed. He was just a huge part of my life.”

Bertinelli said she realized that neither of them had ever dealt with their past traumas. That, in turn, made it easier for her to have sympathy for him.

“Near the end of his life, I could be much more compassionate,” she said, “because I understand now.”

Van Halen passed away on October 6, 2020, from a stroke following his battle with cancer. He continued to make music throughout his final years, some of which his brother, Alex, is currently working on for release as Van Halen’s final album.

Wolfgang, who played bass in Van Halen alongside his father from 2006 onward, fronts his own group, Mammoth. He’s shared that while he wants to cut his own path as a musician, he holds one lesson from his father dear to his heart.

Jimmy Page and Robert Plant helped give Canadian alt-rock outfit Our Lady Peace an early break. But 30 years on, frontman Raine Maida says a very different moment — one involving the Van Halen camp — proved just as pivotal to the band’s trajectory.

Now on the road marking their 30th anniversary, Our Lady Peace are revisiting nearly every chapter of their catalog. For Maida, the milestone has brought two formative experiences into sharp focus.

The first came when Plant heard the band on the radio and promptly invited them to open for him and Page at Chicago’s Rosemont Horizon (now Allstate Arena), along with a stop in Indianapolis. The exposure was transformative.

“Robert was extremely welcoming,” Maida told Ultimate Classic Rock, recalling crowds that were “so giving of their ears, their hearts and time” — a reception that quickly elevated the band’s profile.

Just months later, however, they found themselves in a far less hospitable environment: a summer 1995 amphitheater tour with Sammy Hagar–era Van Halen, in support of Balance, with Skid Row also on the bill.

“We were nervous,” Maida admits. “These were sold-out shows, and the fans — unlike with Page and Plant — really didn’t want to see us.”

Hagar, in particular, pushed the band to adopt a more overtly crowd-pleasing approach.

“He came up to me a couple of times and said, ‘This is supposed to be a party — you’ve got to get the crowd pumped up more,’” Maida recalls.

Maida held his ground. “I told him, respectfully, I get that — he’s an incredible singer — but I’m a very different performer. I’ve never seen myself as an entertainer in that way.”

Tensions escalated to the point where Maida was told a lineup change might be imminent.

“I thought, ‘That’s it — we’ve been kicked off the tour. What am I going to tell my mom?’”

But the decision wasn’t Hagar’s to make. Behind the scenes, guitarist Eddie Van Halen and drummer Alex Van Halen intervened.

“We got a knock on the door, and the tour manager said Eddie and Alex wanted to see me,” Maida says. “Alex and I had become friends — we both had back problems, so we bonded over that.

“I went in, and they told me, ‘Don’t listen to Sammy — he doesn’t have the power to do that. You’re not going anywhere.’ My head was spinning. It wasn’t a great vibe after that, but Eddie and Alex saved us.”

The tour continued as planned, a decision that, in hindsight, left a lasting impression on Maida, not just professionally but personally.

“Eddie showed you what it takes to be a master musician,” he says of the virtuoso electric guitarist. “He’d walk into catering with a guitar on, start soundcheck an hour and a half early. Forget 10,000 hours — we’re talking a million. He was the instrument. That was incredibly inspiring.”

The story has fresh resonance amid renewed activity in the Van Halen camp. Alex Van Halen is reportedly working with Steve Lukather on material drawn from archival demos recorded before Eddie’s death, with discussions ongoing about a possible vocalist. Paul Rodgers has declined involvement, while former bass guitarist Michael Anthony has suggested the recordings might be best left as instrumentals.

And in related news, Sammy Hagar has fired a new shot at Alex Van Halen by unfavorably comparing him to Roger Waters.

Sammy Hagar has fired fresh shots at his former Van Halen bandmate, comparing drummer Alex Van Halen to Roger Waters as their feud shows no sign of easing.

The former Montrose singer last fronted Van Halen in 2005, when their union came to an end after four albums. Founding bass guitarist Michael Anthony exited as well, with Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, stepping in when the band reunited once again with David Lee Roth in 2007.

In recent years, Hagar and Anthony have formed the backbone of the Best of All Worlds band, Hagar’s Joe Satriani–powered tribute to Eddie Van Halen. The group even helped Hagar complete a track he claims he co-wrote with Eddie in a dream more than a year after the electric guitar virtuoso’s death.

Meanwhile, Alex Van Halen has floated the idea of assembling one final Van Halen album with help from Steve Lukather, a project neither Hagar nor Roth is expected to be part of. The lingering tension between Hagar and Van Halen surfaced again in the singer’s new interview with Classic Rock.

“I’m the biggest Pink Floyd fan,” Hagar says. “I see David Gilmour say, ‘I will never play with Roger Waters again,’ and I know what he means. I feel that way about Alex Van Halen. They’re negative people.”

The Gilmour–Waters feud famously reached its breaking point in the mid-’80s, culminating in lawsuits after 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason became the first Pink Floyd album without Waters.

Hagar also argued that the Best of All Worlds lineup comes closer than anyone else to recreating the Van Halen experience.

“Because frickin’ Mike Anthony’s in the band, I feel good about playing a lot of Van Halen stuff, ’cause no one will ever hear it again,” he says. “That was the biggest part of my career — everybody’s career, for God’s sake. It was the biggest band in the world.”

Alex Van Halen recently revealed that during the 12-year stretch before the band regrouped with Roth for 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth, he and Eddie considered Ozzy Osbourne as a potential frontmen for a new project. In 2017, they began talking about collaborating with Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, though that fizzled when Cornell died a few months later.

Anthony, meanwhile, has suggested that if Alex Van Halen and Steve Lukather do move forward with a final Van Halen record, it should be instrumental if they truly want to honor Eddie Van Halen’s legacy.

Being in Eddie Van Halen’s orbit had both life- and sound-changing perks for Steve Stevens.

The Billy Idol guitarist met Van Halen in 1987, shortly after the touring cycle for Whiplash Smile ended and he went on leave from Idol for nearly two decades, working on other projects. Stevens had signed a solo deal with Warner Bros. Records, and A&R rep Ted Templeman invited him to play a NAMM Show gig with Van Halen, along with Tim Bogert on bass.

“It was right after [Van Halen’s] dad had passed away,” Stevens remembers, “and I didn’t know that Valerie [Bertinelli, Van Halen’s wife], was trying to get Ed to sober up a little bit. We were going to have a rehearsal at Ed’s house, so I go over in a limousine and brought a couple of bottles of Cristal. Valerie answered and looked at me and was like, ‘Oh, no…’ and took the bottles.

“We hung out and it was great. We had both become aficionados of the classic Marshall Plexis, although he knew a hell of a lot more about them than I did; he really knew all the inner workings and everything.

“And I didn’t play like him. Although I appreciated all the records and the Van Halen stuff, I was completely different stylistically, and also as a person. I grew up in Manhattan, and he was Pasadena. We complemented each other.”

Stevens and Van Halen spent more time together after Stevens played on Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil’s 1993 solo album, Exposed — another Templeman-brokered deal — and became part of Neil’s touring band.

“Ted asked me to do the Vince Neil record and said he was guaranteed as the opening act for Van Halen’s summer tour,” Stevens says. “That was really what enticed me to do it. What a great opportunity.

“Ed and I hung out a lot. I had produced a couple tracks for Steve Lukather, who was Eddie’s best friend at the time; Steve would come out on the road to hang out with Ed, and the three of us were trouble,” he says with a laugh.

“I had my old Marshalls out with me, which were not reliable, and my Charvel guitar by that time was falling apart. Ed said, ‘Why don’t you play through my rig at the next gig? If you like it I’ll arrange for Ernie Ball Music Man and Peavey Electronics to get you some stuff.’

“It was super generous, and I did like it and switched to using 5150s at that point; they had a bit more saturated sound. And I played the Music Man guitars as well. If it was good enough for Ed it was good enough for me. He kinda knew what he was doing, right?”

Stevens continued using the 5150 rig when he began playing with Idol again during the mid-2000s, though he used Friedman amplifiers on the road last year. The Music Man electric — which he also played on the 1994 soundtrack for the film Speed — does get the occasional airing, however.

“When I guest with Sammy Hagar I’ll bring that guitar out. I’ve done ‘Poundcake’ with Sammy; that’s the guitar you use for that song.”

In 1975, 16-year-old Lita Ford walked into an audition and walked out a Runaway.

Armed with five years of guitar playing and unshakable confidence, she tried out for the “all-girl” band being assembled by the late rock impresario Kim Fowley. At the audition, she ripped through Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” alongside drummer Sandy West and guitarist Joan Jett — all of them barely old enough to drive.

“I immediately joined,” Ford says. “Me and Joan and Sandy got along like that. We were the first three to join the band and the last three to stay together.”

It was a huge leap for the youngster, who had started out copying Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath riffs on a nylon-string guitar. Through a part-time job at a Los Angeles hospital she saved $450 to buy an electric — a Gibson SG similar to the ones she had seen in the hands of her heroes Tony lommi and Angus Young.

And now she was a star. Over the next four years, Ford developed into the Runaways’ lead-guitar firebrand, splashing fierce solos across cuts like “You Drive Me Wild” and “Dead End Justice.” As her technique expanded into Hendrix-inspired phrasing, so did her volatility.

“I was a real bitch,” she says bluntly of those early years. “I couldn’t keep my temper. If I didn’t get to play what I wanted, I’d fly off the handle — kick things, throw things.”

On one notorious night, she says, she broke the wrist of a concertgoer who tried to spray her with beer.

Ironically, just as her playing and self-image were finally aligning, the band imploded in 1979.

“I was finally getting my looks and attitude together. My hair was growing real long. I was getting skinny and felt great. My playing was coming out the way I wanted.

“And then the Runaways broke up.”

The collapse hit hard. Ford packed away her Marshall stacks, her SG and Explorers, and retired to L.A. She quit playing for a year.

“Everybody was yelling at me,” she says. “All my boyfriends who played guitar would call me and say, ‘Why don’t you come over and play with me now?’”

What finally jolted her back wasn’t criticism — it was a challenge from Eddie Van Halen.

“Edward Van Halen said to me, ‘What are you doing? Why don’t you play? You could be the best female rock and roll guitar player in the world, and you’re just sitting around.’”

That lit the fuse.

Four years after the Runaways’ breakup, Ford returned with 1983’s Out for Blood, a title that doubled as a mission statement.

“I just want to be the best female rock guitar player,” she declared at the time. “I want to be classified in the same area as an Eddie Van Halen, Michael Schenker or Ritchie Blackmore.”

She also had advice for aspiring players — especially women.

“People say, ‘Lita, I do a lot of drugs. What do you think?’ I go, ‘No! Take your frustrations out on your guitar — beat the shit out of it.’ Many women don’t play because they think it’ll take away from their femininity. But if you really want to be a guitar player, you have to sacrifice something. My nails are gone, but I don’t care.”

Nearly five decades later — after hits like her Ozzy Osbourne co-write “Close My Eyes Forever” — she’s still chasing that standard. Ford is currently touring the U.S., Canada and Europe in 2026 in support of a forthcoming concept album featuring collaborators including Gary Hoey, producer Max Norman and Jean Beauvoir.

