“I started dicking around and said, ‘F**k, this is a totally new technique”: Eddie Van Halen explains the origins of his legendary tapping technique in unearthed 1978 interview
One of the greatest guitar players who ever lived, Eddie Van Halen is widely credited with popularising two-handed tapping as a guitar technique.
Many guitarists dabbled with tapping before Eddie entered the limelight in the late ‘70s – with evidence of the technique predating hard rock by decades, used by the likes of Harvey Mandel, Frank Zappa, Steve Hackett and Italian guitarist Vittorio Camardese, to name a few.
But it was Eddie who really brought tapping to a mainstream audience following the release of Van Halen’s landmark debut in 1978, and has become somewhat synonymous with the technique.
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And in a newly unearthed 1978 interview with rock journalist, author and Eddie’s close friend Steve Rosen, the legendary guitarist can be heard recounting his experience stumbling across the technique, before it would later captivate audiences on classic Van Halen cut Eruption.
“It’s like having a sixth finger on your left hand,” Eddie explained shortly following the release of the band’s debut album. “Instead of picking, you’re hitting a note on the fretboard.”
Asked by Rosen whether he developed the technique himself or had heard it elsewhere, Eddie replied: “I really don’t know how to explain it. I was sitting in my room at the pad at home, drinking a beer. I remember seeing people just stretching one note and hitting the note once…
“Anyway, it’s just one note like that, and they popped the finger on it real quick to hit one note and I said, ‘Well, fuck nobody is really capitalising on that.’ I mean nobody’s really doing more than just one stretch and one note real quick.”
He continued: “So I started dicking around and said, ‘Fuck, this is a totally new technique that nobody really does.’ ‘Cause it is. I really haven’t seen anyone really get into that as far as they could because it is a totally different sound. A lot of people listen to that, and they don’t even think it’s a guitar.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Eddie reflected on how he “hates” bands at the time who overloaded their records with overdubs and extra tracks. He explained that the majority of the songs on Van Halen were relatively simple in terms of additional guitar tracks.
“I’d say out of the 10 songs, three of them, like Runnin’ with the Devil – [that’s] a melodic solo, so I put a rhythm underneath it, you know.
“Songs that have a spontaneous solo like I’m the One, Ice Cream Man, and most of the songs on the album – Ted [Templeman], our producer, felt, and us also, that it was good enough on its own without fattening it up. Also then when we play it live it sounds the same.
He went on: “I hate people – without naming names – all these bands, they over-produce in the studio, and then when they walk out on stage people go, ‘Wow, is that the same band?’ It doesn’t sound the same.
“With us, it sounds exactly the same, and maybe even better, because you get to see us doing it at the same time. It’s very energetic. We’ll get you up and shake your ass.”
You can watch the full unearthed 1978 interview below:
The post “I started dicking around and said, ‘F**k, this is a totally new technique”: Eddie Van Halen explains the origins of his legendary tapping technique in unearthed 1978 interview appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
