Having Frank Zappa as your dad has its benefits. At 12 years old, Dweezil Zappa found that out when his guitar hero, Eddie Van Halen, showed up unannounced at the Zappa family home. Two weeks later, the guitarist turned up again at Dweezil's high school to gift him a rare Kramer guitar and deliver a valuable guitar lesson.
Dweezil has likened Ed's availability to "having your own toy Eddie Van Halen." Inspired by their close encounters, the youngster was set to perform "Runnin’ With the Devil" at his high school talent show shortly afterward when Eddie unexpectedly appeared during soundcheck.
Now 55, Dweezil gives insights into his journey with the electric guitar in a tell-all chat with Gibson TV. Understandably, Zappa — who released a signature guitar with Shabat Guitars last year — has a vast guitar collection, with Gibson SGs aplenty. But few have stories quite like his Kramer.
“Eddie Van Halen shows up at the house, and he's backlit in his Women and Children First jumpsuit, holding a guitar,” Zappa recalls of the first time he met his hero. “And for me, it was just like he was backlit with a smoke machine and 'Mean Streets' is already playing.”
The guitar in question was a purple, twin-humbucker Kramer, but with a piece of tape covering the name on the headstock to keep Ed's then-secret collaboration with the luthier under wraps. But at the time, the starry-eyed youngster didn't care about that.
“Without even getting into the 'Hi, how are you?' kind of thing, it was. 'Okay, play 'Eruption,'' ” he continues. “It was this amazing moment. When you see how someone really does what they do, where they play it, what strings they're playing on up close, that was burned into my mind. That was the coolest experience, until the next cool experience a few weeks later.”
At this point, Eddie Van Halen was the only guitarist Dweezil would listen to, aside from Randy Rhoads. He was obsessed, and so his high school band had signed up for the school talent show to play one of his songs.
“I don't know how this happened, but Edward Van Halen came to my soundcheck,” he says. “I was playing 'Runnin' With the Devil' with my 12-year-old buddies, I'm not only playing one chord wrong, but my guitar's not staying in tune. So Ed drives home and comes back with this guitar, which originally was cream-colored with an orange lightning bolt. He puts it on me and says 'You're playing it wrong'. He stands behind me, counts it off with the kids, and he does the pick slide, the whole thing. It was the craziest experience.”
After the show, Dweezil called his hero to thank him for lending him the guitar. Ed told him he could keep it, and it didn't take Dweezil long to make it his own. As those watching the video will see, the guitar is far from cream-colored anymore. At 13, he gave it a custom paint job as a homage to Van Halen and screwed in a Tom Anderson humbucker. A sticker declaring that 'Corporate rock still sucks' also features on the rear.
“It just made sense at the time… It probably still does now,” he laughs.
The relationship between Dweezil Zappa and Eddie Van Halen has been well documented. Eddie produced his first single, "My Mother Is a Space Cadet," and Zappa later gave Eddie guitar lessons to help him nail a particularly tricky Frank Zappa song. Eddie also features on Dweezil’s yet-to-be-released shredathon track, "What the Hell Was I Thinking?," which features guest spots from other elite players, including Steve Vai, Brian May, Steve Morse, and Angus and Malcolm Young.
Zappa's chat with Gibson TV also revealed an interesting anecdote about the kind of man that Eddie Van Halen was.
“He was the first person that called me when my dad died,” Dweezil reveals. “It's emotional because, when you have friends that step up and do something for you, it matters. But it was unexpected that it was him, at 5:15 in the morning like, 'Hey, what can I do?'
“He was the kind of guy that was inspired in the moment and he would just go for something. If it had to happen right then he would just do it. I think that's an amazing quality and something that I learned from him. Why waste time?”
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