The goal hasn’t changed either. She’s still making the guitar — and making sure people are listening.

While Alex Van Halen and Steve Lukather continue work on what is expected to be a final Van Halen album, the drummer has revealed just how close he and Eddie Van Halen came to launching a band with Ozzy Osbourne.

Alex recently confirmed that he and Lukather are developing material recorded during Eddie’s lifetime that was intended as a follow-up to 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth. Yet the electric guitar virtuoso’s legacy might have taken a dramatically different turn had an ambitious early 2000s collaboration with Osbourne not been derailed by a single competing opportunity.

Alex has previously spoken about the Van Halen brothers’ jams with late Chris Cornell — then of Soundgarden and Audioslave — as well as exploratory talks about forming a band with Ozzy. Both projects ultimately stalled for different reasons. The Cornell collaboration, which began taking shape in 2017, was shelved following the singer’s death just months later.

Speaking to Brazilian outlet Kazagastão, Alex revealed that plans to write an album with the Black Sabbath frontman came remarkably close to becoming reality.

“Ed and I met with Sharon [Osbourne, Ozzy’s wife and manager], because we were kind of at a loss as to which direction we wanted to go,” he said, recalling a period around 2000 when Van Halen were in flux.

Their brief tenure with Gary Cherone had ended, and relationships with former singers David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar were strained. Rumors about a new vocalist circulated, with David Coverdale among the names floated. The British singer, however, has consistently dismissed the speculation.

“So we sat with Sharon,” Alex continued. “I mean, it was kind of an interesting evening because she’s a lovely lady. I don’t know what people would say about her, but she’s a lovely lady who really had to fend for herself in a male-dominated world.

“The final thing we talked about was, she says, ‘Okay, it sounds like a good idea. Let’s do that. Let’s make a record together. Only one thing. I have a meeting tomorrow with some people about a television show.’ And the rest is history. That’s how close it got.”

That television show was The Osbournes, which ran for four seasons between 2002 and 2005. The series ultimately took priority, while the Van Halen brothers eventually reunited with Hagar instead. Still, the near-miss remains a tantalizing what-if.

In a previous interview with Rolling Stone, Osbourne confirmed that the TV project won out — and admitted lingering regret.

“Yes, we were discussing it,” he said. “It is something that, if it had come to fruition, would have been phenomenal.

“Eddie and Alex were great friends of mine for a very long time, and it’s a regret of mine that we never got it together. The Osbournes [reality show] got in the way of creating new music at that time, unfortunately.”

In hindsight, the experience left its mark. Filming — which effectively took over his Beverly Hills home — proved far more taxing than he anticipated.

“I thought it was gonna be a piece of cake, but you have a camera crew living in your house for three years and see how you feel at the end of it,” he once told Metal Hammer. “You feel like a fucking laboratory rat. It got to the point where I was falling apart emotionally.”

Elsewhere, Zakk Wylde has said Ozzy hoped they would write another album together after Back to the Beginning, one that would return to their 1990s sound. And Jack Osbourne has recalled the moment at Ozzy’s final gig that defined his partnership with Tony Iommi.

Paul Rodgers has confirmed he turned down an invitation to sing on Van Halen’s proposed farewell album, adding another twist to one of rock’s most closely watched unfinished projects.

As drummer Alex Van Halen presses ahead with plans to complete the late Eddie Van Halen’s final recordings, conflicting signals from the band’s inner circle — including founding bass guitarist Michael Anthony — underscore both the ambition of the effort and the unresolved questions surrounding how, or whether, it should be finished.

Alex Van Halen is attempting to shape a final album from material recorded before Eddie’s death in 2020, originally intended as the follow-up to the band’s 2012 comeback, A Different Kind of Truth. He had briefly explored using artificial intelligence to complete the recordings but has instead enlisted Eddie’s longtime friend Steve Lukather to help bring the music to completion.

Lukather, however, quickly clarified after news of his involvement leaked that he would not be contributing new guitar parts.

Alex recently said the search is underway for a vocalist, with classic-era frontmen David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar both believed to be out of contention.

Rodgers’ own comments suggest he was approached — but passed.

“Thanks to Van Halen for inviting me to work on a track with them,” he wrote on X. “But I am in my acoustic, zen phase of life.”The singer, best known for his work with Bad Company, also used the post to downplay health concerns that kept him from attending the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last November.

Rodgers’ decision leaves the project without a confirmed vocalist — and Anthony believes that may be for the best.

“The way I personally feel about it is, if they wanted to do it justice, [the best idea would be] to just finish it up as a great instrumental nod to Eddie,” he told Cleveland radio station WNCX (via Ultimate Classic Rock).

Anthony, who appeared on every Van Halen studio album except their most recent — after being replaced by Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen — has long advocated for unreleased archival material to surface as a tribute to Eddie’s legacy. But he cautioned that adding vocals now could complicate and delay the process.

“We’re not forming a new band,” he said. “Then you’ve got to work on lyrics and all that stuff. And who knows when anything would be put out at that point.”

Rodgers’ reference to being invited to sing on “a track,” rather than the entire album, raises the possibility that multiple vocalists could appear — or that prospective singers are being tested on individual songs rather than formally recruited.

Anthony’s own language is similarly ambiguous. His shifting use of “we” and “they” reflects both his historic stake in the recordings and his uncertain role in their completion, particularly as some of the demos under consideration date back to sessions he originally played on.

What remains clear is that Alex Van Halen is determined to finish the music he and his brother left behind. Whether that final statement arrives as a fully realized rock album or a purely instrumental farewell remains an open — and deeply symbolic — question.

Alex Van Halen says the Van Halen album he’s working on with Toto’s Steve Lukather was intended to be a follow-up to 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth, and that the pair are now looking for a vocalist.

It’s just shy of a year since Dutch newspaper, De Telegraaf, reported that the drummer and brother of late virtuoso Eddie Van Halen had sought Lukather’s help to turn unfinished demos into a Van Halen album. That followed claims by former bass player Michael Anthony that there was a treasure trove of unheard Van Halen material, leading many to believe that it was the pool of riffs that the pair would be working with.

Following De Telegraaf’s article, Lukather promptly clarified his role in the project, saying, “I will not ever play a note on a Van Halen song.” Given Lukather’s long-standing friendship with Eddie Van Halen, Alex hints that he was drafted as director rather than lead man.

Now, speaking to Brazilian outlet, Kazagastão (via Blabbermouth), he's offered the deepest insight into the project’s context yet.

“These are recordings that were going to be the next [Van Halen] record,” Alex states, noting that the process was halted following Eddie’s passing in 2020. “The drums are already recorded. The drums, the guitar, and the bass are already in there. What we didn’t have was a vocalist.”

It isn’t known if Eddie’s son, Wolfgang, is on the record, or if Ed himself played bass on the track. Either way, the album is one step closer to completion. Whoever is chosen as vocalist would become the band’s fourth singer after David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone.

Roth had returned to the band for their 12th LP. Still, Sammy Hagar has taken the mantle following Eddie’s death, with Roth reportedly refusing to acknowledge Ed’s legacy during a mooted tribute tour.

As such, Hagar has turned to Joe Satriani for the Best of All Worlds Van Halen tribute shows, and released a song he claims features “beyond the grave” contributions from Eddie.

“Ed and I had a lot of stuff that we made [and] never let go,” Alex Van Halen continues. “Many people have asked, what about releasing unreleased stuff? Well, we're not gonna release it in its embryonic form because it wouldn’t make any sense.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to have Steve Lukather, but it has to be of the quality and the level of where we left it. Steve is the connective tissue. I can’t play guitar — I can work things out on a keyboard, but it takes me too long to figure it out. By that time, the moment is gone.

“Steve knows where to put the solo. I have my opinions, and he has his, and they are just opinions. So he can facilitate things that would've taken me 10 times as long.”

In 2024, Alex shared the previously unheard song “Unfinished,” currently the only posthumous Eddie Van Halen material that has been released.

“Of course, I could never play like him. I never tried. Only an idiot competes with Eddie Van Halen.”

So said Steve Vai to Rolling Stone in 2020, as he reflected on his friendship with Eddie. Vai certainly spoke from wisdom — after all, he was David Lee Roth’s guitarist after Roth left Van Halen. He knew what would be expected of him and that he needed to cut his own path to avoid being compared to and overshadowed by the great Eddie Van Halen.

“When I joined David Lee Roth’s band, it was great opportunity for me to play such well-constructed rock songs,” Vai said. “Of course, nobody can play them like Edward, but you do your best.”

Eddie was certainly aware of the guitarist who had taken his place alongside Roth. And while Ed knew his own talents were immense, he remained humble and believed other guitarists had something to teach him. Allan Holdsworth for example: Ed was a huge fan of the guitar giant and did everything he could to help him land a recording contract. With Ed, there was never competition, just a desire to play guitar and keep getting better.

So he kept his eye on Vai and was pleasantly surprised at what he heard. Unlike the numerous EVH clones, Vai combined his limits-stretching electric guitar techniques with lyrical melodies. Joe Satriani — who stepped into Ed's shoes on last year's Best of All Worlds tour — might impress you with his bluesy fusion, and Yngwie Malmsteen with his neoclassical chops. But Vai combined an almost operatic beauty with the sort of avant-garde eccentricities of his former employer, Frank Zappa.

And when Eddie heard Vai apply his magic to his own songs in Roth’s band, he was duly impressed.

“I’m going, ‘This guy is better at what I do than I am’, you know?” Eddie told interview Shaun Baxter in 1995.

“But,” Ed added, “ he lacked the vibe… the feel. He was technically very proficient but stiff. It always made me feel bad in a way. Because it made me feel like, ‘Wow, is that how people perceive me?’ ”

Vai stayed with Roth from 1985 through 1989, during which time he performed on the singer’s albums Eat ‘Em and Smile and Skyscraper. Once he was out, Ed felt it was safe to give him a call.

“The day after I left David Lee Roth’s band — I don’t know how Edward found out — but he called me,” Vai told Rolling Stone. “That was the start of a nice relationship and friendship.”

Vai recalled that they hung out frequently over a six-month period, during which he visited Ed’s 5150 Studios and was treated to private listening sessions of his work tapes. “He played me stuff that was never released,” Vai recalled. “I said, ‘Why don’t you make a solo record?’ And he always felt that the Van Halen records were his solo records.

"But this stuff he was playing me was really quite nice. It was all the things we loved about the way he played.”

While Ed considered Vai the one guitarist who out–Van Halened him, Vai believes Ed was a rock and roll game changer with only one peer.

“If I had to use my intuition,” he said, “it’s Hendrix, it’s Van Halen, in rock guitar. So many great guitarists came along and contributed, but those guys just did something for us that reshaped not just the way we played instruments, but the way we write the music, the way we dress, and the way we act onstage. It goes really deep. So I firmly feel that he was one of those monoliths.”

