Eddie Van Halen

COVID-19 and its devastating effect on the music industry aside, 2020 has been a horrendous year for music fans of all genres, with many legends leaving us to take their place onstage at the ‘great gig in the sky’. The year started with Rush drummer Neal Peart’s sad passing in January followed by Kenny Rogers, Bill Withers, Little Richard, Paul Chapman, Vera Lynn, Pete Way, Frankie Banali and many others. But for me, Eddie Van Halen’s death was the sorest of them all and arguably, more so than any other musician who passed before him. Now, I’d love to be able to join the masses online, famous and not so famous, telling you that he’s the man who inspired me to play guitar… but as a ‘three chord wonder’ who’s never quite mastered the six strings (other than when playing air guitar!) that’s definitely not the case! So, to understand why Eddie Van Halen and his music meant quite so much to me, you have to dig a bit deeper into my life.

It’s fair to say that I was brought up in a relatively musical household. My parents weren’t musicians as such but they both had a decent set of pipes (and continue to do so in their 70s!), singing in choirs, with my dad being a member of a fairly prominent male voice choir at one point. Music was always on in the house, blasting from the speakers of my dad’s state-of-the-art (at the time!) Kenwood stereo system. However, in terms of musical genres, it was probably quite a narrow choice. There was choir music (of course!), musicals, country music and easy listening, with my only real exposure to rock music being of the softer type; The Beatles, Eagles, Chris Rea and Dire Straits take a bow! But mainly, it was choirs, musicals, Glen Campbell and Neil Diamond. Really, it wasn’t a rocking house at all and there was a definite aversion to heavier music. Despite this (and to this day they don’t realise it!), it’s fair to say that my parents were inadvertently responsible for my love of rock and metal; the heavy guitar power chords and screeching lead guitar outro in the Steve Harley/Sarah Brightman version of Phantom of the Opera, the classic opening riff of Dire Straits ‘Money for Nothing’, the guitar solos on Chris Rea’s ‘Road to Hell’ and the Eagles ‘Hotel California’… they all planted the seed that eventually made me seek out all kinds of rock music. But the first musician to truly make that seed grow and blossom was one Eddie Van Halen.

Despite my more life-ravaged and worn looks, I’m not quite 40 yet (albeit I’m now well into my 40th year!). The mathematicians out there will be able to work out that Van Halen’s classic debut album was released 3 years before I was even born. If you want to be exact, it was released 3 years and 2 months to the day before I was born! So, it’s fair to say that I was quite late to the Van Halen party, through no fault other than birth year! I don’t know the exact year that I first heard the band’s music, but I know for a fact that I was in my last few years at primary school, meaning around 1991/92. CDs were becoming all the rage by this time but the faithful ‘mix-tape’ was still doing the rounds and was very much still an accepted currency in schools! There was no Spotify, downloading or easy access to music back then!! ‘Mix-tapes’ in a primary school playground in deepest, darkest Cumnock in Ayrshire were generally recordings snatched from Radio 1, interspersed with music obtained from older siblings and parents. It was always interesting to swap these ‘mix-tapes’, sometimes with people from other classes who you didn’t even know, because it exposed you to different types of music. A few of my ‘mix-tapes’ were obtained during the occasional sojourn up the coast to visit family in Ardrossan. My big cousins David and Derek were a good bit older than me and liked a lot of bands and music I’d never heard of (and would have had no chance of hearing through my parents!). So on a very rare occasion, they’d hand me a trusty TDK-90 cassette full of a mixture of music to listen to when I got home. It was from one such ‘mix-tape’ cassette that I first heard the sound of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar.

Listening on a small Alba stereo in my room, I can still remember hearing the unmistakable riff to ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love’ for the first time. I was completely mesmerised by this repeating riff and kept rewinding the tape to listen to it again and again. It was a good ten or eleven rewinds later before I actually let the rest of the song play… and what a treat that was too! I’d never heard anything like it and to me, it was the sound of something really different, unique and special. Looking at the A4 piece of paper that my cousins supplied with the ‘mix tape’, I could see that this band was called Van Halen, or Van Ha-len as my incredibly simplistic ‘say it as you see it’ young mind believed it to be! Indeed, it wasn’t until a few years later, when I saw one of the Bill and Ted movies, that I realised the correct pronunciation of the band’s name! Pronunciation aside, this was a huge moment in my musical education. For the life of me, I couldn’t tell you the name of any other track or artist on that cassette of mixed music. I never really got past Van Halen. Eddie Van Halen made me love rock music.

