As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
I was watching a video about Eddie Van Halen noting the 6 guitar legends he hated, starting with Eric Clapton. The reason he hated Clapton was Clapton was his idle and Clapton summed up Eddie Van Halen as having "good technique". I desire to delve into this as I love blues guitar rock and I would love to be blessed for a day to play guitar like these people can, as I sit there and study their riffs and I do know what makes a legendary rock song. It is simple in a combination of picking, strumming, back strumming and sometimes fret work on the neck for speed. Does not make any difference if it is Alice Cooper in 18 or Eric Clapton on Layla, that is what makes those songs work. Clapton basically expanded the two note TA DAH for Layla if you listen closely.
I think the video on Van Halen is more damning than an apology, as Eddie Van Halen was not hearing what Clapton was stating which was fact. He was not hearing Richie Blackmore who said Van Halen played too many notes.
Van Halen who I adore, condemned Joe Perry and others for giving him dagger eye stares and not coming over to talk to him. The question is why was this kid not going over to talk to the men who founded rock guitar music which Van Halen benefited from?
Eric Clapton went to Fats Domino, not the other way around. These kids in the 1960's all went down to the Black blues clubs in Louisiana and jammed with the men they listened to on records.
So when Van Halen is being scowled at, and not hearing he plays too many fret notes, and has good technique. the best analogy is Eric Clapton has a 1968 Mustang with a 429 interceptor under the hood and Eddie Van Halen goes into the garage, starts it up, and raps the engine out to it almost exploding and thinking it is cool, and Clapton is horrified as Van Halen does not see the car, the interior, the purr of that big 8 while idling in appreciating it all.
Another way hearing this is by Mark Knopfler in Sultans of Swing where he sings, "He doesn't want to make it cry or sing". What Eric Clapton was engaged in with others was putting emotion into the instrument. Jimmy Hendrix on LSD would make a guitar sound like WAH WAH WAH like an acid trip as that is what he was on. I think Clapton's best work is Cocaine in guitar emotion, but that is not coke he is playing, that is a whiskey weed drunk. Honestly, I dislike the closing on Layla with that piano even if it is superb. I love Claptons renditions like Promises or I Shot the Sheriff, but I do not think he is one of the guitar heroes in being best. His work at Cream leaves me with nothing. But Clapton understood the emotions of the guiar like Richie Blackmore who was in his way stating, "Eddie Van Halen pollute the music with too many notes, instead of letting the notes perform the emotion".
Joe Perry is the lewdest guitar player to perform in what he does to Aerosmith songs, but that is the emotion in Walk this Way, again superb.
Van Halen upon introducing "new sounding" rock guitar was thin skinned. He kicked Rick Derringer off the tour for playing the riffs before Eddie got on stage. With Tom Scholz of Boson he was stunned when Scholz got on stage aftewards and played what Eddie Van Halen had performed at as the opening. Scholz who was an engineer and trained, was not doing an FU, but more of a, "Hey kids, we can play this shit too, it is nothing special, we know how to do it, but we do not do this kind of sound".
For the Attention Deficit Disorder Kids and the Coke Rock sound that Van Halen was ushered into, this was wow tunes. Just like Michael Jackson in that one dimensional music which crushed the market as he had no competition for his complete package. Eddie Van Halen on Beat It actually in that intro, come as close as he ever did, except Ain't Talkin Bout Love, to putting emotion into his work.
Frankly, I never like Chet Atkins as he could play the guitar, like Glenn Campbell, like Jose Feliciano, but like Eddie Van Halen, the emotion was not there. Allot of people can play an instrument, only a few can make it cry or sing.
It is not Eddie Van Halen in the picture above, although it looks like it. The guitarist is Craig Chaquico. This child prodigy at age 16 was invited to sit in with Jefferson Airplane and became their lead guitarist.
For years I thought the song Jane was the group Boston and was stunned to hear it was Jefferson Starship. I hate Starship as it is just commercial crap like We Built this City. Jane though is pure rock in the vocals and in that lead guitarist. If you watch and listen to Chaquico's short solo, you will see him playing emotional blues in making that guitar moan like a woman in orgasm, and then you will see his doing the fret work on the neck........just like Eddie Van Halen.
Understand Van Halen released their debut in February 1978. Starship would release Jane in 1979 and knowing studio production, writing and working out songs, yes Chaquico could have added fret work to his riff, but he also shows he was doing better work than Eddie Van Halen in a few months after. I was watching a gal play Layla on gaytube and I noticed she was doing fret work of a few notes in that song. Yes Eric Clapton was apparently doing fret work in rock in Derrick and the Dominoes in 1970 when Eddie Van Halen was 15 years old and just starting to copy Clapton.
The point in all of this is as Van Halen stated, everyone copies someone, but Eddie Van Halen thought this was his identity and no one else could master it. He was not able to comprehend was Eric Clapton of the other guitar heroes were saying to him as he was caught in his own validation. It is regrettable that no one ever sat Eddie Van Halen down and said, "Ed you are not hearing what they are instructing you. They are telling you to slow down, savor each note, put your heart into every note and make that guitar cry and sing. I do not know if Eddie Van Halen had that in him, as he was like a quick draw artist basking in speed.
Someone who never gets credit for the sounds coming out of a guitar is Annie Wilson in her acoustic in the prelude to Crazy on You, with the growling electric guitar moaning or Roger Fischer of Heart. Eddie Van Halen was too busy doing Rain Man on the fret that he forgot the basic Beatles principle in you need a riff to anchor to.
This stuff needs to be said as no one has ever said it as they are too dense. People have categories on Guitar Heroes and never explain why. The godfather of all in the magnus opus of Rock which no one ever was able to mirror was Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven. What Page did was take acoustic, then combine 12 string strumming and 6 string picking and sometimes he was shifting between the two in a few bars. Al Nichols who brought the California Surfer rock of Dick Dale to the studio rock was hemmed in by the radio play limits on time, so he never was able to crank out minutes of his work. He was forced on keyboards and electric guitar to "season" bland Bob Dillion songs into pure blues rock songs which were superb. The difference is Al Nichols kept the music while Eddie Van Halen cluttered the music with notes like Van Gough cluttered the canvas. Cluttered music wows coke heads, but not blues listeners.
I would have liked to have seen what Eddie Van Halen really could have done if he applied himself beyond what he was engaged in.
If you want to see a man making love to his guitar and loving it, and the crowd is loving it, Joe Walsh in Life's Been Good To Me So Far.. I don't like most of Wash's stuff with the Eagles and other venues, as he goes to whining guitar too much, but although sounding like he fried 90% of his brain on drugs, he is what Eddie Van Halen should have tried to be like.
That's about it.
Nuff Said
agtG
