One year ago, the guitar world lost one of its greatest and most charismatic players. Not only did Eddie Van Halen revolutionize technique but he almost single-handedly changed the way people think about designing electric guitar gear.
In a similar vein to Lloyd Loar and Les Paul, Van Halen relentlessly pushed the boundaries of guitar design in order to take music forward, remaining hands-on with the development of electric guitars and amplifiers made under his signature EVH brand.
As a self-taught guitarist with boundless talent and vision Van Halen was rule breaker and rule maker in equal parts. “Instead of reading a book, I wrote my own,” he told an interviewer in 2017. “If I had taken lessons and learned by the book, I would not play at all the way I do. As a matter of fact, because of the things that I created technique wise… they had to create a whole new thing called tablature.”
This incredible clip from the 1986 concert film Live Without a Net gives us a close-up view of the great man at his fretboard-scorching finest. Reaching far beyond the conventional Van Halen shows us exactly why traditional musical notation was simply not enough to accommodate his mind-blowing technique.
Browse Van Halen music here.
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"It's great. I dig this!" Watch Eddie Van Halen compose "Amsterdam" on a Charvel guitar in an unearthed home video from 1987 — eight years before the song's official release
