neugey

Just don't forget the king of tapping, many years before EVH ...

SloMotion

Is that where Eddie VH picked that up? From Steve Hackett?

saintfan

Maybe. I've read plenty on Eddie and he was influenced by a bunch of different players and styles. Thing about Eddie - the thing that makes him, well, Eddie Van Halen - is that he took bits and pieces from other players/styles and made them his own. "Little Guitars" is a great example. He said in an interview about that song that he'd heard this latin player playing something similar and it just blew him away. He said he wasn't good enough to mimic what the guy was doing and came up with "his version".

That's what made Elvis "Elvis" you know? He took any song he did and essentially owned it. Willie Nelson's Stardust LP - Willie is no where near good enough on guitar to play those compositions so he paid someone to 'dummy them down' on guitar for him, and it sounds brilliant because of Willie's style. Same with Eddie. The man has a gift - he's doing what God put him on this planet to do. Not many of us can say that.

And that's why someone saying "there's a lot of better players than Eddie", is, well, ignorant at best. Because that kind of statement misses the point completely and entirely, even if the person saying it who claims to have been a sound engineer (something I've done on and off since 1985 by the way) stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night...

C'mon Man...