Revenge of the Guitar
(For Don, Aric and Mike)
by Matt Mattheisen
Click HERE for a larger version of the cover.
The year was 1978 and the entertainment industry had its face
buried in snowdrifts of cocaine. Eventually a producer would raise his
head from snorting a hastily cut line to give us crap like Man Beast! Myth or
Monster? and the Starland Vocal Band. Needless to say there wasn’t a lot
of product for the masses to be inspired or moved by. But, the muses
mercifully gave a gift that year of gigantic proportions that was so exciting
and technically brilliant that it not only revitalized the hapless consumer, it
changed the entertainment world as we knew it. Personally, it changed my
life and the lives of those around me for years to come. To this very day
we still talk about it.
No, it’s not Star Wars I’m referring to. It was the
first Van Halen album.
Remember the cover of the album? Look it up on Amazon
if you get a chance. It was divided up into four squares with each member
in their respective corner as if to say the band was ready to rock and conquer
the four corners of the earth. Fluorescent trails of light swirled
around Dave, Michael, Alex and Eddie’s bodies giving them an otherworldly
appearance as if they had just arrived to our planet via electrical storm.
I especially remember staring at the cover of the album and
concentrating on Eddie Van Halen’s guitar. It was a white, Stratocaster
style body with black racing stripes intersecting in different angles.
(Those stripes weren’t painted on by the way. For all you Van Halen
aficionados, the racing stripes were created with black electrical tape.)
I would stare at the guitar while listening to the album to see if there was
something contained on the guitar itself that made it sound so alien and
beautiful.
As for songs, the first track on the album was "Running With
The Devil." It wasn’t the strongest song but it proved to be a hit.
Most significant to the song was that the guitar work was quite pedestrian
considering the rest of the album. Producer and then coach for the band,
Gene Simmons of Kiss, probably suggested putting "Devil" as the album’s first
song due to its hit potential. Relevant to this debatable song placement
was the fact that Simmons was managing Liza Minelli’s career at the time so
Gene’s judgment, though not cocaine induced (Simmons was and always has been a
teetotaler), was nonetheless questionable.
The second track was Eddie’s unaccompanied guitar solo,
"Eruption." Whether you are a musician or not you have heard this song or
you are at least vaguely familiar of that which I speak. It is the most
celebrated and famous unaccompanied guitar solo in history. Rock
guitarists, jazz guitarists, classical guitarists, bass players, posers, punks,
Jews and Gentiles stopped in their tracks the first time they heard it.
There were moments when it sounded like a guitar, the power
chord intro, the slower pentatonic licks, but the rest of it sounded like it had
come from the mind of an insane genius. The jaw dropping speed, the dive
bomb whammy bar that punctuated each section of the solo and the sections of
furious tremolo picking made ones jaw drop but it was especially the ending of
the solo that would change guitar playing and rock and roll forever.
No one knew how Eddie played the ending. Guitar
teachers slowed the solo down to 16 rpms on their turntables but that proved to
be fruitless. Musicians congregated in music stores and clubs and
scratched their feathered manes in disbelief. Even when the band was playing
around Los Angeles, Eddie would often turn his back to the audience to retain
the mystery.
Eventually though, word had spread that at the end of
Eruption and throughout various other songs on the album, Eddie was doing
something called two-handed tapping. Basically what that means is that
instead of placing one hand on the guitar neck and using the other hand to pick,
Eddie fretted notes on the guitar neck with both hands. Yes, other
guitarists had done it before. Brian May from Queen, Billy Gibbons from ZZ
Top, but no one had done it so musically and exploited the technique to such a
creative and exciting degree up to that point. Eddie created long
interludes with the technique that were breathtakingly fast and employed large,
dramatic intervals that shook the listeners perceptions of how rock guitar
should sound. He played scales and runs that were long, liquid ideas that
were thrilling to listen to. And all the old wankers with their
multimillion album sales and tired old chops mumbled to themselves in their
mansions and stared at their guitars as "Eruption" kept playing over and over in
their heads. Eddie did it all with not a lick of formal training, without a hint
of studio trickery and without a self indulged stiff British accent. He
was an immigrant, half-breed punk with a smart-ass grin who along with his band
mates made the turgid musical world of the late seventies their newly conquered
realm.
From that point on Eddie was instantly placed amongst the
rock guitar gods. There was no waiting in the guitar god antechamber for a
body of work to be built or legends to be fabricated. Clapton was a fair
guitarist when he was with the Yardbirds but it took him years and several
albums to ramp up to legendary status. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were on
the same career track. They had at least several albums to their credit
when musicians and writers began to notice and appreciate their talent.
The only other guitar player to achieve such meteoric achievement in such a
short time was Hendrix. The only other guitar player since Eddie to reach
it was Yngwie Malmsteen. (The Great Swede terrorized guitar players in the late
eighties.)
As for my own epiphany back in that ancient year of 1978, I
had borrowed a recorded cassette copy of that first Van Halen album from a
friend. I had a cheap tape recorder with a small built in speaker. A
type similar to those the teacher would use to play the audio to a filmstrip we
were watching in class. I plugged in my dad’s big pair of headphones into
the tape player and lay back on my bed to listen. I made it through
"Running With The Devil" without much fanfare because I had heard the song many
times before on the radio. Then began "Eruption" and my body was instantly
scattered with endorphins and my head felt tingly all over. I stopped the
tape player and rewound the song. I wondered if the guitar player switched
back and forth between a guitar and keyboard. Maybe the tape had suddenly
sped up as if it was being eaten? I listened again and again and again.
Each time I became more inspired and stupefied.
Up to that evening I had thought that I might want to play
guitar someday. From that night forward I became driven and obsessed.
Practicing four hours a day, sleeping with the guitar, reading about it, talking
about it and now writing about it. I have never been the same since that
evening. I gotta think I wasn’t the only one that was inspired by Eddie’s
solo. As a matter of fact, I have students that still bring the solo in to
learn.
One thing that I also remember about that evening and the
experience was a daydream I had as I was listening to the song through numerous
times. I imagined the school music teacher had given me a showcase during
our spring concert to play a guitar solo in front of the school. I played
"Eruption." Of course I blew everyone’s mind because that’s what happens
in fantasies like that. And undoubtedly in fantasies like that, there was
also this girl in it that I had a huge crush on. After I was done playing,
she came up to me, smitten by my prodigious talent and energy, and coyly asked
if I wanted to make out by the jungle gym. I turned her down to the cheers
of my friends, some of whom I currently play music with, and I then imagined we
rushed outside and ran flea flickers while the rest of the audience spilled into
the parking lot to their station wagons.
Star Wars was a great movie and a significant event during
that year of our Lord 1978, but that first Van Halen album, that was the New
World.
May the Rock be with you.
