EVH was born in Amsterdam but moved around a lot and ended up at Pasadena. Because of racism abuse in the Netherlands he moved to America from Holland on a boat. EVH 1st gig was on a cruise boat to America which helped pay off their ticket as they were very poor. EVH was origonaly actually a drummer at 1st but quickly his brother Alex Van Halen realised Eddie was better than him at guitar and Eddie realised Alex was better than him at drums so they swapped. Quickly they were in a band together winning school competitions and battle of the band shows, playing literally everywhere at House party, and schools 24/7. Gene Simons from kiss saw them at an empty club and got them some recording sessions. After their recording of Van Halen 1 it was a slow success but eventually it kicked off after their A side track single cover of the kinks ‘You really got me’ reached 38 of top 100 tracks in 1978.
Eddie recorded and played the solo on Michel Jacksons ‘Beat it’ and created it in just 20 mins. He also wrote ‘Eruption’ which blew every guitarists mind and re-defined what a guitar could do and sound like. His bands most well known songs are ‘jump’ ‘Aint talkin bout love’ and ‘Panama’.
Eddies influence was immeasurable. After blowing the competition with his creation of ‘Eruption without a net’ which is longer version of eruption that’s an 11min solo showing more tricks and techniques he created under his belt. Eddie also helped designed the d tuner with Floyd rose and even invented his own tremolo called the fulcrum Tremelo which allowed you to drop the e string 3 tunings down. He invented his own tone called the brown sound which isn’t related to anything brown but is a completely unique tone which has piercing highs but an extreme thickness but somehow a scooped sound too not forgetting his legendary guitar ‘The franken strat’ which was made with b stock parts and vintage guitars.
Ive learnt many skills like pinch harmonics, tap harmonics, tapping and massive finger stretches from learning songs like Beat it and You really got me.
The video above is just a video to show what the ‘Brown sound’ sounds like. The funny thing is is that the brown sound tone isn’t related to anything brown it’s just what’s been floated around. But it’s a very trebly, squashy and compressed sounding tone that still has a lot of bass with scooped mids. EVH was known for using a variac wich turned down the voltage going into his amp, he did this because his 100w Marshall Plexi was way too loud so he needed a way to crank it up to 10 without blowing out his ear drums and the power to his house. The variac did contribute to his tone and according to people who have replicated what he did, say turning down the volume on the variac does make the feel of the amp more saggy/squashy and also gives it more compression. Eddie turned it down to 89 on the variac which was the sweet spot according to him. Picture of a variac below.
‘Eruption’ This is the solo I’m learning and performing for my project. I chose to learn this specific one as It is known for being one of the hardest solos to play and it contains loads of techniques that I haven’t mastered yet. It contains 2 handed tapping, pinch harmonics which is picking with your pick and the thumb your picking with at the same time, tap harmonics which is done by lightly tapping a fret with a harmonic on it (not all frets produce harmonics), hybrid picking which is playing with your pick and and another finger, kind of like finger style picking but with a pick included, pinch bends which is doing a pinch harmonic and bending at the same time, and also contains insanely fast shredding which I can’t really do yet. These are all techniques but not at EVH level of playing. This song is perfect because it’s not too long and has some drums involved so it can be added to a band setlist easily like I have done with my band. Below is someone who did a great cover of the solo and I will be learning off his YouTube tutorial is its extremely detailed and very well played and I want it to sound as best as possible to develop my playing as much as possible.