From this point on, it was all Van Halen for me. I used to hate going to Ayr or Kilmarnock every Saturday afternoon for the weekly shop but all of sudden, it became something to look forward to… because these towns had Our Price record stores and Woolworths branches, as well as a few independents. All manner of vinyl, cassettes and the fairly new CD phenomena could be found there. After much searching, I found the debut Van Halen album on cassette, persuading my dad to play it in the car (a Nissan Bluebird, from memory!) as we travelled back home. I can’t remember the exact reaction of my parents to the opening salvo of ‘Runnin’ With The Devil’ and every air guitarist’s favourite, ‘Eruption’ but I don’t imagine it was overly positive! But I can vividly remember being horrified at my dad singing along to ‘You Really Got Me’ at the first listen and being absolutely disgusted when he claimed it was a song by a great 60s band called The Kinks! “No… this is Van Halen. It’s their song and Eddie plays the guitar”. Obviously, I was young and hadn’t fully cottoned on to the concept of cover songs! However, my dad became instantly cooler… even just for a minute or two! That cassette was played over and over again; in my room, in the car, on my Walkman! If I ever stood on my bed and pretended to be the star of a huge concert, Van Halen songs from that first album were the majority of the set. I’d try to perfect pretty much every rock star pose with a tennis racket as a guitar. During such times, I was Eddie Van Halen!! I’m pretty certain I still have both the ‘mixtape’ and the debut album cassette somewhere in the loft. Eddie Van Halen made me listen to music pretty much 24/7, something that continues to this day.

As time went on, I continued to seek out more and more Van Halen music, either by begging, borrowing and swapping CDs and cassettes or by saving up and heading to the aforementioned Our Price music shops. Confusion was rife as I sensed a change in the vocals at one point, something that I couldn’t take to at first. But ironically, the Sammy Hagar era is where I really started to dig the band’s music and fully started appreciating the immense talent of the main man himself, Eddie! One of the main reasons for this was the more prevalent use of keyboards in the music, particularly from the 1984 album onwards with the classic keyboard part in ‘Jump’. With Sammy’s introduction for 5150, keyboards really started to play a major part in some of the biggest songs… and I was taking keyboard lessons by then, hence my affiliation to this particular era of the band. Taking keyboard lessons and thereafter playing in a brass band for years, performing music was fun for me…but it wasn’t an exhilarating experience! It just wasn’t as cool as being in a rock band appeared to be and at times was incredibly boring. I found it really hard to stay focussed and to practice, causing many an argument with my mum in particular. So, to learn that Eddie Van Halen, the greatest guitarist I’d ever heard, was also playing keyboards on the band’s albums, well… it opened up a whole new world! Suddenly, my Yamaha and Casio keyboards in the corner of my room became interesting again and instead of practicing scales or playing keyboard classics in the vein of the mop-haired French housewives favourite, Richard Clayderman, I started mucking around with different synth sounds and trying to play along to the unforgettable keyboard intros of songs such as ‘Dreams’, ‘Love Walks In’, ‘When It’s Love’, my personal favourite ‘Right Now’ and of course, ‘Jump’! If the early Van Halen albums inspired me to explore heavier, guitar led music, there’s no doubt that the Hagar era albums inspired me to appreciate bands where keyboards were king; Toto, Journey, FM etc,. I’m sure it wasn’t quite what my parents had in mind when I first started keyboard lessons at a young age but I can argue that Eddie Van Halen’s music taught me one thing about learning an instrument; the basics of an instrument are the bedrock… but if you’re not playing music that interests and excites you, it’s hard to stay motivated. I have no doubt that many experienced music teachers and musicians will completely disagree with that sentiment but for me, it remains true, not just in music but in many areas of life. Eddie Van Halen made me practice my instruments more, something my mum struggled to force me to do!