Vai certainly has his own share of fans who consider him a game changer. Tosin Abasi recently spoke of working 16 hours a day in a salmon processing factory in Alaska to buy his Steve Vai signature guitar.

For those who want to channel some of Steve's guitar mojo, his three top guitar tips will prove worthwhile.

In the late 1970s and early ’80s, Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen were routinely cast as rivals. Both were young, technically dazzling and widely viewed as the most important guitarists of their generation, fueling a narrative that divided fans and gave the guitar press an irresistible storyline.

The media’s role in amplifying such rivalries was nothing new — as seen in the much-publicized tensions between Metallica and Megadeth. But according to original Quiet Riot bass guitarist Kelly Garni, the supposed animosity between Rhoads and Van Halen bore little resemblance to reality.

When Van Halen exploded onto the Los Angeles club scene, his revolutionary technique — immortalized in “Eruption” — quickly made him a local phenomenon. At the time, Rhoads was still performing with Quiet Riot. Later, after joining Ozzy Osbourne and helping launch the singer’s solo career, the perceived rivalry intensified in the public imagination.

But Garni says Rhoads himself had no interest in competing.

Speaking on the Booked On Rock podcast (via Ultimate Guitar), Garni recalled how Quiet Riot became aware of Van Halen’s growing reputation while playing the same Hollywood circuit.

“We became well aware of Van Halen,” he said. “When we’d play the Starwood, we knew they were playing down the street at Gazzarri’s. But there was no competition.

“It just wasn’t in Randy to try to compete. He couldn’t. The way his brain was wired, he could not form a thought like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna be better than that guy.’”

Still, the buzz surrounding Van Halen eventually sparked Rhoads’ curiosity. According to Garni, he went to see the guitarist perform and came away impressed, if understated in his assessment.

“Randy said, ‘I’ll go see what the deal is,’” Garni recalled. “He saw him play and said, ‘Yeah, okay, the guy’s good.’”

Rhoads did make it backstage, but the timing wasn’t ideal.

“Eddie was acting kind of crazy and bouncing off the walls in his underwear,” Garni said. “And Randy was like, ‘Oh, okay … not the best time to meet this guy.’”

The two guitarists shared a bill only once, at Glendale Community College on April 23, 1977. Whether they ever properly connected remains unclear, but the mythology surrounding their supposed rivalry only grew in the years that followed.

Van Halen would later claim that “everything he did, he learned from me,” while Osbourne said in 2022 that his late guitarist “didn’t have a nice thing to say about Eddie.”

Yet decades later, Osbourne appeared to signal reconciliation of sorts. During his 2024 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he invited Wolfgang Van Halen — Eddie’s son — to perform “Crazy Train.”

Even so, Van Halen’s legacy remained entwined with rivalry. Guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen, who rose to prominence after Rhoads’ death in 1982, has claimed that Van Halen avoided sharing bills with him to sidestep direct comparisons.

True or not, Garni’s recollections suggest that at least from Rhoads’ perspective, one of rock’s most famous guitar rivalries may have existed more in headlines than in reality.

To mark what would have been Eddie Van Halen’s 71st birthday on January 26, Alex Van Halen shared a glimpse into the past by posted a silent home video of his brother as a young boy playing the instrument with which he would change music.

Although the clip contains no audio, Eddie’s joy is evident as he strums an acoustic guitar. At one point, the camera briefly turns to a young Alex, who flashes a wide grin, a reminder that the Van Halen story was always a shared one.

Accompanying the video, Alex included a message from his nephew, Wolfgang Van Halen: “Al, you and dad changed the world of music.” Wolfgang responded in the comments with three red heart emojis, while his mother, Valerie Bertinelli, added a single white heart.

The post arrived amid a period of renewed creative activity for Alex. Earlier this month, he confirmed he’s working on a new album with Toto guitarist Steve Lukather. Alex has also revealed plans for a new Van Halen anthology book, slated for release later this year, which will follow his 2024 memoir, Brothers.

The birthday tribute was a silent reminder of where the Van Halen journey began.

Alex Van Halen says he’s getting ready to make a new album with guitar ace Steve Lukather, a longtime friend of Alex and his brother, the late Eddie Van Halen.

Talking with Iron Maiden’s Nicko McBrain for the Metal Sticks podcast, the Van Halen drummer offered few details about the project.

“I’m getting ready to do this record with Lukather and a couple other people,” Van Halen said. “It should be exciting.”

Asked if they’d begun rehearsing, Van Halen replied, “No, we don't need to rehearse,” and laughed.

“There's a lot to be said for spontaneity,” he added. “That's how we did a lot of things together in the studio. [Eddie] would just play and we would just take snippets of it, and then you elaborate on little ideas and make a song out of it. Beethoven made a whole symphony out of [snippets],” he added, before singing the opening notes from the composer’s famed Fifth Symphony.

Van Halen also spoke of his close friendship with Lukather.

“If you're in this line of work… it goes beyond a superficial contract, and ‘I want you to do this and do that.’ We do it because we like something, or we want to do it because it's creative. The moment you get into contracts that are very specific about what your role in the project is, it falls apart. That's our experience anyway.

“And we've known Lukather for a long time. He was one of the real, real true best friends.”

Van Halen’s announcement is the first he’s said about his work with Lukather in nearly a year. Last March, the drummer announced that he was working with the guitarist to create a new album of tracks from Eddie Van Halen’s unfinished demos.

“Ed and Steve Lukather were very good friends, and they often worked together,” Van Halen told the Dutch newspaper De Telegraf. “There is no one who can do this process with me as well as he can.”

Soon afterward, Lukather added context to Van Halen’s announcement, noting that he would not be playing guitar on the album,

“I will not ever play a guitar note on a Van Halen song,” he said. “Al asked me to help him go thru a ton of unfinished recordings of Al and Ed writing and recording that never saw the light of day. As of now that’s all I got.”

Lukather and Eddie Van Halen first crossed paths on projects in the 1980s. Both men worked on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” on which Eddie played the electric guitar solo at the invitation of producer Quincy Jones. Eddie performed bass on a song from Lukather’s 1989 solo debut and contributed to a track on Luke’s 2003 holiday album, SantaMental.

“I’m very honored to have been Ed's friend — really a friend,” he told Metal Master Kingdom, “not just a guitar buddy who had a beer with him once. [There is] 40-plus years with him, Al and I."

Ever wondered what Van Halen would have sounded like with no Sam or Dave?

Well, wonder no more. Writer and filmmaker Andrew Bennett is selling rare recordings from the band’s rehearsals at Eddie Van Halen’s 5150 studio. Titled The 5150 Sessions, it contains tracks cut between November 2006 and January 2007 featuring Ed and his brother, Alex, joined by Ed’s son, Wolfgang.

The tracks date from the period after longtime bass guitarist Michael Anthony had been dismissed, but before David Lee Roth rejoined the band for their 2007 reunion tour.

“From the collection of writer and filmmaker Andrew Bennett during his time documenting Van Halen as Wolf joined the band in 2006 and into 2007 leading up to the reunion tour,” the description reads. “These recordings are from rehearsals at 5150 from November 2006 to January 2007, recorded straight to the 5150 soundboard.

“Eddie, Alex, and Wolfgang Van Halen were rehearsing full set lists twice a week, and since this was prior to the return of Dave these recordings are performed with no singer.

“Finally, no Sam versus Dave debates.”

The 10-track LP includes the songs “Unchained,” “Atomic Punk,” “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love,” “I’m the One,” “Runnin’ With the Devil,” “Panama,” “Romeo Delight,” “Hot for Teacher,” “On Fire,” and “Somebody Get Me a Doctor.” Samples of each song can be heard at the site.

After Bennett posted about the release on his Facebook account, fans responded, with several saying they’ve received their copies.

Bennett is the author of the photo book Eruption in the Canyon: 212 Days & Nights With the Genius of Eddie Van Halen. The book is a self-published chronicle of the two weeks he spent filming Van Halen in 2004 and living with him from 2006 to 2007.

The author and filmmaker previously posted about about the 5150 Sessions album on Facebook in July. In addition, a now three-month-old Reddit thread reveals that the record has been in some buyer's hands for several months.

There is no word from the Van Halen camp at this time about the album or claims of copyright.

However, Bennett previously ran afoul of Van Halen in 2018 after he shared footage of his time with the electric guitar virtuoso online. At that time Van Halen successfully filed an injunction to halt its release.

Some guitarists should never meet their heroes. That was true for Mark Knopfler when he worked with Bob Dylan on his 1983 album, Infidels. It also didn't turn out too well for Eddie Van Halen when he befriended his guitar inspiration, Eric Clapton.

But it worked out just fine for Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell when he and Eddie became friends in the 1990s. Unfortunately, their friendship was bookended by a pair of bad experiences for Cantrell: In short, the worst gig of his career, and the theft of an extremely rare electric guitar Eddie gave him.

In the early 1990s, as Van Halen were getting ready to tour their For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge record, singer Sammy Hagar handpicked Alice in Chains to open for them. The band was blowing up at the time, and Hagar became enraptured with them after seeing their music video for "Man in the Box" on MTV.

The 10-month tour kicked off in August 1991, which is when Cantrell had his nightmare gig, all because he was nervous about performing in front of Eddie.

“The first time I met Ed Van Halen, I was getting ready to go onstage, and he was standing in my pit with Valerie [Bertinelli] right next to him and Wolfie in her arms,” he tells Gibson TV. “He's got his guitar on, and he's running scales like, ‘Hey, dude, what's up?’ And I'm like, Are you fucking kidding me?

“I think it was probably the worst show I ever played in my life, because I could not stop thinking, He's right there! I couldn't focus, and I couldn't wait until the gig was over.

“After that, it was fine, and we became good friends. Any time Ed would come to Seattle, he'd come pick me up, and we'd go to a pool hall, or we'd go see a band,” he adds. “Or we'd just end up in his hotel room playing, like, Name That Riff all night.”

Once the tour was over, Cantrell learned about Eddie's famously generous nature.

“I remember coming home off that tour, and I was living with [Alice in Chains’ manager] Kelly Curtis and his wife, Peggy,” he says. “He's like, ‘Hey man, welcome home. You had a good tour, and now you can relax... Hey, by the way, do you think you could clear your shit out of my garage? I need to put my car in there.’

“I'm like, ‘What are you talking about?’ and he says, ‘Eddie Van Halen filled the garage with gear for you. I haven't been able to park my car in my garage for months.’”

This was at the height of Eddie’s association with Music Man, and Cantrell benefited from it greatly. Among the haul were two 5150 amp heads, four cabs, and two copies of Ed's signature Music Man guitar, including one in Translucent Blue — a colorway reserved for models given as gifts to the guitarist’s inner circle.

“It’s sitting there in this tightly packed garage, and I’m trying to process it all like, ‘Okay, Eddie Van Halen just filled my garage with gear.”

In 2000, nearly a decade later, Cantrell took the Trans Blue axe to A&M Studios in Hollywood to record his solo album, Degradation Trip. It was then that the guitar went missing, stolen from the studio.

“I never knew what happened to that guitar, and I tried to track it down for years. I just couldn't figure it out,” Cantrell explains.

