In the late 1970s, hard rock was on the ropes. Always a guitar-dominated form of music, it had been diluted to the point of near extinction. But with the 1978 arrival of Van Halen, guitar phenom Edward Van Halen redefined it with new grooves, riffs, sound, attitude, stagecraft, ridiculous guitar antics… everything.
In 1981, Frank Zappa personally congratulated Edward for “reinventing the electric guitar” but that was obvious to anyone hearing his band’s eponymous debut. What could be more telling than “Runnin’ with the Devil” followed by “Eruption” and “You Really Got Me”? Just 23 when Van Halen was recorded, Edward was already a fully formed creative dynamo who did for heavy-metal guitar what the Beatles did for pop rock, singlehandedly launching a legion of copyists, creating the mythos of “superstrats” and modded Marshalls, and recalibrating the sound of the next decade. Some labelled the album “heavy metal,” owing to the power of the music; more accurately, it was simply the next step in rock’s evolution. Universally acknowledged as one of the most-significant rock albums of all time, it’s unquestionably the most-significant rock-guitar album of the last 40 years; no recording since Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced? has made a greater impact on guitar players, and none since Led Zeppelin has so successfully purveyed the power-trio-plus-power-mouth format.
The band’s origins reach back to ’67, when the Van Halen family emigrated from Holland to Los Angeles, center of the youth-oriented, rock-obsessed counterculture. Edward had been into music since seven, studied classical piano and theory at his dad’s insistence, and routinely won piano competitions. In L.A., he embraced rock and began playing drums, but switched to guitar when his brother Alex showed more promise. He then began to absorb sounds of the Beatles, Beck, Page, Blackmore, and particularly Cream/Bluesbreakers-era Clapton.
While in high school, the brothers formed Mammoth, recruited singer David Lee Roth and bassist Michael Anthony from rival bands, played backyard parties, beer bars, small clubs, and dances in the Pasadena area, and wrote original material. By the mid ’70s they were playing auditoriums, opening for UFO, Santana, Nils Lofgren, and Sparks. Their influence then expanded to Hollywood, where Kiss’ Gene Simmons watched them play in ’76, and funded their early demos. Though they failed to attract label interest, their reputation and following grew. A year later, Warner Brothers CEO Mo Ostin and producer Ted Templeman heard them on a rainy night in the spring of ’77 at an almost deserted Starwood, and virtually signed them on the spot. That August, the band entered Sunset Sound with Templeman and engineer Donn Landee.
Van Halen boasted a live feel sharpened by countless gigs, with minimal overdubs. In three weeks, the band recorded about 40 songs, paring the list to 11; their originals evaded cliché while covers of “You Really Got Me” and “Ice Cream Man” were supercharged treatments that took reinterpretation to a zenith. The music was multifaceted and unmistakable, and in some cases uncategorizable – the sound of rules being broken.
Producer Ted Templeman was astonished by Ed’s two-handed tapping technique in “Eruption.” He equated the melodic outlines with Bach keyboard music, which is well-founded. This excerpt from the closing section is a brilliant case in point. Consider the Baroque motor-drive rhythm of 16th note (sextuplets) and smooth voice-leading in the chord inferences that spell out the modulating progression of C#m-A-Adim-B-E-C-D-E7. Ed generally held his pick between thumb and middle finger, leaving the index free to tap notes, and jammed the pick into a space made by curling his middle finger towards the palm. He supported his right hand on the neck, resting on the top of the fretboard with the thumb, and gripping on the opposite side (treble side) with pinky and ring fingers.
Most established metal bands didn’t attempt to cross the stylistic boundaries that Van Halen did with unerring regularity and ease. The public concurred. Van Halen reached #19 on Billboard’s Top 200, garnered Gold by May ’78, and went Platinum that October. It has remained a perennial best-seller, eventually going to eight-times Platinum and reaching Diamond status in ’96. After its release, the band toured with Journey and Montrose, but soon transcended support status and opened internationally for Black Sabbath. In ’79, they were global headliners.
