“For someone to do it better than him, they’re gonna have to reinvent the guitar all over again”: Kirk Hammett thinks no guitarist will ever eclipse Eddie Van Halen
Will there ever be another guitarist who changes music quite like Eddie Van Halen? Metallica’s Kirk Hammett isn’t convinced.
As Hammett explains in a new interview with Consequence – in which he lists 11 albums every guitarist should own – EVH “reinvented the guitar”, and for anyone to make the same impact, they’d need to do the same.
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Of Van Halen’s entire catalogue, Hammett contests that every guitarist – nay, “everyone” – should own the band’s 1978 debut album, Van Halen I. This album featured the likes of Eruption, You Really Got Me, Runnin’ With The Devil and Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love.
Speaking specifically on Eddie Van Halen’s style on this album, Kirk Hammett explains: “[He] never really went into harmonic minor or anything like that, or augmented scales or diminished stuff. Black Sabbath does it, we do it, tonnes of bands do it.
“Eddie’s riffs were kind of just like major-sounding riffs. Sometimes he had minor sounding stuff, too, but that says a lot in terms of how Van Halen’s music sounded. A lot of Van Halen sounds like good-time party music because that’s just the way that Eddie Van Halen wrote the guitar riffs. And it’s a beautiful thing in itself because he was able to write all sorts of songs that had all sorts of emotions and feelings.”
Of course, if there’s one technique Eddie Van Halen was best known for, it was two-handed tapping.
“There are people doing a right-hand technique on the neck, but not like Eddie,” Hammett explains.
“Eddie blew it open and hands down was the best guy in doing all that stuff. Absolutely the best guy in creating those amazing tapping licks and harmonic licks and crazy sort of note patterns. He was the king of all that stuff. No one did it better.
“For someone to do it better than him, they’re gonna have to reinvent the guitar all over again ‘cause Eddie reinvented the guitar. There wasn’t anyone who did that since Jimi Hendrix. And then Eddie did it.”
Elsewhere, Halestorm frontwoman Lzzy Hale recently waxed lyrical on Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang, even going as far as to say he’ll “save rock ‘n’ roll” with his band Mammoth.
“He’s a humble kid, there’s none of that ‘I’m a rock star’s kid’ stuff,” she said. “I’ve met quite a few of those guys that think that they’re better than everybody else because their dad was famous. That’s never been Wolfie.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