As Alice in Chains embarked on their Rainier Fog tour in 2018, he got a lead from Dave Friedman, with whom he had built his JJ-100 amp head.

“‘There’s a guy in Florida who collects Eddie’s Music Man guitars,’“ he said, “‘and he thinks he has your guitar.’

“So I called him up, and he'd found it online 18 years after it went missing,” Cantrell remembers. “They only made 23 of them, and mine in particular I routed out so that I could pull the Floyd Rose back. He showed me the guitar, and sure as shit it was.”

Unfortunately, the collector went dark soon enough. About a week later, Cantrell learned he was trying to get rid of the hot property.

“Another collector, Greg, calls from San Diego,” Cantrell continues.. “He's like, ‘Dude, this kid wants to sell me your guitar for, like, seven grand. I was asking him about where he got it, and he said his dad used to work at A&M Studios.’

“So Greg bought the guitar, drove it up from San Diego, and gave it to me. He didn’t even want any money. He was like, ‘It’s your guitar, man.’”

With a mix of excitement and relief, Cantrell rang Eddie to tell him the good news. His reply? “I'm really happy for you, but why hasn’t that ever happened to me, man? I never get my shit back.”

“Well, it's because it's you’re Eddie Van Halen, dude,” Cantrell replied. “I wouldn't give it back either.”

Meanwhile, Eddie Van Halen has been accused of stealing "Eruption" from Ace Frehley, while, in turn, Frehley was forced to re-create Eddie's solo on "Christine Sixteen" after the shredder tracked some demos for Gene Simmons.

A veteran guitarist has claimed that one of Ace Frehley's most iconic Kiss solos laid the foundation for Eddie Van Halen to flip the guitar world upside down with "Eruption."

It’s not the first time that links have been made between Ed's 1977 guitar solo and various other guitar players. For example, Harvey Mandel said he deserves credit for introducing EVH to the two-handed tapping techniques that are a signature element of the song.

But this new assertion of a link between the virtuoso and Kiss — a band he loved so much that he once asked to join them — is something altogether more incendiary.

The claim has been made by former Cro-Mags guitarist Parris Mayhew in the newly published book, Talk to Me: Conversations With Ace Frehley, by Greg Prato.

Despite his deep-rooted associations with the New York hardcore punk scene, Mayhew is a big admirer of the late Space Ace. He says there are clear similarities between Ace's solo on "Shock Me" from Alive II and Eddie's showcase.

“People understand and revere how important Eddie Van Halen is. It's so clear,” Mayhew states. “He is so much better than everybody else. But he also has all that fire and magnetism and magic that Ace had. He just did it better.

“And nobody that I knew who liked [Van Halen's debut] would accept the fact that this guy was influenced by that guy,” he continues. “And if you listen to the ‘Shock Me’ solo and ‘Eruption’ back to back, and if you don't hear that the 'Shock Me' solo is completely a template for the 'Eruption' solo, then you don't have ears.”

Frehley's solo — which, like "Eruption," is performed without accompaniment — comes at the 4:05 mark. While there are similarities in his and Van Halen's approach and style, including plenty of squealing pinch harmonics, there are good reasons to doubt the claim Ed took his lead from Ace.

Consider the recording and release dates: Alive II was issued on October 24, 1977. Van Halen's self-titled debut album, which features "Eruption," wasn't released until the following February, but "Eruption" was recorded September 8, 1977, several weeks before Alive II came out.

For that matter, Ed had been performing "Eruption" well before its September 8 recording date, as can be heard on a live taping from June 10, 1977. The recording of "Shock Me" on Alive II comes from a show at the L.A. Forum in late August of that year. To claim it was a template for a work that was already months in the making seems quite a stretch.

This isn't the first time someone has claimed Eddie took something from Ace. Even Ace thought Eddie began using two-handed tapping after seeing him do it in concert. Eddie said he saw Jimmy Page do it in 1971, well before Kiss existed, making him realize the technique's potential for his electric guitar fireworks.

Mayhew admits his claim has led to debates with fans over the years. But he stands by it.

"When I first heard 'Eruption', I was like, 'Oh my God, he's totally ripping off Ace!' I have never heard anybody else say that. And when I've brought it up, I've had people argue it down. And I'm like, 'Listen to them back to back.'

"Eddie Van Halen, if he was alive, and he claimed that he didn't just nick that whole thing as a template for 'Eruption', he's a liar."

In related news. former Van Halen bass player Michael Anthony has revealed the career-saving advice Eddie got from David Lee Roth in the band's early days, and Carl Verheyen has recalled the time Eddie borrowed one of his Les Pauls, causing him distress in the process

The one-two punch of Alive! and Destroyer made Kiss a success in the mid 1970s. In the summer of 1976, shortly after the release of Destroyer, Gene Simmons decided to use his newfound fame and fortune to help find and lead another group to the top of the charts. While in Los Angeles, he saw a young, unsigned Van Halen perform on the Sunset Strip and decided he would turn them into superstars.

He cut a demo tape with the group — Eddie Van Halen, drummer Alex Van Halen, singer David Lee Roth and bass guitar player Michael Anthony — at Village Recorder in L.A., then flew the group to New York City for overdubs and final production at Electric Lady Studios.

Nothing much came of the effort — Kiss’s management vetoed Simmons’ request to sign the group — but the bassist stayed friendly with Van Halen. (Simmons has said Eddie even tried to join Kiss in 1983 when he grew tired of leading his own band.)

As Simmons explains, while Van Halen were in New York City, he hired Eddie and Alex to help him record demos for three songs, including the Kiss hit “Christine Sixteen.” Simmons says he liked Eddie’s guitar solo on the cut so much that he made Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley copy it note for note.

“Around ’77, I wrote ‘Christine Sixteen’ and two other songs,” Simmons says. “On the way back from Japan, at one in the morning, I called Eddie and Alex and said, ‘I’ve got some songs — you want to help me do these demos?’ And they did.

“Eddie did the solo on ‘Christine Sixteen’ in one take. I loved it so much that I made Ace copy it note for note. So when you hear ‘Christine Sixteen,’ that’s Eddie’s solo you’re hearing, but copied by Ace.”

Granted, the solo is short on the kind of fireworks Eddie would soon be unleashing on Van Halen’s records, but it’s a tasty fill that shows young Ed’s maturity as a player. Whereas another guitarist might have used the opportunity to show off his chops, Ed gives the song just what it needs.

Simmons might have showed similar restraint. When it comes to crude and rude rock songs, they don’t get much worse than “Christine Sixteen,” which Kiss delivered on their 1977 album, Love Gun. The song concerns a 16-year-old girl, and the much older singer — Simmons was 27 at the time — who is spending too much time hanging around her high school waiting for a glimpse of her. Many radio stations banned the song. Others played it only during late-night broadcast hours.

As Simmons explained in the liner notes to his 2017 box set, The Gene Simmons Vault, the song was written as a retort to Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley.

“Paul would say, ‘Gene, all you ever write about are monster songs. Like ‘God of Thunder,’’’ Simmons wrote. In fact “God of Thunder” didn’t exist at the time Stanley said it; he just made the name up in the moment, but it sparked an idea. “And of course, he went home and wrote that song, as a semi-parody of a Gene song,” Simmons explained.

Simmons similarly challenged Stanley, telling him, “All you ever write are teenage girlie songs, like ‘Christine Sixteen.’

“And as soon as I heard myself say that, I quickly wrote it.”

Perhaps too quickly. With lyrics like “when I saw you coming out of school that day / that day I knew, I knew / I’ve got to have you,” “Christine Sixteen” is creepy and cringey.

Nevertheless, it reached a respectable number 25 on the Billboard charts.

Notably, “Christine Sixteen” isn’t the only time Frehley copied a solo. As Simmons told The Magnificent Others With Billy Corgan last February, the late Ace was a huge fan of Doors guitarist Robby Krieger and copied his electric guitar solo for “She,” a track from the 1975 Kiss album, Dressed to Kill. The Krieger solo comes from the Doors’ “Five to One,” from their 1968 album, Waiting for the Sun.

Eddie Van Halen may be best known for his Frankenstein Strat — a guitar hat married Les Paul tonality with Stratocaster playability and Floyd Rose trickery — but he was always keen to test-drive other guitars. Even if he might not have always treated them with the care their owners would have liked.

Speaking of one memorable night he played with Van Halen, Carl Verheyen says Eddie took a fancy to his Les Paul, and it nearly fell back into his possession, worse for wear.

The versatile Santa Monica-born session musician briefly joined Supertramp in the mid-’80s before pursuing a solo career.

But back in the 1970s, he was a performer in the L.A. area. Which is how he came to meet and befriend Eddie Van Halen.

“My band played opposite Van Halen a few times,” he says during a chat with Jon Stankorb. But it was one gig in particular that he remembers with a mix of fondness and fear for the well-being of his prized electric guitar.

“I remember that Eddie borrowed one of my Les Pauls. We had played a set and then they were going to play a set on a different stage in this sort of L-shaped building,” he details. “We ended our set with ‘I'm Going Home’ by Ten Years After, and they started their set with that, just to one-up us!”

In fact, the two Van Halen brothers were hugely inspired by Ten Years After's performance of the song in the Woodstock film. “The solo in the movie sounds pretty rough to me these days,” Ed told Guitar World in 2023. “But it had the energy, and that was what Ten Years After were all about at the time.”

Verheyen understood that a little bit of brash one-upmanship was never out of the question with Eddie Van Halen. It's what happened next that surprised him.

“They played 45 minutes, and when they were done, he walked over to our stage,” he continues. “And he goes, ‘Hey man, great guitar. Thanks.’ and he dropped the Les Paul from — I don't know — about three feet into the case, not realizing that these guitars don’t have bolt-on necks and they don't bounce.

“I said, ‘Ed, what are you doing!?’ but I think he was used to the Frankenstein Strats; you couldn’t hurt them.”

Reflecting on one of his most demanding recording sessions with Guitar Player, Verheyen had the chance to analyze and marvel at another next-level guitar player, and one that Eddie Van Halen was equally impressed by: Allan Holdsworth.

“I was instantly humbled when he showed me the chord voicings he used for the soloing changes in ‘Three Sheets to the Wind,’” Verheyen says of trying to keep up with Holdsworth’s wizardry. “My left hand couldn’t form the shapes quickly and cleanly enough. I limped home with my tail between my legs.”

Luckily, he refused to be beaten by the challenge – “the next morning, I locked myself in a room with a guitar. I refused to come out until I could [do it],” he says – and turned the mind-expanding experience into a fascinating lesson.

Verheyen has also delivered a whammy-bar masterclass for GP, having revisited it after falling in love with Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop.

Eddie Van Halen had his fair share of copyists. While he wasn't happy about it, he accept it as a byproduct of his rapidly rising stock.

But one player he cut too close to the bone. Shockingly, it was a guitarist whom Ed had once idolized.

Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, once suggested that his father “kind of ruined the musical landscape” of the 1980s, alluding to how his scintillating tapping licks and dive bomb trickery inspired a generation of players to mimic his style.