As teenage years hit, other bands appeared in the soundtrack of my life, most notably Metallica and Whitesnake. However, Eddie Van Halen remained a constant. I regularly walked around in a Van Halen T-shirt and dark jeans, all floppy haired and lanky (ah… slim with a good head of hair! Those were the days!). I remember being curious when attending the local library in Cumnock town centre and finding that they now had a stock of CDs, with the curiousness turning to all out excitement when I noticed Van Halen 3 in the collection. This album with Gary Cherone on vocals isn’t a favourite but I still returned and re-borrowed it from the library several times, mainly because I was trying my best to copy it on my new Panasonic double tape deck! Acoustic and electric guitars appeared in my bedroom and amps were turned up to eleven as I desperately tried to emulate my hero. I’d watch videos of live Van Halen performances that I’d discovered in record stores or second hand shops, in particular the Right Here, Right Now tour, which is still a favourite live album to this day. You see, it was slightly cool, if not a bit geeky, to be different. All of my peers were taken in by the latest Britpop craze, idolising Oasis and the Gallagher brothers and wearing sheepskin jackets whilst pretending to be from Manchester rather than Auchinleck! It was an odd time to be a rocker in the middle of an indie music craze. But I had a girl to impress and sticking out a bit from the crowd was the way to do it! Wearing Van Halen T-shirt’s, desperately trying to play guitar and keyboards like Eddie Van Halen and listening to the many great songs by the band (particularly impressing said girl with the ballads) undoubtedly played a huge part in being a bit different. In fact, I know that I was listening to Van Halen’s ‘Balance’ album as I got ready for my first date with a beautiful, tall, blond girl from school. It was a walk up the country roads on a dark night in mid-February 1997… purely to have a better view of a meteor shower, unobstructed by light pollution, you’ll understand!!!! I didn’t actually see a meteor shower, the Van Halen T-shirt now fits me like a boob tube, I’ve lost my glossy hair and ultimately I’ve never really learned how to play guitar like Eddie… but it must’ve helped at the time, as that blond girl has been Mrs Griffiths since 2005! Eddie Van Halen helped me to woo my wife!!

It may surprise many of you to hear this… but from my med-teens to early 20s, I was actually a fairly shy individual. I’m clearly not a giant but at 6’2”, I was much taller than my peers, particularly at school, so I was always conscious that I stood out a bit. This caused me to stoop and I was quite happy to fade into the background, never feeling the need to be seen or heard. I did come out of my shell as I got older, especially after joining the job that I’ve done for a living for almost 20 years now, but I still managed to reach the grand old age of 22 without ever having done karaoke. I enjoyed watching others often sing tunelessly and awkwardly in front of a crowd but it’s not something that floated my boat! I could feel awkward as it was without doing it front of a crowd! Eddie Van Halen changed that. Well, when I say it was Eddie, it was actually a combination of him and Jack Daniels! I had been on a paint-balling afternoon with around 30 work colleagues and the function hall at the nearby Fenwick Hotel had been booked for a karaoke and booze-up afterwards where we were all joined by our spouses and partners. The karaoke book was being passed around and a good few people had already been up to sing the usual karaoke standards. You know the type of song; the type usually heard at wedding receptions. I avoided the book a good few times but by the third or fourth pass, I was well into several servings of Jack Daniels and Coke, pretty much on an empty stomach. As I looked at the selection of songs, one spoke to me from the page! ‘Jump’ by Van Halen! Before I could stop myself, I had selected my song and added my name to the list. I prepared for my karaoke debut with another JD and then took to the stage for my big moment. As soon as the opening riff of ‘Jump’ started and the host handed me the microphone, I realised that I was about to make a complete fool of myself. But it was too late. The Fenwick Hotel became my Wembley stage (or my Fresno stage, to fans of Van Halen’s ‘Right Here, Right Now’ live recording!). It was time to shine! I ran around the stage like a maniac, jumping high into the air every time I sang the lyric “might as well jump’. When it was time for the guitar solo, I was pretty convinced I was Eddie Van Halen, air guitar in hand whilst contorting myself into various poses that quite frankly, by body wasn’t shaped for! As the song came to an end, I climbed onto a fabric dining chair as the horrified host looked on before jumping high into the air and off the chair. As I landed on the ground to the cheer (and amusement!) of the crowd, I realised that I needed a big finish. So, I ran across the dance floor and in one movement moved to my knees, sliding across the shiny wooden floor for a metre or so. Almost immediately, I realised what a bad idea that was as I could feel the heat of a fairly bad friction burn on both knees. As I say back down, my girlfriend (now my wife!) pointed at my jeans. I looked down to see two massive burns/skid-marks on both knees of brand-new jeans! This was the very first time I’d had them on and, at the time, were probably the most expensive jeans I’d ever owned! The couldn’t be fixed and were completely ruined but if nothing else, that song became a huge part of my work life for a good few years as every time rock music was mentioned, the whole Van Halen ‘Jump’ karaoke night was brought up. Eddie Van Halen and his music made me feel like a rock star for one night… and he helped to ruin a good pair of jeans!

