“What if Van Halen played fretless...” What would Eddie Van Halen’s “Beat It” solo sound like on a fretless guitar? Here it is — no whammy bar required

Guitars come in all shapes and sizes and with everything from four strings — as in the tenor guitar — to 17, as in Gibson’s Style-U model.

But the oddest of all electric guitars has to be the fretless. They don’t show up often, but when they do, they tend to make a stir, as did the Bartells fretless guitar from the 1960s. George Harrison owned one, John Lennon played it, and it may have actually made an appearance on the Beatles' 1968 White Album.

Because fretless guitars are, you know, fretless, they lend themselves to the type of swooping portamento effects used by players of violins, violas and cellos. The result can be a bit wobbly sounding, as if the instrument had too much to drink.

For reference, we present Ilya Franciosi, a talented fretless guitar player who has served up a fine example of fretless playing using Eddie Van Halen’s solo on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”

The song is famous not only for being one of Jackson’s biggest hits but also for featuring Van Halen’s incredible shredding, complete with plenty of his trademark double-tapped runs.

What if VAN HALEN played FRETLESS? - YouTube

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As Eddie explained, his session work with Jackson came about after he received an early morning phone call from Jackson’s producer, the late Quincy Jones. Eddie assumed it was a prank and hung up on him until a persistent Jones convinced him otherwise.

Franciosi does a spectacular job with the solo and demonstrates how amazingly fluid a fretless guitar can sound in the hands of a guitarist who knows what he’s doing.

If you want to know more about fretless guitars, we recommend checking out Paul Brett’s groundbreaking book, Finding Fretless: The Story of George Harrison’s Mad Guitar, published by This Day in Music Books. In it, Brett charts the history of the Bartell’s fretless guitar, created by Paul Barth in the 1960s.

As Brett told us in 2020, Barth was something of an early electric guitar Zelig. His uncle was John Dopyera, inventor of the resonator guitar, whom he worked for at the National String Instrument Corporation. Barth went on to collaborate with George Beauchamp at Rickenbacker on the Frying Pan electric and Beauchamp’s design for a guitar pickup.

By the early 1950s, Barth was on hand with Leo Fender as the electric guitar pioneer was setting up his shop in Santa Ana. It was Barth who built many of the woodworking jigs from which bodies and necks for the Stratocaster, Jazzmaster and Jaguar models came.

Barth launched his own brand in 1956 and worked with Ted Eugene Peckels to form the Bartell company in 1964. Chief among its products was the fretless guitar. Although the model never took off, it captured the imagination of George Harrison, who purchased one on his trip to Los Angeles in 1967.

So who knows? Maybe Ilya Franciosi is on to something. He’s certainly helping to keep a much-neglected line of guitar history alive.