His imprint was felt on the electric guitar market, too. The prominence of his Frankenstein guitar and the shred-enabling instruments he wielded across the rest of the decade saw a score of firms trying to cash in on everyone wanting to have instruments like Eddie's. Even Gibson skewed its tradition for a Super Strat-style build that, though a failed experiment, has recently been revived.

But in the case of the player that angered Eddie, not only did he feel he took matters too far — he did it right in front on his eyes.

“Rick Derringer opened for us last year, and he did my exact solo,” Eddie told Guitar Player’s Jas Obrecht in 1979. “After the show, we’re sitting in the bar, and I just said, ‘Hey, Rick. I grew up on your ass. How can you do this? I don’t care if you use the technique — don’t play my melody.’ And he’s drunk and stupid and going, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’”

Derringer first broke out in the 1960s with the McCoys, performing their hit cover of Wes Farrell and Bert Berns' "Hang on Sloopy." By the 1970s, after he became a key figure in both Edgar and Johnny Winter's bands, he branched out as a solo artist.

But despite his own immense talents as a guitarist, he couldn't help lifting a page or two from EVH's book.

“The next night, he does my solo again,” Eddie moaned. “He ends the set with ‘You Really Got Me,’ which is exactly what we do.”

Van Halen had released their hell-raising version of the Kinks' hit single on their debut album just one year before. The song is widely regarded as a pivotal precursor to heavy metal, thanks to Dave Davies’ distorted guitar tone — achieved by slicing the speaker cone of his amplifier. It became, and remained for years, a staple of the band’s live shows.

“So I hate to say it, but I just told him, ‘Hey, if you’re going to continue doing that, you ain’t opening for us,’” Ed added.

Derringer was defiant, though. Eddie stayed true to his word, and he was booted from the tour.

“It’s fucked,” Eddie spat. “Because I’ve seen him plenty of times. I’ve even copied his chops way back then.”

However, Derringer wasn’t the only guitarist to be singled out. Boston’s Tom Scholz was also in the firing line.

“We played right before them — I forget where — and I do my solo. And then all of a sudden he does my solo,” he claimed. “I got pissed.”

They weren't the only guitarists Ed reportedly had problems with. Yngwie Malmsteen claimed Eddie was intimidated by his talents and would avoid him every chance he got.

What's evident is that Eddie was at times overwhelmed by the attention that went with his fame. As Gene Simmons has claimed, Ed was so burned out from it all that he once implored the bass guitar player to let him join Kiss when the group was considering getting rid of Vinnie Vincent, one of their early lead guitar replacements for the late Ace Frehley.

The wildfires that swept through Los Angeles in January 2025 had a devastating impact on the city. More than 200,000 people were forced to evacuate, and over 18,000 homes and structures were destroyed as the fires spread across over 520,000 acres of land.

That left a score of musicians having to make some difficult decisions about their gear, and Wolfgang Van Halen was among them as he watched the fires get closer to his father’s legendary 5150 Studios.

In such testing moments, however, you soon learn what really matters to you. For the Mammoth bandleader, there were only two things he couldn’t bear the thought of losing.

“I thought, I’ll have Frankenstein and my wife, and we’re good,” he says in a new interview with Premier Guitar (via Guitar.com).

He’s talking, of course, about the Frankenstein Strat that his father built between 1977 and 1981. It was the result of Eddie Van Halen craving a guitar that blended Gibson tonalities with Stratocaster functionality.

It's the same electric guitar Wolfgang used to track some parts from Mammoth’s 2025 single “The End,” saying that it “makes me feel closer to Pop.”

To ensure the guitar's safety during the fires, he kept it in his car for three weeks, in case he ever needed to hotfoot it to safety.

“We had a U-Haul filled with whatever else we felt was worth saving, which was very tough,” he adds. “Luckily, it didn’t come to that, but it was a traumatizing time we’re still working through.”

“That’s where most of the anxious, doomsday energy in the lyrics [of ‘The End’] comes from. I couldn’t focus on my things.”

He goes on to say that he embraced a darker, rawer sound on the track as he continues to both celebrate his family’s musical legacy and not be defined solely by it.

“In comparison to how I was on the first album, which was very reserved, guitar-wise, I’m starting to worry less about what people think and what people say,” he says. “[‘The End’] has a rawer vibe, and I was happy to keep the rough edges for people to feel like they’re in the studio with me.

“From the beginning, I’ve tried to stand out as my own person, without all of the bullshit that comes with the name and the controversies and everything that’s come before me. It’s just nice to be able to be judged for the music itself, rather than what people think or say about me.”

In another corner of L.A,. Joe Bonamassa's Nerdville home/museum was in danger of succumbing to the wildfires too, prompting him to evacuate as much priceless gear as he could while accepting that “my lifetime of work is not in my hands anymore.”

“It’s something I’d care not to go through again, but a lot of people lost everything, so I consider I’m one of the lucky ones,” he would later tell Guitarist. “A friend and I were able to get all the big stuff out.

“The Flying Vs, there were nine sunburst Les Pauls at the house at that time, a fancy Martin, the Broadcaster... all the big stuff went. We only had one shot, and it was like, I think, 55 guitars and a Dumble and a Trainwreck [a legendary and uber-rare, wooden shell amplifier built by the late Ken Fischer].”

The rest was at the mercy of fate and the flames.

Meanwhile, a free-to-watch documentary about Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein and his wider, unrelenting passion for modding guitars was released last year. It was pieced together using interviews from Eddie, the band, and those around him, and it digs deep.

In his own words, it recounts how his first retrofit was of a Univox 12-string guitar. From there, modding became a fascination.

“I liked the guitar,” he said, “but it had 12 strings. I didn't want 12 strings, I wanted six, so I asked the guy, ‘Can I take six strings off and try it?’ and the guy goes, ‘No, but if you buy it, you can do whatever you want.’ So I bought it, took six strings off, and loved it.”

Allen Hinds is nothing if not well grounded.

He's been an A-list sideman for artists like Gino Vanelli and Randy Crawford, a long-serving tutor at MI/G.I.T, and a solo artist with eight albums to his name. His playing — performed largely on custom Xotic California Classic electrics (XSC-AH and XTC-AH) — is an exquisite mix of southern rock sass and tasty legato fusion blues, enriched by a bridge-pickup biased tone that is lauded the world over.

With all this accounted for plus the popularity of his insightful legato technique lesson, it was time for us to talk.

From his experiences at L.A.'s famous Musicians Institute, Hinds discusses his early student years to becoming a sort after tutor. He reflects on his friendship with Jeff Buckley, taking lessons with fusion virtuoso Scott Henderson, meeting bass guitarist Jaco Pastorius and his unexpected dep gig for Steve Morse in the Dregs.

And as someone who has spent much of his life teaching and mentoring guitarists from around the world, he shares his views on what are the most vital elements to becoming a great musician.

You were at MI at the same time as Jeff Buckley. What was he like as a student?
Back then, MI — or G.I.T. [as it was originally known] — was only a one-year school. New classes came in every six months. I came in halfway through Jeff's time there.

I'm a pretty silly person sometimes and I keep things light, so Jeff and I got along partly because he was silly too, but we also loved Led Zeppelin. And there we were, in a progressive school, trying to learn how to play over jazz changes. As you do in schools, like-minded folks would sanction off from the others.

I would say Jeff was one of about 10 guys that could really play. He had great time and facility. He was into Allan Holdsworth like us all, and because his time was so good he could really pull it off. But there was always a sense that that was not what he was after. He was 10 years younger than me and he could play incredibly well, but that particular skill seemed not to be his real passion, even though he did it so effortlessly. I remember he was easy to make laugh and he was a bit shy.

One time, there was a jam we had: If a performance room was empty, you could just get in and start playing. It was me, Jeff, bassist Jeff Berlin and a great drummer and friend named Rory Flores. We were playing "Footprints" by Wayne Shorter. Because of the level of the band, students started to gather until the room was almost full. But in the middle of his solo, Jeff just stopped playing.

Afterwards, I said, “What happened?” He said he just got really nervous. Crazy, considering his future.

Jeff was into Al Di Meola’s playing with pieces such as "Race With Devil on Spanish Highway." Did you see him play much like that as his albums don’t show this?
We were all trying to copy any guitar heroes’ chops to see if we could play like them. I remember that but I remember that Jeff was more into Weather Report, Allan Holdsworth and Led Zeppelin.

Who else was at MI when you were a student?
These were really golden years. You could walk down the hallway any given day and on your left and right would be Joe Diorio, Robben Ford, Jennifer Batten, Scott Henderson, Frank Gambale and Jeff Berlin. Student-wise, Oliver Wood was there from the Wood brothers and Jimmy Herring. But really, there were many really great players from all over the world.

What musicians at MI inspired you the most as a student?
Probably Scott Henderson, Robben Ford and Joe Diorio. All for different reasons.

What musical insights did you gain from Scott Henderson?
Scott was the first person to explain how melodic minor modes could be used just as Major scale modes, relative to each other. I would sit with Scott everyday, but Jeff Buckley didn’t. Jeff was a little shy and scared of Scott’s style of teaching and playing. But maybe he just had a premonition that that playing style wasn’t for him.

And from Don Mock?
Don was so nice to me. I was in awe of his complete mastery of the fretboard. He knew I wasn’t an alternate picker like so many were, but he thought that was cool. He was a great hang, a great person just to be around, easy to make laugh.

Joe Diorio was a fantastic jazzer. What was your time with him like?
From Joe I learned the lesson to follow your crazy imagination as far as you can. He was so open to everything, and he would take a concept and run with it with no fear. I loved his imagination. He was a great guy, before he left we regularly had lunch together.

Howard Roberts was a very important part of MI and a great session player who could sight read pretty much anything.
I came to appreciate Howard's playing later. At the time he was this icon, with his sunglasses and his philosophy. I never spent much time with him, although he and Tommy Tedesco gave me my job there. At one suggestion meeting they would hold toward the end of every semester, they would gather the student body and ask the students how to make the school better. Someone recommended me as a teacher. Tommy and Howard said '"Who is Allen Hinds?” I stood up and they gave me a gig.

MI is renowned for having many guest performers in. When you were a student, what guests inspired or influenced you the most?
During my first month's there, the Dregs came to play but for some reason Steve Morse could not show. I knew a couple of their songs from my bands in Alabama, so they got me up and I played "On the Pipe." I was terrible, but they were nice.

Robben Ford was a big help, I sat with him every day I could and pestered him. I learned a lot about phrasing and touch.

There was a Jaco Pastorius visit but he wasn’t in good shape really. I asked him a relatively stupid question. I said, “Jaco, which musical experience meant more to you than others?” I wanted to get him away from all the other questions like “What pick do you use?"

He paused and said, “What?!" All of sudden I was under the microscope. I repeated the question, then he said “Look, I have four children and I love them all the same. Same with music." So tail between legs, I went back to my seat.

Within the environment of MI, what are the underlying aspects of getting good as a guitarist?
To me, it was the learning of different cultures as much as anything, all brought together with a common thread, which was the guitar. It was the best year of my life.

