Eddie Van Halen, like Lemmy and Prince and George Michael and friggin’ Bowie, was just not one of those cats you expected to die.
That is, of course, a little rich, considering his fairly long history battling cancer. But Eddie has always seemed larger than life. Untouchable.
If you’re around my age, I really don’t care what tribe you chose to adhere yourself to, pretty much everybody liked Van Halen. As with The Cars, I don’t ever remember anyone saying “man, I fucking hate this band” when a Van Halen song came bulldozing out of a nearby speaker. Surely, they were burlier and beefier and not always as pop-friendly (although I’d argue that they were way more than simply another dumb metal band), but they were fucking Van Halen. Bow the fuck down and give it up.
Guilty of inspiring legions of strenuously lesser guitarists and wankier bands, Van Halen occupied a space in the rock firmament alongside names like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and AC/DC. Consummately heavy, but transcendent of genre, theirs was an undeniable blend of pop-flecked, hook-laden brute force and bug-eyed virtuosity that few could ever hope to match. Brash and cocky, they traded in excess on every level and personified more dumb rock cliches than can be quantified. That would all damn them to ignominy if their records weren’t so damn good.
As a sniveling, acne-speckled pre-teen metalhead enthralled by KISS, I think I first heard Van Halen via my grade-school comrade Rich. At his mom’s apartment one afternoon, Rich dropped the needle on side one of their eponymous debut LP, and it was like being run over by a freight train. “Runnin’ With the Devil,” “Eruption,” “You Really Got Me,” “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love” and “I’m The One” rolled out in swift, mind-blowing succession. They clearly cribbed liberally from the KISS playbook, but with slavishly sharper chops and better songwriting skills.
As it happened, Van Halen became the music of choice for certain variants of unseemly male stereotypes: Camaro-driving mooks, 7-11 parking-lot stoners, sleeveless tough guys, early smokers, etc. Rising to prominence in the same era as Punk Rock, Van Halen seemed poised to represent everything Punk sought to destroy – a commercial juggernaut fueled by muso noodlery, rock star excess, gluttony, etc. The Clash famously balked about them onstage at the US Festival in 1983. Again, that would have all been perfectly fine, had their songs not delivered the goods so damn well. It should also be noted that Van Halen themselves were not so musically provincial. Punk purists may deride them, but David Lee Roth was well-versed in the music of bands like The Stranglers and Black Flag, and Eddie purportedly harbored some admiration for my beloved Killing Joke.
Back in Manhattan in the mid-80’s, while all my friends liked them, the biggest Van Halen acolytes I knew were a gaggle of Yorkville roughnecks known as The 84th Street Bombers (or, as I mistakenly referred to them on this old post, The 84th Street Gang). Even that uncomfortable common ground did not dissuade me from eagerly snapping up each successive VH record, my all-time favorite remaining the comparatively dark Fair Warning, largely for its inclusion of anthems like “Mean Street” and, to my mind, their finest-ever track, “Unchained.”
Of course, `twas not to last, and the inevitable reunions later on never really added up to the majesty of their early days. Don’t even talk to me about the Sammy Hagar and Gary Cherone years.
Eddie Van Halen was a true titan of his art. His passing is not just another incidental rock-star death. We have lost a genuine innovator. And as this cliché goes, we shall not see his like again.
Play this as loud as you can.
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