“Playing as fast as you can doesn’t really hold much water for me”: Eddie Van Halen pours scorn on shredding in unheard 1991 interview
Eddie Van Halen is pretty much regarded as one of the true innovators of shred guitar, but a recently unearthed interview from 1991 shows that Eddie had reservations about the discipline he’d spawned.
Speaking to Guitar Player journalist Jas Obrecht, the Van Halen guitarist admitted that he was well beyond his years of shredding. “A lot of people just do all kinds of crazy shit,” he said. “Sure, that’s fine and dandy when you’re young… playing as fast as you can doesn’t really hold much water for me… To me, a solo is to highlight song. It’s not to show off.”
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Later on in the interview, he even explained that he was embracing a slower, more deliberate approach to playing. “In the guitar polls, I’m not the number one cat anymore,” he admitted. “You know, there are faster gunslingers out there… what’s important to me now isn’t how fast I can solo. It’s the whole picture.”
That’s not to say shredding holds no place in metal. “I was like that back then [when I was younger],” he added. “But the whole band thing, the songs… that’s what’s important.”
Of course, Eddie added that this wasn’t an admission that he “can’t solo anymore”. The realisation was just something he came to learn as he grew up, as shredding seemed to often be a by-product of “big egos” and showing off.
“Big egos are very unhealthy,” he explained. “Everybody needs an ego, obviously, but when it starts getting in the way of the overall picture, you know – what a band is and what a band supposed to be doing – too much ego is bad news.”
Eddie distancing himself from shredding is something fans and peers alike noted in the legend’s later years. Toto’s Steve Lukather revealed that Eddie regretted adding fuel to the shredding fire in an interview with us back in 2021.
“There were the times when guitar players were trying to show what they had – each guy had something and they wanted to show it off,” he recalled. “It was healthy, no-one was trying to one-up anybody else, that came a little later in the 80s with all the intense Uber-shredding.”
“Ed was sitting there going, ‘I created a monster, fuck!’” he continued. “They misinterpreted what his musical intent was and turned guitar into more of a sport. I know that always bothered him.”
Lukather voiced a similar sentiment in 2023 while talking to Guitar World. “Eddie Van Halen came along and changed the whole game,” he said. “I remember him telling me once, ‘Man, I didn’t mean to start all this madness,’ but he really did change the entire game. That always cracked me up, as Eddie was the father of shred!”
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