Posted on 10/13/2020 2:55:42 PM PDT by billorites
This was a tough one.
At a formative time in my life, Edward Van Halen went out of his way to befriend me, show me guitar techniques, invite me and my dad to his home, show me his recording studio, chat with me about life, and even give me one of his famous striped red guitars.
I was a seventeen year old nobody. He was the world's biggest rock star. It was spring 1986. My dad's band, Bachman-Turner Overdrive (BTO), was opening for Van Halen on their "5150" tour. I was in high school at the time, but as Dad could never see the point of school when there was rock-and-rolling to be done, he called one day to ask if I wanted to ditch school to fly out and hang with him on the Van Halen tour for a few weeks.
It was the easiest question in human history to answer: Yes, I want to ditch school and go on tour with Van Halen. Just thinking about it felt like a dream. I'd spent most of the past few years trying to learn how to play Edward's guitar parts on "Eruption", "Spanish Fly", "Hot for Teacher", "Ice Cream Man", "Cathedral" (which I played at the church talent show), and dozens of other pieces. And Van Halen was the biggest band in the world at the time; every 20, 30, 40,000 seat date on the tour was sold out. The new album with Sammy was Number One on the Billboard charts. The three singles off the album were either smashes already or on their way.
Even better, this was the eighties—you know, when the world was still fun. There was light. There was laughter. There was big hair and acid-washed denim, just because, dammit. You could still make jokes
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
I’ll be. Tal hasn’t just been sloggng the club circuit, he’s got a bachelor’s degree in political science and does conservative commentary - he has a regular column on Steyn’s website. I’m starting to like him.
Man Eddie and Prince? That would have been a site to see! Both incredible guitarists.
In the early 2000s Prince played nearly four hours in Nashville’s brand new hockey/concert arena, then went to Broadway’s Irish-themed bar Seanachie and played more hours free for that astonished, lucky crowd. File his picture under “Master Entertainers”.
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