Eddie Van Halen once gifted Alice In Chains’ Jerry Cantrell so much gear it filled up his manager’s garage: “I haven’t been able to park my car for months!”
Alice In Chains’ Jerry Cantrell has looked back on his friendship with Eddie Van Halen, sharing how the guitar mastermind gave him so much gear that it completely took over his manager’s garage.
The pair became buds when touring together for Van Halen’s For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour in the early 1990s. Cantrell was originally nervous to play in front of EVH, but soon enough they would hang out together backstage playing ‘name that riff’.
READ MORE: The Guitar Influences of Eddie Van Halen
In an interview for Gibson TV, Cantrell shares how Eddie generously gave him a guitar for free, and even went the extra mile to gift him even more guitars as well as amp heads and cabs, all for nothing in return.
“The first time I met Ed Van Halen I was getting ready to go onstage [to open] for his band, and he was standing in my pit with Valerie [Bertinelli] right next to him and Wolfie [Wolfgang Van Halen] in her arms. He’s got his guitar on, and he’s running scales like, ‘Hey, dude, what’s up?’ And I’m like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’”
He adds, “I think it was probably the worst show I ever played in my life, because I could not stop thinking, ‘He’s right there!’ I couldn’t focus, and I couldn’t wait until the gig was over. After that, it was fine… We ended up being really good friends.
“On that tour he had the [Peavy] 5150 heads that he had kind of made, and he had the [Ernie Ball] Music Man guitars; the EVH Music Man that he had designed. I was like, ‘Man I’d really like to have one of those, think you could give me a good price on one of those?’ And he was like, ‘Fuck that dude, I’ll just give you a guitar! Everybody gives me everything for free now, when I can totally afford it. When I couldn’t afford it, nobody would give me anything. So, let me do that for you. I’ll give you a guitar.”
Cantrell continues, “I remember coming home off that tour, and I was living with [Alice in Chains’ manager] Kelly Curtis and his wife, Peggy… He was like, ‘Hey man, welcome home. You had a good tour? Now you can relax. Hey, by the way, do you think you could clear your shit out of my garage? I need to put my car in there.’
“I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And he says, ‘Eddie Van Halen filled the garage with gear for you. I haven’t been able to park my car in my garage for months.’”
You can watch the full interview with Jerry Cantrell below:
You can watch the full episode of Icons: Jerry Cantrell of Alice In Chains via Gibson TV on YouTube.
The post Eddie Van Halen once gifted Alice In Chains’ Jerry Cantrell so much gear it filled up his manager’s garage: “I haven’t been able to park my car for months!” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