What do you think makes MI different now compared to back then?
Like most schools, MI is keeping up with the trends. There aren’t as many guitar solos on the radio as there used to be, as it's fallen a little out of favor. And, like everything, it's much more expensive to attend now. I think a year of MI in the 1980s was about $2,500. Crazy. All that said, there is still a lot of eager and hungry young players that come through and love the school.

What about your dealings with today's students and their aims to improve?
I encourage songwriting over chops building. It encourages a more rounded appreciation of music making, it builds a bigger picture. To me personally, my songs mean more than my licks. That's why I concentrate more on writing than chops building these days.

To be specific, what are the six most important topics that can help guitarists become better musicians (and why?)
One, get over yourself. There are always better players than you. That said, bandleaders would rather have a good hang than be the best player.

Two, don’t make faces when you think you mess up. No one else knows!

Three, write, write, write. At the end of the day, people remember songs.

Four, learn the fretboard. If you practice a pattern, use it: don’t leave it as a practice tool only.

Five, teach others. I find I learn so much about myself by having to reverse engineer what I know. It's healthy and it helps you to grow.

And six, listen to Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles and Stevie Wonder, and learn their songs. If nothing else, it will bring you great joy!

Allen’s latest album, The Good Fight, is out now. You can check out the track "Slither," below. The solo section is full of emotive bends, rippling rock fusion lines and tasty blues phrasing.

For more information about Allen, visit Allenhinds.com

Van Halen alumni Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony have reflected on one of Van Halen’s more unlikely shows, when they played during a blizzard.

On the road in 1995 to support their 10th studio album, Balance which would prove to be Hagar’s fifth and final record with the band, their stop in Denver provided less than hospitable conditions. But, as the old adage goes, the show must go on, and Eddie Van Halen and company plowed through the storm to deliver an exhaustive 21-song set — even if that meant to resorting to every cold-conquering measure they could think of.

“It looked like we were playing for 18,000 snowmen,” Hagar says of the show at the Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre. The date was September 20, making for a decidedly unseasonal cold snap.

“Eddie ended up playing half the show with gloves with the fingertips cut out, if you could imagine,” he continues. “We had giant heaters onstage — you name it, we did the whole show. The craziest thing ever."

The clip shared shows the band performing “Poundcake,” a song released four years earlier on For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. The tune famously features a Makita 6012HD power drill in its intro and guitar solo after Eddie Van Halen heard a technician using it in the studio, and loved its engine-like quality. Paul Gilbert, of course, had taped guitar picks to a power drill for "Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy" that same year.

"Poundcake" was the penultimate song of the night and was executed under a maelstrom of snow.

After thanking the crowd for sticking through the extreme conditions, Hagar said, “The promoter and our management asked if we wanted to cancel the show. We said, ‘Fuck no, man.’ If you can do it, we can do it.”

“The place was packed and everybody looked like a Q-tip out there,” bass guitarist Anthony recalls, 30 years on. “It was no big deal for the audience!”

Eight inches of snow had fallen that day. Power lines had been downed, and millions of trees were said to be damaged, but the band played on.

The following year, tensions between Hagar and EVH came to a head, with the singer departing from the group. Original vocalist David Lee Roth returned to the fold for a brief reunion before turning to Extreme singer Gary Cherone for their next album, Van Halen III.

Speaking to Jeremy White about his three-year stint in the band in 2023, Cherone said he believes he added something different to the mix.

“As far as Eddie, I think our writing partnership was different than the other guys, in the sense that I would show him a lyric. It was the first time he would write to a lyric,” he had said.

“It was something that me and [Extreme guitarist] Nuno [Bettencourt] did forever. But that was something new for [Ed], which inspired him in different directions.

“I think with the Sammy era... they knew who they were. With me coming into the fold, we were discovering who we were.”

Hagar has since taken aim at his predecessor, Roth, stating that EVH was a better songwriter for his presence in the group, as he had far fewer limitations.

Earlier this year, the singer finally released the track he claimed he wrote with Eddie Van Halen in a dream. He also stated that EVH was more interested in the cello than the guitar before he died.

Eddie's son, Wolfgang, has been keeping his dad's legacy alive by recording with his infamous Frankenstein Strat, a guitar that has recently been the subject of a free-to-air documentary charting Eddie's love for modding.

When a die-hard fan spray-painted “Clapton is God” on a London wall in the middle of the British blues boom, it was evident that a modernized interpretation of the blues had successfully captured the imagination of contemporary audiences.

By Clapton's own admission, playing the blues, let alone reshaping it for a new era, required not superhuman talent but plain-old hard work. As he continued to push the genre forward in Cream — after a glimpse of Buddy Guy's live show convinced to form his own power trio —– other artists helped take it to new places in the following decades. Clapton believes Robert Cray did that better than anyone.

“It’s the most difficult thing to write, a modern blues,” Clapton told Rolling Stone in 2017 mused. “The only person I know who can do it well is Robert Cray. It comes straight out of him. I saw him recently this year, and he’s still doing it. He’s on fire, the real thing.

“I wish I could be like that,” he added. “Really, I’m a musician. I try to be a singer and songwriter, and it’s interesting to me. But I would never think of myself as that.”

Clapton, of course, speaks with humility — his success includes 17 Grammy awards. But he felt Cray had the whole package, with his guitar playing and voice working together in perfect harmony.

Despite getting a metaphorical pat on the back from a blues legend, Cray wasn't a purist. Part of his brilliance came from the fact that he peppered his blues with elements of gospel and soul, the musical styles of his upbringing. Blues was, in fact, not his primary source of inspiration.

“My dad would play gospel music on Sundays,” he tells Guitar Player. “It was Swan Silvertones, Sensational Nightingales, the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi — and Alabama — and all kinds of stuff like that. During the week, it would be Ray Charles, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Sarah Vaughan...

“It’s funny, because as a kid I heard all that music, and then, as kids do, of course, you listen to your own music. When I got into my late teens and picked up the blues bug, I started taking my parents’ records from the house, and then embellished that collection by buying my own records. So getting the gospel music or getting Curtis Mayfield or the Impressions was all just part of what I grew up on.”

He also played an accidental role in inspiring the hit film The Blues Brothers, having played bass previously in the house band from the film Animal House. While those two instances are comedic footnotes to a journeyman career, Cray is as authentic as modern blues can get.

Unfortunately, for all of Cray's and Clapton's mutual admiration, their friendship wouldn't last. Cray took exception to his friend's decision to sing some lines on Van Morrison's anti-lockdown song, "Stand and Deliver," and ended their relationship.

As he told Clapton, he was particularly taken aback by the lines “Do you wanna be a free man / Or do you wanna be a slave? Do you wanna wear these chains / Until you’re lying in the grave?”

“His reaction back to me was that he was referring to slaves from, you know, England from way back,” Cray told The Washington Post.

Cray, who was born in Georgia during segregation, found the reply wanting. He was further dismayed to see a photo of Clapton and guitarist Jimmie Vaughan posing with Texas governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, in September 2021. As The Washington Post noted, Abbot had “recently signed the country’s most restrictive abortion law and a Republican-backed measure to limit who can vote in the state.”

In addition, Abbott is opposed to vaccination mandates, as is Clapton, who has posted statements against vaccines and described scientific data as "propaganda."

In response to the photo, Clapton's business manager Michael Eaton said at the time that posing with the governor didn't amount to an endorsement of his positions.

“[Clapton] is a great believer in freedom of choice which drives his position on vaccinations,” said Eaton. “And his views on other matters would reflect that belief in freedom of choice.”

It all brings to mind the old saying: You may lose your friends, but you never lose the blues.

The rise of Eddie Van Halen as a generation’s guitar hero saw thousands running to their local Guitar Center to buy a Superstrat and master tapping licks. As his son, Wolfgang Van Halen, once said, EVH “kind of ruined” the ‘80s guitar scene, as a raft of copyists followed in his wake.

But for other impressionable musicians like Les Claypool, his influence would push them away from the electric guitar while inspiring them to reach new heights on their chosen instrument.

“Everybody wanted to be Eddie Van Halen,” the Primus bass player and frontman tells Rick Beato. So, his looking to the low-end of the scale made perfect sense — all these guitar players would need a bassist for the bands they started. Although it took a little coaxing from his schoolmate, Kirk Hammett, to become embroiled in band life.

“He actually tried to get me to sing for his band,” Claypool reveals. “We had algebra together, and he sat behind me. He would always go, ‘Hey, Claypool. Hey, Claypool, check it out, man.’

“I still, to this day, remember this ad. It was the ad for a Stratocaster where the guy's holding it, and he's going, ‘It's a rock machine,’ and the guy behind him is going, ‘No, it's a country machine.’ And he's [Hammett] like, ‘Here's my guitar, Claypool, man. It’s the one I'm getting.’”

Hammett, who of course would go on to take over the world with Metallica — although a Fernandes was his Strat of choice in the band’s early days — was just one of the players to have been enraptured by EVH’s flair and fretboard pyrotechnics.

“That first Van Halen album blew open everyone’s minds to the potential of electric guitar,” he told the New York Times of his influence in the wake of his passing in 2020. “His right-hand technique, the way he hammered on strings, with super-wide intervals that a person could not humanly stretch. It was an incredible sound. Eddie started this momentum of just getting sounds out of his guitar that no one got.”

The Hammett-Claypool tie-in never happened after he “chickened out” of being Hammett’s frontman. “I was a total Bobby Brady, croaking and cracking,” the bassist admits. But another band soon began their search for a bass player, and Claypool’s fate was sealed.

“There was a guy who had this bass for sale for 15 bucks, some old piece of shit, and — actually it was 30 bucks, and I had 15 — I said, ‘Dad, can I borrow 15 bucks?’ He's like, ‘Is that really what you want to do?’ And I said, ‘Yep.’ He's like, ‘Well, let's go down and talk to Al's Music.’ It was a buddy of his.

“We went down and we got a brand-new P-Bass copy, by Memphis. I got this thing, and I had to pull weeds all summer to pay for it. But then I was instantly in a band, because nobody wanted to play bass back then.”

Claypool and Hammett each fared well in their music careers, but behind the scenes, there was a fallout from their aborted attempts to play in a band together.

“I didn't find out till years later that he was kind of pissed at me for bailing on his thing to go play bass in this other band,” Claypool says.

In 1986, following the passing of Metallica founding bassist Cliff Burton, Claypool auditioned for Metallica. At that time, he'd started laying the foundations for what would become Primus and, with it, his rather atypical slap-and-tap bass style. It was a world away from Burton's approach to the instrument, and that wasn't lost on the band's drummer, Lars Ulrich. He reportedly told Claypool, “You're not really used to this kind of music, are you.”

“I was a carpenter and would have joined any band that paid me,” Claypool told Guitar World. “Kirk called me, but I didn't fit in. I had a blonde Mohawk and baggy skater pants and two different colored tennis shoes — and this was back when they had long hair and tight pants.”

Ultimately, he's glad he never got the gig. In Primus, he ventured into uncharted territory that never would have been explored had he joined a band basking in the success of Master of Puppets.

