said, ‘Hey, Rick. I grew up on your ass. How can you do this? I don’t care if you use the technique—(but) don’t play my melody.’ And he’s goin’, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ The next night he does my solo again, and he ends the set with ‘You Really Got Me,’ which is exactly what we do. 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.’ So I kicked him off.”
The same thing happened in June of 1979 in North Carolina when Van Halen played a stadium bill with Boston, who top-billed at the time. Tom Scholz did the same thing Rick Derringer did—he incorporated the “Eruption” tapping sequence into his own guitar solo. Edward was livid. “It was real weird, because it was a daytime thing, and I was standing onstage and the whole crowd was looking at me like, ‘What’s this guy doing?’” Eddie said. “I was drunk, and I got pissed. He never comes around. He doesn’t say ‘Hi.’ He doesn’t do anything. He just kind of hides out, runs onstage and plays, and disappears afterwards. So I started talking to the other guitarist, and I told him, ‘Hey. Tell him I think he’s fucked!’”
About exactly a month after the Boston incident, Adam Brenner had his fantasy hang-out with Edward in Seattle. Adam said, “He told McCrae [Adam’s friend] I was better than the guy in Bad Company and I should start a band, but whatever I do, he told me, ‘Don’t just copy me like every asshole in L.A., take it somewhere further, somewhere else.’”
By the mid-1980s, the tapping technique would be common not only to nearly every single rock or metal release, but the technique also extended into the jazz realm with players like Stanley Jordan. It took a few years, but there would eventually become a marked distinction between guitarists whose careers were already established when Van Halen was released, and those who came onto the scene or had albums released starting around 1980 or so. Randy Rhoads, for example, came into national prominence in 1981 on Ozzy Osbourne’s first solo album Blizzard of Ozz . Randy’s solos and fills were chock-full of tapping and other techniques similar to Edward’s, but Randy proudly named Eddie as a huge influence on his playing. When Randy and other newcomers used tapping, it then became part of the general lexicon of electric guitar playing. But in 1978 and 1979, when it was new and it was the signature sound of a singular guitar player, it was different. Edward deserved a grace period of ownership of his technique, but the lure of it was too much to resist for established guitarists like Derringer and Scholz, which, in retrospect, should be an embarrassment to both of them. Ed had every right to stake his claim.
“I guess they always say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. I think this is a crock of shit,” Edward said. “I don’t like people doing things exactly like me. Some of the things I do I know no one has done… . What I don’t like is when someone takes what I’ve done, and instead of innovating on what I came up with, they do my trip! They do my melody. Like I learned from Clapton, Page, Hendrix, Beck—but I don’t play like them. I innovated; I learned from them and did my own thing out of it. Some of those guys out there are doing my thing, which I think is a lot different.”
Ed also expressed frustration about the jealousy of other guitarists and asserted that people outright hated him. “Other musicians, they’re jealous,” he said. “The more they hate you, the better you are. I mean, no other guitarist is gonna hate another guitarist if they’re no good. You’re no threat.” Eddie added, “There’s a lot of people who don’t know me who hate me, because they think I’m some egoed-out motherfucker, but I’m not at all. That’s just one thing that I never expected.” Eddie specifically noted a sour encounter with Joe Perry of Aerosmith: “I walked up to
The same thing happened in June of 1979 in North Carolina when Van Halen played a stadium bill with Boston, who top-billed at the time. Tom Scholz did the same thing Rick Derringer did—he incorporated the “Eruption” tapping sequence into his own guitar solo. Edward was livid. “It was real weird, because it was a daytime thing, and I was standing onstage and the whole crowd was looking at me like, ‘What’s this guy doing?’” Eddie said. “I was drunk, and I got pissed. He never comes around. He doesn’t say ‘Hi.’ He doesn’t do anything. He just kind of hides out, runs onstage and plays, and disappears afterwards. So I started talking to the other guitarist, and I told him, ‘Hey. Tell him I think he’s fucked!’”
About exactly a month after the Boston incident, Adam Brenner had his fantasy hang-out with Edward in Seattle. Adam said, “He told McCrae [Adam’s friend] I was better than the guy in Bad Company and I should start a band, but whatever I do, he told me, ‘Don’t just copy me like every asshole in L.A., take it somewhere further, somewhere else.’”
By the mid-1980s, the tapping technique would be common not only to nearly every single rock or metal release, but the technique also extended into the jazz realm with players like Stanley Jordan. It took a few years, but there would eventually become a marked distinction between guitarists whose careers were already established when Van Halen was released, and those who came onto the scene or had albums released starting around 1980 or so. Randy Rhoads, for example, came into national prominence in 1981 on Ozzy Osbourne’s first solo album Blizzard of Ozz . Randy’s solos and fills were chock-full of tapping and other techniques similar to Edward’s, but Randy proudly named Eddie as a huge influence on his playing. When Randy and other newcomers used tapping, it then became part of the general lexicon of electric guitar playing. But in 1978 and 1979, when it was new and it was the signature sound of a singular guitar player, it was different. Edward deserved a grace period of ownership of his technique, but the lure of it was too much to resist for established guitarists like Derringer and Scholz, which, in retrospect, should be an embarrassment to both of them. Ed had every right to stake his claim.
“I guess they always say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. I think this is a crock of shit,” Edward said. “I don’t like people doing things exactly like me. Some of the things I do I know no one has done… . What I don’t like is when someone takes what I’ve done, and instead of innovating on what I came up with, they do my trip! They do my melody. Like I learned from Clapton, Page, Hendrix, Beck—but I don’t play like them. I innovated; I learned from them and did my own thing out of it. Some of those guys out there are doing my thing, which I think is a lot different.”
Ed also expressed frustration about the jealousy of other guitarists and asserted that people outright hated him. “Other musicians, they’re jealous,” he said. “The more they hate you, the better you are. I mean, no other guitarist is gonna hate another guitarist if they’re no good. You’re no threat.” Eddie added, “There’s a lot of people who don’t know me who hate me, because they think I’m some egoed-out motherfucker, but I’m not at all. That’s just one thing that I never expected.” Eddie specifically noted a sour encounter with Joe Perry of Aerosmith: “I walked up to
Similar Books
