Zachary Clausen Final Project/Eddie Van Halen

Edward Van Halen was born on January 26, 1955 in the Netherlands where he lived until

he moved to California with his family in the 60s. He and his brother Ales grew up taking

classical piano lessons and it started to show Eddie as a musical standout. Eddie then started to

play on the drums with his brother playing the guitar, but they had eventually switched

instruments with each other when they became better at playing the others instrument. They

played in backyard parties and clubs around Los Angeles eventually meeting David Lee Roth and

Michael Anthony. They formed the group called Mammoth in the 70s and it was around the

time where Eddie began using the two-handed tap technique which can be heard in his solo in

“Eruption”.

In 1977 Gene Simmons the bassist for Kiss found them at a club, and financed their first

recording session, however they had to change their name as it was already taken, and they

simply went with Van Halen. After they recorded the first session it wasn’t long before they

signed with Warner Bros and had their first album. It hit platinum status in close to six months

of releasing and was just the beginning of their string of multi-platinum albums. They were

close to the top on album charts, but it wasn’t until 1984 when they released an album on New

Year’s Day where they would rise to number 2 with the momentum from the song “Jump”

which had used Eddie’s new synthesizer.

In 1984 they toured, and each member of the band played separate solo sets and were

physically separated showing somethings were not right within the band. Eddie and Roth

weren’t on good terms with each other ever since Roth was reluctant to use electronics in their

music like “Jump”, “I’ll Wait”, and “Panama”. While everyone was doing their own thing at the

time Van Halen was trying to do a follow-up recording to 1984s tour, but it was Roth who was
Zachary Clausen Final Project/Eddie Van Halen
delaying the recording and was eventually fired and replaced by Sammy Hagar. Hagar was able

to keep with Van Halen up until 1996 where after long tensions between Hagar and Eddie broke

when Van Halen began recording with Roth without informing Hagar. Hagar says Eddie fired

him shortly afterward with Eddie saying he quit.

It wasn’t long before Roth was fired again, and a new vocalist named Gary Cherone was

the new lead singer up until 1999 when he was dismissed. Later in 2001 Eddie said publicly that

he was battling cancer with the doctors saying a complete recovery was most likely. It was a

few months later when news spread that Van Halen also were no longer working with Warner

Bros as they were blamed for only promoting younger bands, while also there was no

replacement for Cherone and Roth was no longer being considered. The next three years were

all the band handling personal and business matter with Eddie separating from his first wife

Valerie Bertinelli.

In 2007 Van Halen was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as well as the

announcement of a reunion tour with Roth. On August 17th dates were announced and the

lineup of the band changed with bassist Michael Anthony being replaced by Eddie’s song

Wolfgang. The tour had a gross over $93 million making it one of the most successful tours in its

history. They recorded an album in 2011 and had the release in 2012 followed by a worldwide

tour supporting the album.

In the end the techniques Eddie used were mainly the two-hand tap, which became sort

of his mark, and bending. Bending the strings can be seen by our main class example of it being

Jimi Hendrix during the National Anthem he preformed at Woodstock. Eddie also introduced

Van Halen to the use of electronics in its music which allowed them to reach #2, higher than
Zachary Clausen Final Project/Eddie Van Halen
their previous high of #6. Van Halen was one of if not the most popular band during the late 70s

and early 80s setting a template for hard rock and heavy metal in the 80s.

Sources

 Erlewine, S. T. (n.d.). Van Halen | Biography & History. Retrieved April 03, 2018,

from https://www.allmusic.com/artist/van-halen-mn0000260206/biography

 Prato, G. (n.d.). Eddie Van Halen | Biography & History. Retrieved April 03, 2018,

from https://www.allmusic.com/artist/eddie-van-halen-

mn0000146544/biography

 Eddie Van Halen. (2015, June 16). Retrieved April 03, 2018, from

https://www.biography.com/people/eddie-van-halen-9542559