At the same time, like Van Halen, Claypool set out to do things with his bass guitar that others had not.

“My style in Primus evolved from me consciously trying to play bass and rhythm guitar at the same time,” he explains. “Primus was all about doing something that nobody had ever heard before, and the guitar players I used were textural players. I wasn't really used to playing with regressive players who wanted the bass to stay in the background. I was into Adrian Belew, Robert Fripp, and Andy Summers.”

In related news, Kirk Hammett has given Guitar Player an extensive tour of his gear collection and revealed that he's sat on a mountain of riffs for the follow-up to the band's 2023 album, 72 Seasons.

It’s no secret that when David Lee Roth left Van Halen, he was hellbent on besting his old band and outshining the guitarist who kept stealing the limelight from him. While Eddie Van Halen and company turned to Sammy Hagar to fill the void, Roth shrewdly tapped another hotshot guitarist to go toe-to-toe with: Steve Vai.

Roth’s solo career may not have even threatened to reach the heights of his rival, but for Vai — who advanced his career from being Frank Zappa's transcriptionist to his “stunt guitarist,” and become a mildly successful solo artist on his own — was simply thrilled for the opportunity.

“It was a good time, we were young — I was 25, 26 — and we wore the most outlandish clothes,” he tells Billy Corgan on his The Magnificent Others podcast. “The stages were the size of a football field, and we played our asses off.”

Vai’s electric guitar talents are undeniable, but his body of work at that point — seven studio and live albums with Zappa, and one solo album, 1984's Flex-Able — was pretty eclectic compared to the stadium rock David Lee Roth was gunning for. Vai knew the gig was temporary and wanted to make the very most of it while he could.

“It was great while it lasted,” he continues. “I was able to live in that world because, as a teenager, even though I had all this interest in compositional music, rock music was embedded in me.

“It was kind of like acting in a sense. I knew it was fleeting, that it was trendy, and I was in a position where I could play my butt off and then it would be over. Then I could go back to playing weird music.”

Vai might have been just looking for a good time, but Roth was looking to prove a point. With virtuosic bass player Billy Sheenan, who would go on to enjoy success with Mr. Big and the Winery Dogs, and drummer Gregg Bissonette, who has since become sticks for hire for Vai, Joe Satriani and Andy Summers, Vai wanted a best-in-class band. This was far from the David Lee Roth show, even if his ego implied otherwise.

Ironically, though, Vai didn’t see himself in competition with Eddie Van Halen.

“In the background somewhere, there was the extraordinary thought that I need to somehow keep up with Edward, which is an illusion, because you can't,” Vai says. “But what I could keep up with was my own expansion. I loved Edward.

“When he hit the scene, you know what happened? Everybody's input jack closed up.”

Vai's resume would help him score the gig as Roth's foil. But he wasn't about to start a war with Eddie.

“When word got out that David Lee Roth was looking for a guitarist, it was probably the most coveted rock guitar position,” he reflects. “I was in my little apartment on Fairfax Street in Hollywood. And as soon as I heard that news, I turned to my roommate and I said, ‘That's my gig.’ But it didn't come from a place of [in a commanding voice] ‘That's my gig!’ It was just this intuitive thing.

“The next day, the phone rings, and it's David. I just knew that I could make it work ‘cause I had a rock and roll fire in me. And I knew that I wasn't going to try to sound like Edward or do anything like him.”

Ultimately, Vai’s plan to quietly return to writing weird music didn’t quite pan out. Whitesnake came calling in 1989, but when he did peel back from the scene several years later, he did so knowing he never stepped on his hero’s toes. Because no one could, not even Yngwie Malmsteen, despite his claims that Eddie was “threatened” by him.

Roth, meanwhile, continued to showcase his knack for hiring unknown superstar guitarists, with a rich lineage of shredders following in Vai’s footsteps. But his biggest hit — “Yankee Rose” — came from Vai’s genius.

When it came to what he could do with an electric guitar, Eddie Van Halen was a trailblazer. But that doesn’t mean he pulled his inspirations out of thin air.

One of Van Halen’s biggest hits, “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love”, the fourth single from the band’s eponymous 1978 debut album, came from a tongue-in-cheek place that belied their usual technical ecstasy.

“When Eddie came up with the lick, it was kind of like a nod to punk,” former bassist Michael Anthony tells Professor of Rock. “Like The Ramones, you’ve got one [or] two chords and that’s it.”

Naturally, the song does have oodles of Eddie’s trademark flair; there’s a dexterity to some of his fretboard dancing that would make Johnny Ramone’s brain melt. But Anthony’s right – the song pinballs between two chords: A minor and G.

“The whole song is just that one lick throughout,” Anthony expands. “It has no other kind of B-section that takes you somewhere else or whatever. That’s exactly why that song came out like it did. It shows you what you can do with two chords.”

What certainly isn’t punk is the subtle helping of sitar that the band’s super producer, Ted Templeman, snuck into the mix.

“There was an electric sitar in the studio, and Eddie picked it up, and the thing was really hard to play,” Anthony adds. “But it sounded really cool, so he used it in that solo. It was different sounding, and [even though] Eddie struggled to play that thing with the string height and everything, he did it.”

“There was no guitar player who had ever played like that,” Templeman once told Guitar Player of Eddie's talents. He even cites “Ain’t Talking ‘Bout Love” as the favorite Van Halen song he worked on.

“First of all, Ed’s guitar – that riff is incredible, and Donn [Landee, engineer] got a great sound on it,” he enthuses. “Instantly, he tuned right in. And it’s got a really interesting solo on it. For some reason, out of anything I ever cut, I still love listening to that. A lot of it is the intro. Ed’s guitar is amazing.”

Eddie was the unmistakable driving force behind the band; he was their selling point – even with David Lee Roth fronting them – and his limelight hogging was the reason the singer ultimately quit. But there was great pressure with that, too.

British filmmaker Simon Adkin has captured that superbly. He has been tirelessly piecing together old Van Halen interviews across a series of free-to-watch documentaries on the band. In one of his latest, which centers on how “Eruption” revolutionized lead guitar for a generation of players, Eddie talks about being the “spark plug” of the band, and how the rest of the group relied on his genius.

Conversely, Sammy Hagar says the guitarist was “dried up” by the 2000s, hence why the band only released one album in the 21st century. The singer also said that he was more interested in the cello than the guitar in his final months – but refused to showcase his chops.

Hagar also claims that Eddie came to him in a dream after they died and that his latest song, “Encore, Thank You, Goodnight” is what they wrote in that moment. It’s a fairly outlandish claim, but Santana’s recent dream-based tale – featuring the fingerless spirit of Stevie Ray Vaughan – might just top it.

Eddie Van Halen's 1982 Kramer electric guitar, which bears his signature stripes design and played a surprise role in a glam metal classic, is headed to auction this fall.

Going under the hammer as part of Sotheby's inaugural Grails Week (October 21 to October 28), the electric guitar is expected to go for $3 million, considering its heritage. That would make it the fifth most expensive guitar ever sold at auction, falling just behind another red, white, and black-striped Kramer – Eddie's "Hot For Teacher" axe, which sold for $3,932,000 in 2023.

If the guitar is to fetch that price, it would knock John Lennon’s “Help!” 12-string Framus Hootenanny out of the top bracket. The acoustic guitar sold for $2,857,500 in 2024, after it hadn't been seen or played in 50 years.

The Kramer is based on Eddie’s infamous home-built Frankenstein Strat, which was last used by Wolfgang Van Halen during the recording of Mammoth’s new track, “The End”. The Kramer featured prominently across Van Halen’s 1982-83 tour dates, having been played in Philadelphia and extensively across South America.

Featuring a Floyd Rose tremolo and a humbucker in the bridge and single coil in the neck – complete with a vacant middle cavity to mirror the Frankenstein – it’s the epitome of EVH luthiery. Signs of heavy wear, particularly across its maple fretboard, show the guitar has been used and abused plenty during its lifetime.

Known for gifting his guitars – just ask a teenage Dweezil Zappa, and Mark Tremonti – the virtuoso later gave the twin pickup guitar to his longtime tech, Robin "Rudy" Leiren. It even has a personalised inscription on the guitar from Van Halen to Leiren on the bass side horn.

By the end of the decade, it was in Mick Mars’ hands, and he used the guitar across the recording of Mötley Crüe's 1989 album, “Dr Feelgood”, when the band were at the height of their powers. It’s been confirmed that it was used on the track “Slice of Your Pie”.

“Played during some of Eddie's most iconic performances and later used by Mötley Crüe's Mick Mars, this instrument connects two giants of heavy metal,” says Sotheby’s Ian Ferreyra de Bone. “With its custom build and incredible backstory, it's a true grail.”

The guitar will be put on display in Monterey, California, from August 13 until August 16, ahead of its sale.

In related news, Eddie Van Halen’s lifelong friend has opened up on how he was a “pretty complex” character, while a recording engineer who worked on “A Different Kind of Truth” has explained why he didn’t double-track his riffs.

Mark Tremonti has revealed how Paul Reed Smith gave him the “Dumble itch”, and has reflected on his favorite memories of Eddie Van Halen, having been given the rare opportunity to write and record in the hallowed halls of 5150 Studios.

The Creed and Alter Bridge guitarist has long since been one of PRS Guitars' poster boys, and his connection with the luthier helped kickstart his Dumble obsession. Today, although he daren’t take one of his prestigious Dumble amps on the road with him, he's revealed how their spirit lives on in his Creed live rig, having worked with PRS on a Dumble-inspired signature head, the MT 100. But there was a point that Howard “Alexander” Dumble’s tube amps were solely the stuff of legend.

“Paul [Reed Smith] was the first person who let me play a Dumble amplifier,” he says, in conversation with American Musical Supply. “We were at a PRS event. He had all of his endorsees there; there were probably 10 of us, and he had all these amps on stage.

“He's like, ‘All right, guys, everybody get up. We're going to sound check.’ So, I ran up on stage and I saw a Dumble that I plugged right into,” Tremonti continues. “I had to hear it.

“I absolutely loved it,” he goes on. “So, from that day on, I was obsessed with getting that tone because Paul ended up giving that amp to a friend of his, and so I could never get it again. It was a 50-watt version.

“Since then, I've bought another Dumble from Paul that I think is the best Dumble I've ever heard.” However, he feels that some of the amps that PRS is currently building have a chance of usurping that cherished tube amp.

“Paul's dabbling more and more and more into amplifiers, and he's getting very, very sophisticated at it,” Tremonti reveals.

The firm had been in business for nearly a quarter of a century when, in 2009, it launched its first amps after Smith met boutique amp designer Doug Sewell at the Dallas Guitar Show. The Sonzera 20 & 50 combo amps were the first to hit the shelves, and plenty have followed since.

“Some of the stuff that he's turning out now is blowing my mind,” the guitarist adds. “Some haven't been released, but when they do come out, people are going to be slack-jawed. It's really great stuff.”

