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Other authors named Eddie:
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Author's popularity: 1
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Popularity: 2
Vote: | David Lee Roth had the idea that if you covered a successful song, you were half way home. C'mon - Van Halen doing 'Dancing in the Streets'? It was stupid. I started feeling like I would rather bomb playing my own songs than be successful playing someone else's music. |
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Vote: | I was trying to take the band in a direction that I thought was appropriate, and Roth was trying to take the band in more of a Las Vegas direction. And there he is. |
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Vote: | It's always a Catch-22 situation. They hate you if you're the same, and they hate you if you're different. |
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Vote: | Music is for people. The word 'pop' is simply short for popular. It means that people like it. I'm just a normal jerk who happens to make music. As long as my brain and fingers work, I'm cool. |
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Vote: | Practice. I used to sit on the edge of my bed with a six-pack of Schlitz Malt talls. My brother would go out at 7 P.M. to party and get laid, and when he'd come back at 3 A.M., I would still be sitting in the same place, playing guitar. I did that for years - I still do that. |
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Vote: | There's a plaque on our wall that says we've sold over 65 million albums, and I don't feel I've accomplished anything. I feel like I'm just getting started. |
Popularity: 2
Vote: | Yeah, but I don't think it was because of us. There was a lot of cocaine on the console-and it wasn't necessarily the band's. That was a problem. And we weren't allowed any input on the mix. |
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Biography
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Image:Redleather.jpg|right|thumb|Eddie Van Halen
Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, generally known as Eddie Van Halen, (born January 26, 1955 in Nijmegen, Netherlands,) is a virtuoso guitarist, classically-trained pianist, and founding member of the hard rock band Van Halen. His family moved to Pasadena, California in 1962.
History Eddie started classical piano training, and won talent competitions as a child. Initially, Eddie's brother Alex Van Halen began playing the guitar, while Eddie played the drums. According to Van Halen lore, while Eddie was delivering newspapers to pay for his drum kit, Alex would practice playing on them. It was when Eddie heard Alex's mastery of the Surfaris drum solo in the song Wipe Out that Eddie decided to switch and begin learning how to play the electric guitar.
Eddie was around age twelve when he first started to learn guitar. He was so committed to playing the guitar, that he played it all day, everyday. Sometimes, he would even skip school to stay at home and practice. In an April, 1996, interview with Guitar World, when asked about how he went from playing his first open G chord, to playing "Eruption", he simply replied " Practice. I used to sit on the edge of my bed with a six-pack of Schlitz Malt talls. My brother would go out at 7 P.M. to party and get laid, and when he'd come back at 3 A.M., I would still be sitting in the same place, playing guitar. I did that for years--I still do that."
In the burgeoning Los Angeles rock scene of mid-1970s, Van Halen's band was called Rat Salade, after a song by Black Sabbath. David Lee Roth suggested calling the band Van Halen, after having been hired by the band as a vocalist to circumvent paying for the use of his P.A. system. After unfulfilled promises by KISS's Gene Simmons to sign Van Halen, they signed with Warner Brothers in 1977, and then released their eponymous debut album on February 8, 1978. It was immediately recognized as a ground-breaking work. Van Halen's innovative, home-spun techniques, and unparalleled rhythmic sensibility influenced generations of guitarists. Van Halen's mantra, "if it sounds good, it is good," renowned "brown sound," and fleet-fingered graceful melodicism propelled him to "guitar god" status around the world. He is especially known for a technique that he popularised: finger tapping. While he did not originate the finger tapping technique, he refined it to an art through various unusual applications. In interviews, Van Halen has credited Jimmy Page's guitar solo from the song "Heartbreaker" (Led Zeppelin II) as the inspiration for developing this techinque.
Van Halen albums such as Fair Warning and Diver Down displayed Eddie's prowess as a piano player, as well as a guitarist. Keyboards featured prominently on the landmark album 1984, arguably the defining rock and roll release of the 1980s.
Edward Van Halen also played a role in getting R&B videos played on MTV. He was called in by Quincy Jones to play guitar on the song Beat It, from Michael Jackson's famous 1982 album, "Thriller". The combination of Jackson's pop sensibilities, Quincy Jones' production and Van Halen's guitar work melded several genres of music, and helped each to find new fans. Concurrently, Van Halen's song Jump was played in discos, inner-city R&B clubs, and on rock radio.
Van Halen did soundtrack work for movies such as Back To The Future and Wild Life, and has recorded with Brian May, Jeff Porcaro, and Thomas Dolby. He built his trademark red and white striped "Frankenstrat" guitar, (it was originally black and white,) by hand, using an imperfect body and neck picked up at a discount.
The 1990s and early-2000s proved to be a rough time for Van Halen. He battled alcoholism, lost his mother to cancer, was treated for tongue/mouth cancer, had hip replacement surgery, separated from Valerie Bertinelli, (whom he married in 1981,) as his band lost their third lead singer, Gary Cherone. He also was labeled as a racist by critics and the public alike after calling Pat Smear, rhythm guitarist for Nirvana at the time and also a big Van Halen fan, a "Dirty Mexican".
Van Halen has one son, Wolfgang William Van Halen, born March 16, 1991. He was named after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and nicknamed "Wolfie". Wolfie has played at some of his father's concerts on their 2004 reunion tour with Sammy Hagar. Eddie named his line of signature Peavey Guitars after his son, and between 1993 and 2004 was also sponsored by Peavey Electronics to use their 5150 Amplifiers, which he had a part in designing. In 2004 the Peavey company and Eddie split ways, and Eddie launched reissues of his famous "Frankenstrat" guitars with Charvel.
...(more on Wikipedia)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Eddie Van Halen".
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