Alex Van Halen is still mad that Eddie performed a solo on Michael Jackson’s Beat It
Obviously, Eddie Van Halen’s career saw no shortage of iconic guitar moments, but up there near the top was his guest solo on Michael Jackson’s pop-rock smash hit, Beat It.
As the story goes, Eddie actually recorded his solo on the 1982 Thriller single without his Van Halen bandmates knowing. And that decision led to already-festering tensions within the band reaching fever pitch.
READ MORE: Alex Van Halen says he’s reached out to OpenAI to analyse “the patterns of how Edward would have played something” in hopes of generating new Eddie Van Halen riffs and solos
Speaking with The Guardian newspaper [per Guitar World] while promoting his new book Brothers, Eddie’s brother and Van Halen drummer Alex says he’s still mad at Eddie for guest-spotting on one of Michael Jackson’s biggest songs, saying he should have, instead, kept them for use with Van Halen.
Ed’s solo reportedly came both when producer Tim Templeman was discouraging his heavy use of solos in Van Halen, and when frontman David Lee Roth was jealous of “Ed’s status as a creative colossus”. These tensions led EVH to seek a creative outlet elsewhere.
“What the fuck are you doing playing on that record?” Alex recalls saying when he found out about Eddie’s guest spot. “Don’t you realise you only have so many great solos in you? Don’t give one to Michael Jackson!’”
Beat It is one of Michael Jackson’s biggest songs ever, with well over a billion streams on Spotify and hundreds of millions more elsewhere at the time of writing. Alongside Eddie Van Halen, the track also features Steve Lukather, who laid down its iconic guitar riff.
His comments come after another interview with Rolling Stone, in which he also touched on the issue of Eddie lending a solo to Michael Jackson.
“Why would you lend your talents to Michael Jackson? I just don’t fucking get it. And the funny part was that Ed fibbed his way out of it by saying, ‘Oh, who knows that kid anyway?’ You made the mistake! Fess up. Don’t add insult to injury by acting stupid.”
In that same Rolling Stone interview, Alex touched on the fact that both Ozzy Osbourne and Chris Cornell nearly joined Van Halen, and how he’s reached out to OpenAI to gauge the possibility of generating new Eddie Van Halen riffs and solos.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net