The music said it all. “Runnin’ with the Devil” opened with a cacophonous choir of car horns (a metaphor for L.A. traffic?). Ed’s catchy triad riff recalled and updated the rock-and-roll swagger of Keith Richards and Zep, and was the first of many memorable hooks. His fixed “melodic solo” accompanied by overdubbed rhythm guitar, was thematic and tuneful – and couldn’t possibly prepare the listener for the sonic bombast to come. Ed made a distinction between “melodic” (composed) and “spontaneous” (improvised) solos in the repertoire. The fixed melodic thread was immediately counterbalanced by the spontaneous spectacle of “Eruption.” Proving to be the musical Pandora’s Box of the ’80s, the instrumental was a 1:42 roller-coaster ride of fretboard pyrotechnics culminating in a cascade of tapped arpeggios emulating classical keyboard figuration. Cognoscenti have speculated about its ancestry. The opening phrases allude to Cactus’ “Let Me Swim” while the tremolo-picked passage was a paraphrase of Kreutzer’s second violin etude that Ed had been playing in his solo spot since ’75 and lent a seminal neoclassical-metal tinge. Tap-ons had been played by Gibbons, Beck, Carlton, Hackett, and Mandel, but never with such verve and ferocity. Precedents in no way diminish the effect of “Eruption.” The ostentatious guitar showcase re-shaped and codified the ingredients, introduced tap-ons to a generation of players, started the solo guitar rage (prompting virtually every known metal/rock guitarist from Rhoads and Malmsteen to Vai and Lynch to throw down their respective gauntlets), and anticipated the instrumental rock-guitar trend of the late ’80s. Interestingly, “Eruption” (called “guitar solo” in session notes) was included as an afterthought, last to be recorded, at Templeman’s suggestion. It was a high point of Van Halen concerts (later augmented with “Spanish Fly,” “Mean Streets,” and “Cathedral”).
The first single, “You Really Got Me,” epitomized the band’s handling of cover material. The Kinks’ signature piece received a characteristic heavier treatment including a spontaneous solo with repurposed blues licks, tapping, controlled feedback, and toggle-switch flicking. “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love” was the band’s lighthearted jab at punk rock, but became one of its most-beloved riff tunes. A melodic solo doubled by an electric sitar/guitar overdub gives an otherworldly twist. “I’m the One” was the first of many turbocharged boogies (presaging “Bottoms Up” and “Hot for Teacher”), with an unstoppable riff tantamount to ZZ Top on steroids. Describing its energy, Ed admitted he favored improvising on the “quick stuff” and the song contained his favorite spontaneous moments; a virtual catalog of Van Halenisms replete with intricate cross-picked string skipping, fast triplet scale runs, tapped sequences, wide string bends, whammy-bar antics, pinch and natural harmonics, tremolo picked patterns, and mutated blues mannerisms.
“Jamie’s Cryin’” (third single) was a departure that revealed the album’s melodic metal or power pop side… or is it just tuneful hard rock? Flaunting a rock/tango feel with clever rhythmic breaks, it bore a strong riff-based structure with thoughtful overdubs, and presented Ed’s restrained thematic approach in a melodic question/answer solo. Years later, the riff was sampled for Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing.”
“Atomic Punk” commenced with an example of “neat noises” emblematic of the band’s repertoire. Ed’s scratchy, phased (and flanged) string scrapes, strummed with his palm edge and played percussively, are vaguely reminiscent of a swooping helicopter and set a precedent for physically generated effects (later realized in “Mean Streets”). His spontaneous solo was laced with phaser/echo colorations and contained wide bends, triplet blues runs, and tremolo-picked passages.
Ed often incorporated wide left-hand stretches into his solos, played these with such ease that many perceived them as two-handed tap-ons. The opening phrase of the “Ice Cream Man” solo is telling. These fingerings yield major-triad arpeggios with an added second, hinting at a pentatonic sound on a single string. For example, E-G#B (major triad) plus F# (added second) on the high E string. The fingering pattern was moved rapidly and seamlessly across the fretboard at the 12th position, spelling out E (first string), B (second string), G (third string) D (fourth string) and A (fifth string) major chords. Notice Ed’s enlargements of blues-rock clichés in measures 6-10. These come in the form of tapped slides, vibrato on a slow bend, and a whammy-bar dive bomb in the midst of post-Clapton blues-scale shredding.
“Feel Your Love Tonight” was a cruising, riff-based tune with simpler chords, relaxed tempo, and gang vocals that exemplified arena-bound anthems. It’s perhaps the most straightforward, accessible tune on the album. Accordingly, Ed’s solo struck a balance, splitting the difference between melodic procedure and improvisation, with overdubs to thicken texture.
“Little Dreamer” was a moody minor-mode love ballad buoyed by solid rhythm guitar and one of his most-striking solos; hints of Blackmore’s influence lie in the chugging eighth-note grooves, triad riffs, and allusions to the “snake charmer” sound in the solo.
“Ice Cream Man” is blues for the 21st century. Roth’s rustic open-tuned acoustic-guitar intro belied the hard-edged blues-rock in band sections. Ed’s guitar work revealed refinements in his blues approach, with Chuck Berry comping figures, stop-time breaks taken to metallic extremes, and a stunning spontaneous solo with dizzying finger stretches, contorted blues licks, whammy-bar bends, dives, and dips, and a distortion-laden country-blues quote beginning the second chorus.
