“My dad was a great guitarist but a terrible guitar teacher”: Eddie Van Halen once asked Paul Gilbert to give his son Wolfgang a guitar lesson
Though rarely omitted from any conversation surrounding the world’s most legendary guitar players, Eddie Van Halen wasn’t the best teacher, or so says his son Wolfgang.
It’s certainly true that just because someone is proficient or highly skilled in something, doesn’t mean they share the same skill in imparting that knowledge. And as Wolfgang Van Halen explains in a new interview with Guitar.com, for Eddie, that skill didn’t come so naturally.
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“My dad was a great guitarist but a terrible guitar teacher – he’d tell you that himself,” Wolfgang recalls, adding that his father once tapped Mr Big and Racer X virtuoso Paul Gilbert to give him a lesson instead.
“He even called Paul Gilbert one time and asked him if he would give me a lesson, and he laughed his ass off,” he continues. “That just shows you how he felt about being a teacher.
“And, yeah, he was right. He’d be like, ‘Just do it like this.’ ‘Well, how?!’ You’re at such a different level, you’re just not even thinking in the same way.”
While Eddie Van Halen was, in large part, known for being technically gifted, what Wolfgang took from him the most was his sense of melody and musicality.
“When it comes to Dad, people always talk about the tapping and the shredding and stuff, but I think very much what he instilled in me is that melody is song,” he goes on.
“If you can hum it, if you can think of it and sing it, that’s the best kind of solo – which is another reason why I love Aaron [Marshall, Intervals] so much!
“But, yeah, I think his ability to not only be an amazing rhythm guitar player, but just to merge melody with the shreddiness, and never letting melody fall, is a very important thing as a musician. While shredding scales is technically impressive, it’s almost artistically stale.”
Read the full interview – in which Wolfgang Van Halen names his five favourite guitar players – at Guitar.com.
The post “My dad was a great guitarist but a terrible guitar teacher”: Eddie Van Halen once asked Paul Gilbert to give his son Wolfgang a guitar lesson appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
