OffsetGuitars.com

One of rock's great rhythm guitar players.

Everyone loved the solos. But the supportive, good-feeling, song-serving rhythm guitar is what sold the records.

Of the two months of guitar lessons I took one summer, the only thing i still remember is the intro to Panama.

øøøøøøø wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 06, 2020 7:02 pm

One of rock's great rhythm guitar players.

Everyone loved the solos. But the supportive, good-feeling, song-serving rhythm guitar is what sold the records.

No doubt. He was a great rhythm guitar player, I never really cared about the solos so much, but listening to something like Ain't Talking 'Bout Love you can hear a man make a great and propulsive song out of some pretty simple chords.

I've become more forgiving of Van Halen as I get older. The ponderous Sammy Hagar era really sucked any joy out of the Van Halen experience for me.

But I'll throw an RIP Eddie Van Halen out there.

He was one of those players that seemed to have genuinely made the guitar/amp system an extension of his own brain; and of those players, he had a better feel and touch than nearly everyone.

I’m not the biggest Halen head in my gang, not by a mile, but his playing floats up there like Billy Gibbons’s highest fever dream performed by clever demons. I hope I can avoid learning the truly unpleasant elements of his story (and I don’t mean Van Hagar) and continue to think of him as the strange prophet that I have seen him to be.

Don’t smoke, kids.

Edit to add: I also think of his rhythm playing first - he always seemed to have some completely effortless way of hitting the most incredible groove with just the pad of his left index finger, and he knew exactly how much to lean into it to get the ideal tone out of the amp. I like his solos, but a grainy double stop is what I think of first.

I’m gutted too. Eddie was what my dad listened to when I was a kid but I didn’t really come to appreciate him until I was closer to 30. And I fell completely in love with his playing, both lead and rhythm. Amazing player, certainly one of my idols. Rest In Peace. I will crank my 5150 and rip out some riffs on my Floyd Charvel for him.

One of the ways his genius showed wasn't his technical abilities, but just how weird and abstract he could get and still make it fit the song like a glove.

The solo from Top Jimmy is maybe my favorite example of this. It's just this awesome jump from the song into a whole other thing; whale noises and screeches, warbles and wails, lightning licks and squiggly lines. Just this guy who could make the guitar sound exactly how he felt using it to go off on this whole other trip. Yeah, there was no shortage of guys with flashy licks in those days, but none of them could think up those squiggly lines on their own, much less mean them, and that's before getting to the problem of making them fit the song.

Can anyone fault Jeff Spiccoli for blowing his reward money on hiring Van Halen to play his birthday party? Those guys were fun. Their music was fun. They had fun playing it, and it really came through the recordings. What a loss.

mackerelmint wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 06, 2020 10:15 pm

Those guys were fun. Their music was fun. They had fun playing it, and it really came through the recordings. What a loss.

Yeah, totally. The stuff with DLR was truly original; something nobody else was doing. And I agree with Brad, I was always way more impressed with his rhythm playing than his solos (which were ridiculous, of course).

Fun story:

I grew up in Pasadena, CA. EVH went to the same high school as my aunt, and he walked her home a couple times. She said he was very nice but only seemed interested in talking about his band. Imagine if he’d ended up being my uncle!

RIP, Eddie...what a guitar player.

This is a nice short read:

https://www.vintag.es/2020/10/van-halen ... -boat.html

I'll throw in here as well. I grew up listening to and learning shred stuff just prior to getting into more out there music of all stripes. Van Halen was definitely a person I emulated in that era. I was trying to learn "Eruption" before I knew how to play any chords at all. I love all the DLR era stuff unashamedly and I will even say that I don't mind the Hagar era either fwiw. Thanks to those old Columbia House/BMG things in the early 90s I distinctly remember ordering 5150 at the same time as NIN's Broken EP hahaha. I guess it's all been said here before but he def had an ear for melody and his riffing was extremely tasteful for a band of that ilk from that era.

True story, my bandmates in my current shoegaze band once tried to question my shred chops because I told them I grew up learning to do that stuff first. I whipped out "Spanish Fly" and shut them down very fucking fast. **note - Van Halen songs are not much fun to play on offsets, at least not to me.

RIP Ed.

I'm just here to point out that his signature guitars both from Ernie Ball Music Man and Peavey are technically offsets.

so much truth in the comments above. i was blasting Hear About It Later through headphones last night, blown away as always by the inventiveness of his playing and excellence of the arrangement and recording. if someone asked me to sum up VH in two songs, it would be this and Unchained, which follows it on the album.

the mind-bending solos got all the attention, for good reason, but it's what he was doing on either side where the real magic was. i've always thought of him as freeing rock guitar from the tyranny of the power chord -- cool arpeggios, lots of thirds, running up and down the inside strings. he really had his own language, could take any chord progression and stretch and twist it into something unrecognizable.

EVH was the best

Ceylon wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 07, 2020 4:41 am

I'm just here to point out that his signature guitars both from Ernie Ball Music Man and Peavey are technically offsets.

And cool as hell- just not very popular 'round the OSG.

SignoftheDragon wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 07, 2020 8:45 am

Ceylon wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 07, 2020 4:41 am

I'm just here to point out that his signature guitars both from Ernie Ball Music Man and Peavey are technically offsets.

And cool as hell

+1

Jack White put away some of his weirdo guitars to play an EVH guitar recently. Who actually makes the EVH guitar now? Seems like Eddie was able to take his design to different manufacturers. It's not my cup of tea, but his Peavy 5150 amp seems to be highly regarded too. I saw a video a while back with one of the Deafheaven guys extolling the version Peavey was making under a slightly different name, presumably because Eddie had moved on.

burpgun wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 07, 2020 9:11 am

Jack White put away some of his weirdo guitars to play an EVH guitar recently. Who actually makes the EVH guitar now? Seems like Eddie was able to take his design to different manufacturers. It's not my cup of tea, but his Peavy 5150 amp seems to be highly regarded too. I saw a video a while back with one of the Deafheaven guys extolling the version Peavey was making under a slightly different name, presumably because Eddie had moved on.

Yeah it was on their rig rundown right?! I believe those guys play the Peavey 6505 which for touring bands is kind Marshall sounding minus the price tag and is quite durable. I had a 5150 ages ago myself and didn't get along with it at the time, kinda wonder what I'd think of it now if I could go back.