I think excess got him in the end — the two headed monster of cigarettes and booze. Yet the combination got a lot of people and they were considered manly, rugged traits at one point. Watch a movie from the 40s and 50s and people were all drinking and smoking. Somebody walks into a room and you offer them a cigarette and/or some booze. It’s a terrible thing to slip into these habits unknowingly and then you end up relying on them. Eddie seemed like a typical musician: talented but insecure. You see him trying to combat his insecurities, especially in his solo guitar solos where he “winds up” before he takes the leap into the unknown. A lot of musicians feel that pressure of doing a solo piece — I think of Glenn Gould who hated the audience because he thought they were there to see him fall like a high wire act in a circus. There is even a Van Halen DVD was called “Without a Net.” So you have an insecure musician who has been flattered by his audience and the industry into believing he is a guitar God (whether he is or not, he certainly influenced the 80s). And so Eddie turns to drugs to combat his fears, the pressure and expectations of the industry and audience. No big shocker. It is a glamourous and self destructive cocktail from the media/Hollywood perspective — what artists are expected to do — and I believe it killed him in the end, in the same way it killed Humphrey Bogart. It also killed a lot of other rock musicians including another “guitar God”: Jimi Hendrix. There is a romantic presumption that a tough man can handle excess, can handle drink and we see this all the time played out in the movies. But a tough man can also stop himself and pull back from the edge before it’s too late. I don’t think Eddie did. Perhaps he wasn’t trained for it.
Also the Devil likes a good tune. Seduction is a key thing with evil. We have to be aware of what we’re dealing with, whether you believe in the Devil or not. You have to be aware of what critical parts of our being or mind we turn off in order to experience bliss. That takes courage. Some are fortunate to pull back from it and learn. Some aren’t. There, but for the grace of God, go I.
I remember when Johnny Carson was nearing his end he cursed the cigarettes he had smoked throughout his life.