“You hang with Ed, you’re not going to be talking about life in general. It’s about gear!” RATT’s Stephen Pearcy on the lessons he learned from his neighbour Eddie Van Halen
If you only lived half a mile up the hill from Eddie Van Halen in the ’80s, there was probably only one sensible thing to do: let him come over and talk guitars.
That was the case for RATT frontman Stephen Pearcy, whose house was close enough to Van Halen’s that the guitarist would regularly cruise over on his motorcycle when he knew Pearcy was home.
Speaking on the Mighty VH Podcast, Pearcy recalls how his “three-level, high-tech” house – jokingly dubbed the White House – became something of a hangout for the legendary rocker.
READ MORE: “Eddie said, ‘I can’t play on that!’” Albert Lee reveals the genre that Eddie Van Halen was reluctant to play
“I had a house we called the White House. It was a three-level, high-tech house. And I was never there. I was always on the road,” Pearcy says. “But when Ed would know I was home, he’d cruise over and, you know, go back up the hill on his motorcycle and get busted for being at my place.”
When Pearcy headed up the hill to return the favour, he’d often find himself in Van Halen’s studio, where the conversation inevitably turned to guitars.
“I’d go up there and check out the studio and hang a bit. I mean, we were trading guitars. It was all about Charvels and guitars,” he recalls.
Pearcy admits he wasn’t particularly interested in Van Halen’s obsession with the whammy bar at first. That changed when he started bringing some of his San Diego friends along, including RATT guitarist Robbin Crosby.
“I wasn’t really into his kind of trip, the whammy, this and that. But the minute I brought Robbin up there – I started bringing my San Diego guys up with me to check Van Halen out – Robbin and Ed became friends.”
That friendship came with a pretty useful perk: one-on-one guitar lessons from Eddie Van Halen.
“We’d literally go to his house, Ed’s house, and he’d have a little workshop in his bedroom or somewhere and he’d tell Robin how to keep in tune with the whammy. There were no lock bars back then,” Pearcy says.
Van Halen’s lessons didn’t just stop there. He also shared tips on keeping strings fresh and getting the most out of the guitars they were constantly tinkering with.
“A lot was going on. How to keep your strings fresh and new,” Pearcy says. “And I’m just taking notes, and these two guitar dummies are taking notes too.”
“You go, you hang with Ed, you’re not going to be talking about, you know, life in general. It’s about gear,” he continues. “Unless he wants to tell you something else.”
Watch the full interview below.
The post “You hang with Ed, you’re not going to be talking about life in general. It’s about gear!” RATT’s Stephen Pearcy on the lessons he learned from his neighbour Eddie Van Halen appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