Tremonti, Myles Kennedy, and the rest of Alter Bridge are fresh out of the studio, having finished recording their eighth album. Key writing sessions and drum recording happened in Eddie Van Halen’s custom-built 5150 Studios, where previously, only Van Halen and Wolfgang Van Halen’s band, Mammoth, have tracked.

“That's one of the biggest honors you could ever ask for,” he beams. “We were the first band outside of somebody with the last name Van Halen to be able to do that in that studio. We only tracked drums there, I tracked guitars at home in Orlando, but we got to put the arrangements together [at 5150].”

The band spent a month in the studio. Every Van Halen record from “1984” was committed to tape in those four walls, and Tremonti often found himself daydreaming.

“Being able to just walk around and see the memorabilia and where it all happened, see the tiny little vocal booth where Roth did his vocals… Obviously they don't have the Frankenstein [Strat] and stuff lying around, but you'll see little things like the 5150 necklace from the cover.

“It's just amazing to be in that room, that space where all that magic happened, and hearing the stories about it. It’s a crazy honor.”

He’s also come away from those sessions with a little memento, courtesy of his longtime friend, Wolfgagn Van Halen.

“One of the amps I have on stage now [the 50-watt EVH 5153] was [from 5150 Studios]. I said I loved it, and Wolfie gave it to me.”

Tremonti has previously recalled how, when Creed supported Van Halen in the late ‘90s, Eddie had battled through a crowd of fans to give him a guitar, and has also spoken about the pressure of playing shows with the virtuoso watching on.

“He came to an Alter Bridge show in LA when Wolfgang was filling in on drums,” he tells Loudwire. “You'll play a show and see him there, smiling, looking down. It was hard to shake the nerves, but it felt good for him to be there.

“We went to see them [Van Halen] practice at 5150 Studios, and they were playing the new album [2012's 'A Different Kind of Truth']. They finished a song and I was like, ‘Wolfie, that was a killer song, I loved when you did all the chordy stuff,’ and Eddie was like, ‘Were...were my parts good?’ You're Eddie Van Halen, your parts are always good! But he was always pushing to be the best he could be.”

Speaking to Guitar Player earlier this year, the guitarist has also revealed his strange-but-effective tip for writing unique solos, and it’s easier to pull off than you might think.

Five-time Grammy winner Ross Hogarth has a rich recording résumé, having worked with Edgar Winter, Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, Dweezil Zappa and John Fogerty before being hired for Van Halen's final album, 2012's A Different Kind of Truth.

In a new interview, Hogarth has reflected on his time working with Eddie Van Halen and revealed how his way of tracking albums differed from most guitarists.

“Most of Ed's records are not double tracked, because he would play the part with all these nuances and squeals,” he tells the Agartha Podcast.

With so many little details populating Eddie's perpetually unpredictable playing, nailing double takes proved an impossible task.

“Guitar players, when they know they're going to double the guitar, simplify their part so they don't have to worry about learning every little nuance,” he continues. “To have to double that is incredibly time consuming, and as human beings, it's almost impossible to be perfect.

“If you try to double it, you can hear all the imperfections, whereas on its own, it's perfect.”

Hogarth knew when he took on Van Halen's album what the gig would be like and who ruled the roost.

“I know that you don't come into a Van Halen record and tell Eddie, ‘Well, here, this is how we're going to do it.’ You come into Ed's world and you see what he's doing.

“He wasn't using ribbon mics — he was using one cabinet, he had two Shure SM57s, and he split them, and he would delay them a little differently. So it wasn't a dedicated analog bounce of stereo left and right.”

Despite the fact that Ed had his methods mapped out, Hogarth decided to throw him some new ideas, knowing what fun it would bring if he said yes. Noticing that the guitarist used a splitter to divide his signal across multiple tube amps and cabs, he made his pitch.

“I said, ‘You've got this splitter here that you use for live shows. Do you want to try messing around?’”

Ed was game. And because recording was taking place at Van Halen's studio, 5150, all his gear was on tap.

“We started by using two heads and two cabinets with the SM57s, and he already started to like that because that's like a natural stereo, because speakers don't move absolutely perfectly,” he explains. “So the left and right speakers were doing this little stereo air dance.

“I said, ‘You've got all these choices. Just for me, can we pull out the old Marshall,'" Hogarth asked, referring to the 1967/68 Marshall 1959 Super Lead used to track the band's first six albums. "And some of your old gear? And we started having a really good time blending two amps.”

The engineer had another trick up his sleeve.

“Eddie was looking for bottom,” he says. Recognizing the Shure SM57s' lack of low end, Hogarth suggested trying a new tube ribbon mic he was creating with Royer, which would come to be known as the R-122V. It captured plenty of detail as well as the low end Ed was seeking.

“Ed, God rest his soul, was an incredible engineer on his own. He was amazingly intuitive,” Hogarth says. “I'd watch him sitting there listening to playback, turning the Royers up and down, and he's starting to really get off, because they were bringing natural low end.

“It was bringing in a whole other midrange frequency that made the guitar really start to speak. He totally understood it within five minutes, and he was like, ‘Fuck yeah!’”

Hogarth was also on hand to help troubleshoot an issue that came up due to a change in the band's personnel. With Michael Anthony out and Wolfgang Van Halen in, they had to accommodate a new bass guitar tone for the first time.

“Ed wanted to make space for Wolf's bass, too,” Hogarth says. “It's a much grindier bass sound than on prior records. He comes from '90s and 2000s alternative music bass sounds, so I'd move the guitars a little wider using a time adjuster," a device that allows engineers to manipulate the timing of the audio signals.

The record would prove to be the swan song for EVH, who passed away eight years later. A Different Kind of Truth topped multiple charts on its release and has sold 40,000 copies worldwide.

In related news, Eddie's lifelong friend has said the guitarist was a “complex” character, revealing how he learned to read his friend's quirks. And an unheard interview has come to light, revealing a peculiar anti-shred stance from the guitarist.

Eddie Van Halen made guitar pyrotechnics his stock in trade when he burst on the scene in 1978. The novelty of what he did — not to mention the excitement it generated and his success with it — spawned a wave of copycats.

But by the early 1990s Eddie had changed his approach. That's not to say he stopped performing two-handed tapping — a technique Harvey Mandel claims he introduced to the guitarist — or whammy-bar dive bombs, but he had started to put the brakes on his love of burning up the frets.

For that matter, he wasn't happy with the need for speed that emerged from his early shred-heavy approach. While Eddie always put melodicism first, other guitarists were all about showing off how fast they could play.

“A lot of people just do all kinds of crazy shit,” he told Guitar Player's then associate editor Jas Obrecht in a recently unearthed 1991 interview. “That’s fine and dandy when you’re young, but playing as fast as you can doesn’t really hold much water for me.

“To me, a solo is to highlight the song, not to show off.”

He admitted that speed was often a side effect of youthfulness. He too played with his foot on the accelerator in his early early days, but by 1991, was was embracing slower, more intentional soloing, perhaps taking a leaf from the book of one of his biggest heroes, Eric Clapton.

“In the guitar polls, I’m not the number-one cat anymore,” he said. “There are faster gunslingers out there…

“What’s important to me now isn’t how fast I can solo; it’s the whole picture. With the whole band thing, the songs are what’s important.

“Big egos are very unhealthy,” he added. “Everybody needs an ego, obviously, but when it starts getting in the way of the overall picture, you know — what a band is and what a band is supposed to be doing — too much ego is bad news.”

His attitude is echoed in recent statements from his son, Wolfgang, who has channeled his efforts into his band Mammoth since his father's death in 2020. Although he's delivered some heartfelt nods to his father, Wolfgang has made it clear that he's his own guitarist.

But, like his dad, he believes a guitar solo should serve the song, and says his upcoming third album, The End, will have far fewer solos than usual as he changes the tack of his songwriting.

“Not everything needs a guitar solo,” he tells SiriusXM. “That might be stupid coming from the son of Eddie Van Halen to say, but, for me, that is where I get my most joy from — crafting the song piece by piece.”

For evidence, one only needs to look at The End’s first two singles. The title track is full of tapping licks, while “The Spell” backs away from incendiary solos.

“I approach guitar playing more as a producer and more as a drummer than a guitar player,” Wolfgang said last year. “Rhythm is always the first thing for me, and melody is the second.”

Echoing his dad's sentiments, he says he's drawn to more purposeful soloing, rather than seeing the 16-bar spot as an opportunity to flex his muscles. He says a one-note solo "can be way more impressive than a solo that's 2,000 notes. It's not really the speed at which you play.”

Jack White certainly has a penchant for weird and wonderful guitars. Whether proving a point about the viability of cheap and obscure guitars or modding the Telecaster within an inch of its life for his first-ever Fender signature model, the soon-to-be Rock and Roll Hall of Famer doesn't conform to norms.

So to celebrate his 50th birthday, the guitarist turned to Eddie Van Halen’s luthier of choice, Chip Ellis, for an “out of this world” custom build that looks like a White-ified, cartoonish reimagining of a Rickenbacker.

Lovingly named the Ugly Stick, the build is a hybrid blend of electric guitar and bass and is, in fact, the culmination of three decades' of work. It features two lots of three strings, each with a bottom bass string.

This is surely a fine example of creating a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist. The vacant middle saddle also feels like a minor missed opportunity.

“Chip has been working on this for 30-plus years on and off,” White says in an Instagram post that finds him showcasing his new toy with a joyful grin. “I have it tuned to open E on the low and open A on the high strings. But you could do what you want with it.

“The bass strings,” he adds, “are recessed lower than the guitar strings so you can play them all at the same height and same time.

Ellis is a master builder over at Fender, and he was responsible for White’s signature Triplecaster Tele last year. He’d risen to prominence when, upon falling out with Peavey after Joe Satriani signed on as a signature artist, Eddie Van Halen chose him to spearhead his EVH brand. Their first build together launched in 2007.

This new guitar’s unveiling comes a year after White had road tested it in the studio. It ultimately featured on two songs from his 2024 solo LP, No Name — “Number One with a Bullet” and “Terminal Archenemy Endling.”

He adds that it hasn’t made it onto the road yet, but the triple-humbuckered beast might not be confined to the studio forever.

“Thank you so much, Chip. This thing is out of this world,” his post wraps up. “I'm either wishing I had this back in the White Stripes, or I am glad I didn’t!”

The White Stripes’ legacy is set to be immortalized this autumn when the band, alongside Soundgarden, Bad Company and a very anti-Rock Hall Carol Kaye, are set to be inducted.

Speaking to Guitar Player in 2010, White revealed that their biggest hit, “Seven Nation Army”, which is now sung in sports stadiums across the world, came together during a spontaneous soundcheck Down Under.

“I was sound-checking at the Corner Hotel in Australia when that came out,” he says. “I thought about it as a possible James Bond theme, actually. And then I thought, ‘That will never happen!’”

Five years after the song’s release, White collaborated with Alicia Keys on “Another Way to Die,” the theme for the 22nd 007 film, Quantum of Solace. Duran Duran and Amy Winehouse had also been rumored for the film's theme, but the guitarist's success with his alt-rock duo was enough to score him the dream gig.