The Guitar Influences of Eddie Van Halen
Few guitarists have had more of an influence on modern rock and roll than Eddie Van Halen. His playing was hugely inventive, technically astounding and perhaps most importantly of all, designed to elevate and enhance the songs he was playing on.
READ MORE: The Gear Used By Eddie Van Halen on ‘Van Halen I’
But even the greatest musicians of all time had inspirations of their own, and EVH was no different – and there are a few peers and precursors who had a significant influence on the way he approached the guitar. Let’s take a look at the ones whose impact was most significant.
Eric Clapton
Van Halen himself stated that his biggest influence early on when it came to electric guitar was another guitar hero who needs no introduction — Eric Clapton.
“My main influence was Eric Clapton,” he told Guitar World. “I could play everything he did when I was 14. I would play the live version of Crossroads from the Cream album note for note. I was a big fan of Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, and Allan Holdsworth, too. But Clapton was it. I knew every note he played. That’s what I was known for around home… Clapton was my favorite.”
Eddie and Clapton eventually did cross paths and become friendly, but the two never collaborated on any music. Given their very different but equally influential styles, that would have been quite a pairing – Slowhand meets the definitely-not-slow-hand.
Jimmy Page
A lot has been said about the origins of Van Halen’s legendary two-hand tapping technique – it was something that Eddie did not invent but certainly popularised to a huge degree. As a result, many have speculated who inspired Eddie to start tapping – Canned Heat’s Harvey Mandel being a common name mentioned. Van Halen himself insisted it came from something further back, however.
“I think I got the idea of tapping watching Jimmy Page do his Heartbreaker solo back in 1971,” he told Guitar World. “He was doing a pull-off to an open string, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, open string … pull off. I can do that, but what if I use my finger as the nut and move it around?’ I just kind of took it and ran with it.”
Page was one of the most famous and influential guitar players on the planet when Eddie was coming of age, and so it stands to reason that he would have taken elements of Page’s technique and style and tried to evolve it.
It’s also equally plausible that he would have been familiar with contemporaries like Mandel, or the likes of Dave Bunker or Jimmie Webster – both of whom were tapping in their own ways long before EVH did.
Ritchie Blackmore
Like so many of us, Eddie was heavily influenced by the pioneers of heavy rock music like Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix. But Ritchie Blackmore seemed to affect Eddie Van Halen’s playing on a fundamental level. According to a conversation Eddie had with Classic Rock magazine in 1978, he pointed out that Blackmore got him “hooked on the whammy bar”. The whammy bar would come to be a big part of his signature sound in the years to come.
Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Eddie’s father, Jan Van Halen, was a professional musician who played saxophone and clarinet. He actually did record a song with Van Halen on clarinet on their 1982 album Diver Down. Eddie’s birthname, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, was given to honor Ludwig van Beethoven (Lodewijk is Dutch for Ludwig) and when Eddie had his son, he named him Wolfgang, in honor of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which is incredibly telling of his admiration for classical music in general. It’s fair to say that Mozart and Beethoven, two titans of classical composition, were both heavy influences on Eddie early on when he began learning to play the piano.
The lessons Eddie would learn on piano would have a direct influence on his understanding of music composition in general and when he picked up the guitar, his classical background would have informed his early development in learning guitar as well.
Tony Iommi
Early on in his career, Eddie would cover Black Sabbath songs on stage, even taking on vocal duties. As we know, the bands we idolize early in our guitar playing development have a lasting impact on us when we develop our own original sound. Like many of us, Eddie was drawn to the powerful riffs that Iommi is known for. In 1978, Van Halen toured with Black Sabbath, and Eddie may have gotten some direct guidance from the godfather of heavy metal himself.
Eddie also probably had influences on his playing style that he was perhaps not always forthright about – for example, George Lynch claims that he and Eddie both saw Mandel do neoclassical tapping on stage with Canned Heat long before he did it.
Similarly, the unique Frankenstrat paint job looks very similar to the paint job of a guitarist named Chip Kinman of a punk band called The Dils, who often played in Los Angeles. All of which is worth mentioning because it shows that it’s entirely possible that there are other musicians out there who influenced Eddie but never got directly acknowledged by the man himself.
What is interesting is that most of Eddie Van Halen’s influences are not uncommon or unusual – you probably have a lot of them in common with him. What made him such a game-changing guitarist was the way that he took those inspirations and added his own special ingredients and ingenuity that made him truly unique, and an inspiration to millions.
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