Posted on 10/08/2020 8:02:58 AM PDT by Kaslin
4L8r
I hear the same noises when I’m getting a tooth drilled.
...the solo EVH came up with was so memorable and well-phrased...
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Thats what separates him from other shredders and virtuosos—he had great taste. Some players just have an instinct for playing lines that grab you. He had it in spades, plus an innovative technical approach that let him express it in a way that was really exciting. He also was one of those guys who could almost “speak” through his instrument; that is, there was no technique barrier between what he wanted to play and his ability to play it. Two other guys that come to mind who had that are Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck. Also Danny Gatton but nobody but guitar junkies have heard of him.
Unfortunate it bothers you to the degree that you felt compelled to make a stupid smart az comment.
The next time you feel that compulsion, BIOYA.
LOL. Please learn how to re-size photos when posting. You’ll be doing everyone a favor, keyboard warrior.
Problem is, I have Ritchie on record doing what EVH did later.
Like I said, I thought a couple of their Roth originals on their final album were pretty good.
But absolutely NOTHING wrong with a cover if you make it your own.
Adam Lambert’s “Ring of Fire” was every bit as good and in many ways better than Cash’s-—but it’s a totally different song.
Same thing with Van Halen’s “You Really Got Me”.
And we have Ritchie saying that’s not so. Of course there’s degrees of doing something. There’s doing something once in a while pretty well, and there’s something regularly and very well. Adrian Belew related a story yesterday. While he was touring with Zappa he’d started experimenting with tapping (which didn’t really have a name yet), walking around LA with a friend of his who was also playing with the technique they wandered into the Whiskey. Turns out Van Halen was there, and they’re watching Eddie tapping, and Adrian turns to his friend and says “hey he’s doing our thing” “yup” “and he’s better than us” “I noticed”.
He was an innovator and he pushed the technique of rock and roll guitar playing in new directions of speed, technique and technical manipulation. Most of the great guitar players out there have been talking about that the last 2 days. Heck they’ve been talking about it the last 2 decades. They liked him as a professional and person. They learned from him. Those are the facts. That is reality.
And yet, wasn’t the guy in Autograph generally considered to be the “father” of “tapping?” That’s what wiki said at one time.
All music rests on someone else’s shoulders. Black musicians claim all the stuff in the 60s-—they had been doing it all for years in the clubs. Who knows?
I like EVH. I wouldn’t put him in my top five guitarists, which would be Beck, Hendrix, Blackmore, Clapton, and Page, all for different reasons.
My brother was one. VH was in its heyday when he was in high school, and he just had to get a guitar and a little amp and try to play like Eddie. He never quite got there despite many attempts (heard by me down the hall).
This was a great read about someone I never appreciated.
Thank you.
Eddie could compose his solos, and improvised like a jazz musician. It wasn’t about the technicals, it was the flow of the notes and sounds, that were in his head, that he could make come out of the instrument.
You've missed out on a lot.
Eddie was exceptional at both, though his biggest strength was the artistry he brought that nobody else could duplicate. That's what made him special. For example fingertapping was just a throwaway gimmick rarely used before Eddie embraced it and through his musical creativity transformed it into something everyone used in almost every song for a decade.
Was never a huge VH fan — David Lee Roth kind of turned me off — but liked a number of their songs. When they re-did “You Really Got Me,” it was an ingenious choice. Almost like they were saying, “the original version took rock in a new direction, with power chords, distortion, etc. We’re going to use the same song to take rock in another new direction.”
As far as Eddie hammering the strings, he certainly popularized it, but he didn’t invent it. I remember reading an interview with Brian May, who did it on a Queen album a year before VH’s debut and said he got the idea from a guitarist at a club in Texas, who said he copied it from Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. But it probably predates Billy Gibbons as well.
Eddie was raised on classical music. His father was a classical musician and Eddie was trained in classical piano before deciding he'd rather rock. But he still loved the classics and he named his son Wolfgang after Mozart.
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