Fast forward a few years to 2007 and my wife Kirsteen was pregnant with our first son, Ewan. He was quite an active baby in the womb, always wriggling around and kicking. It became apparent that certain types of music made him move even more than normal; Bruce Springsteen ‘Radio Nowhere’, Whitesnake ‘Here I Go Again’ and, you’ve guessed it… a Van Halen track. As soon as the opening riff of ‘Panama’ started, Ewan would start punching and kicking like a madman (or mad baby!). It was as if he was having his own private, headbanging moment within the womb and was enjoying every minute. Either that, or he was indicating that he was hating it and wanted the music turned down! He’s 13 now and has attended a good few rock concerts with me, meeting and getting picks from some real guitar legends down the line, including Viv Campbell, Bernie Marsden and Steve Lukather. Taking cognisance of how much he enjoys attending rock concerts, I’m going to presume that pre-birth Ewan enjoyed hearing loud guitars and that Van Halen’s ‘Panama’ is somehow inbuilt to his aural DNA. You could say that Eddie Van Halen was one of my oldest son’s first guitar heroes!

Early last year, I was listening to Van Halen’s music in the car a lot whilst travelling to work. Quite often, I’d try to educate my car-share buddies (one a decade older and one almost a decade younger than me) in giving different types of music a chance and Van Halen was one of the many educational tools used. I don’t think it overly worked but if nothing else, their recognition of several tracks proved one thing; Eddie Van Halen’s music was recognisable everywhere and, in many ways, transcended age! After a discussion in the car about how his music had a great impact on the young me, I went onto the Van Halen website in an attempt to replace the old t-shirt of my youth with one that would fit my older, less firm frame. Not only did I find a multitude of t-shirts but I also found Eddie’s very own EVH range of Vans trainers. They were in all different designs, including one of his

famous red guitar. Another pair of high-tops had his face emblazoned on the side. Possibly in a sub-conscious attempt to stave away middle age and my upcoming 40th birthday, I added them to the basket. I was surely going to be the coolest dad in the school playground? In the end, the cost of shipping from the US helped me to accept the natural ageing process much quicker! But one thing remains true; Eddie Van Halen still has an impact on my (lack of) fashion sense!

Eddie Van Halen passed away at 65 years of age. For 42 years or so, he was a musical hero to many. It’s true that a lot of people had Van Halen in their lives a lot longer than me. It’s true that they were there from the very beginning of his career, for the original albums and the original t-shirts. Others learned to play guitar because of him and some of the luckier ones even managed to catch him live in concert, something that I was never able to do, much to my now eternal disappointment. But that doesn’t mean he was any more important to those people than he was to me. Eddie was there when I learned to love rock music. Eddie was there when I listened to music in my dad’s car. Eddie was there when I tried to practice keyboards. Eddie was there when I was the strange rock-loving, indie-hating kid at school. Eddie was there for my first date with my wife. Eddie was there when my first child was due to be born. Eddie was there as I tried to encourage others to embrace different genres of music. Eddie was even there as I tried to ignore advancing years! Eddie was present through some of my landmark moments of the past 30 years and much of his music will form the soundtrack of my life. That’s why he will always be important to me and why his music will always be heard in the Griffiths household.

I didn’t know Eddie Van Halen. But he knew me, just like he knew all of his fans. His music will live on and we’ll all find our own individual messages in each album. For me, this lyric from ‘Right Now’ says it all; “Miss the beat, you lose the rhythm’. That’s how Eddie Van Halen lived his life and if he was the beat, it’s up to the rest of us to ensure the rhythm goes on through the legacy of great music he has left behind. I’ll certainly be doing that.