EDDIE VAN HALEN -1955–2020

The great magician’s departure marks the end of a game-changing career. With exclusive thoughts and memories from the scene’s greatest players, we remember a visionary and virtuoso who rewrote the rules of electric guitar

- HENRY YATES

Some rock-star deaths hit like a sledgehammer. On 6 October, as the black news ripped through social media, fans both illustrious and unknown found a thousand ways to echo the same sentiment. Not Eddie Van Halen. Death was so diametrically opposed to the life force in the Californian virtuoso’s fretwork. The black-and-white valedictory photos filling news feeds so drab compared with his kaleidoscope of DIY SuperStrats. The past tense of the eulogies so jarring when applied to the man who announced the future when he arrived in 1978, all megawatt smile and hands ablaze.

“Eruption erupted through my radio as I was warming up on my guitar,” remembers Joe Satriani of the instrumental that marked the boldest line in the sand since Jimi Hendrix detonated the Bag O’ Nails nightclub in 1966. “I was instantly mesmerised by the sound. In that moment, Eddie captured my heart with his musicianship. He expressed his joy of music in every note he played.”

In modern times, virtuoso players are 10-a-penny, Eruption a rite of passage. But it’s a hard thing to convey the impact of hearing the second track from Van Halen’s self-titled debut album back in 1978. There had been wizards, speedsters and sonic adventurers before – from Jimi’s outer-reaches space blues, to Clapton’s precocious strut on Hideaway, to Alvin Lee hitting what seemed like the redline with I’m Going Home at the Woodstock festival. But with Eruption, Van Halen left them all standing. “He basically came in and laid waste to the competition,” says Joe Bonamassa, “while changing the game like no-one since Hendrix. I’m just glad I was alive to witness it.”