“On Fire” was a solid closer, with thundering power chords in the intro conjuring more “neat noises” – low-register bending, tremolo-picked glissando, and alternating high natural harmonics and muted strings that presage “Panama.” Tricks gave way to a powerful fast-rock groove, a heavy riff punctuated with colorful ad-lib fills, and syncopated juggled-chord interlude (1:18) that likely inspired Randy Rhoads’ “Steal Away.” Bandmates encouraged Ed to take an adventurous fusion approach in the solo. Originally planning something melodic, he responded with an idiosyncratic group of phrases that conceptually alluded to John McLaughlin and Allan Holdsworth with quasi-symmetric patterns ascending the fretboard sequentially and obscured any tonality during the brief eight-bar flight. The improvisations personified Ed’s “fall down the stairs and land on your feet” credo.
Van Halen was renowned for making a Ferrari out of country-blues go-karts popularized by John Lee Hooker, ZZ Top, Savoy Brown, Foghat, et al. The opening phrases of their first, “I’m the One,” (A) present some of his innovations and depict his balanced lead/rhythm approach. Note the varied colorful fills decorating the simple (but propulsive) boogie played on the A and D strings, and his effective palm-muting of the figure. To each iteration of the riff, he adds a different ending – a metal dyad, vibratoed low bend, a remarkable cross-picked string-skipping maneuver in measures 4-6, and natural harmonics sustained and wanged with the bar in 8-9. A key aspect of his shredding style is found in B. This quick, ascending scalar sequence was played as a rapid fill in the intro of “I’m the One” at 0:31. This type of figure, and its infinite variations, was ubiquitous in his solos and fills, and remained so throughout his life. He credited the inspiration and legato execution to players like Holdsworth, but his application put a different – and highly personal – spin on the idea.
SOUND
Ed labelled his guitar tone “a warm, brown sound… a rich, toney sound” and it became a synonym (and metaphor) for the holy grail of rock-guitar tone. His recipe called for DIY guitars plugged into modded low-tech pedals feeding modded non-Master Marshall amps. On Van Halen, he used the black-and-white-striped “Frankenstrat” shown on the cover – the first in a cavalcade of instruments that whetted an appetite for superstrats with eye-catching graphics. Experiments began with a ’58 Strat on which he replaced the bridge pickup with a humbucker from his ES-335. He then opted for a body of denser ash (a Boogie Body via Wayne Charvel) routed for only a bridge pickup screwed directly into the wood, single Volume control, and an old Fender vibrato tailpiece with four springs. To this he added an unfinished maple-board neck from Lynn Ellsworth at Boogie Body, fitted with large Gibson frets and Schaller tuners. He tried various humbuckers including DiMarzio and Duncan, finally preferring rewound and potted vintage PAFs – setting in motion another trend. He favored the configuration until 1980, when he began using Floyd Rose vibratos for Fair Warning. On Van Halen, Ed alternated between his Frankenstrat heard on “Eruption,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love,” “Jamie’s Cryin’,” “Atomic Punk,” “Little Dreamer,” and “Ice Cream Man,” and his Ibanez Destroyer with a PAF for “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “You Really Got Me,” “Feel Your Love Tonight,” and “On Fire.” He tuned down a half-step and preferred Fender 150XL strings (.040-.032-.024-.015-.011-.009) and Fender medium picks.
Ed used 100-watt/non-Master Marshall Super Lead heads with 4×12 cabinets. His favorite was the house amp at the Rose Palace, in Pasadena – a ’68 Model 1959 plexi that he bought from the venue. His heads went through various modifications including larger transformers and capacitor swaps, mods by Jose Arredondo, and connection to an Ohmite variac voltage regulator.
By late-’70s standards, Ed’s pedalboard was primitive, with generic stompboxes including an MXR Phase 90 and Flanger, and switches for two Echo-Plex tape delays, duct-taped to a plywood board. He used an EQ to boost the signal lost from a long cable and added a Univox EC-80A tape echo for the effects at the end of “Eruption.”
Wolf Marshall is the founder and original Editor-In-Chief of GuitarOne magazine. A respected author and columnist, he has been influential in contemporary music education since the early 1980s. His new book, Jazz Guitar Course: Mastering the Jazz Language, will be released this winter. Others include 101 Must-Know Rock Licks, B.B. King: the Definitive Collection, and Best of Jazz Guitar, and a list credit can be found at wolfmarshall.com.
This article originally appeared in VG’s March 2024 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
