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.