Eddie van Halen, guitarist and founder of the group Van Halen – Foreign, has died

Santa Monica (United States), October 6, 2020 – Died Eddie van halen, legendary guitarist and founder of the homonymous group. After a long battle with cancer, Van Halen disappeared in Santa Monica, where he was admitted to St. John’s Hospital. Born in Amsterdam on January 26, 1955, Van Halen had seen his health deteriorate in recent days. Having suffered from cancer for more than a decade, in recent years he had alternated treatments between the United States and Germany. Eddie’s death was announced on social media by his son.

Eddie Van Halen, along with his brother Alex, founded the Van Halen band of the same name in 1972. The group has gone down in history for its instability; Over the years, vocalists like David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar have been successful, with 12 studio albums and tens of millions of copies sold. A crystalline guitarist, Eddie is recognized as one of the most influential and innovative musical personalities of the 20th century on the hard rock and heavy metal scene. Van Halen’s method of playing the guitar, two-handed, has made a school for decades among hard rock groups.

The group’s commercial success came in the second half of the eighties, notably with “1984”, the sixth album to stay away from the number one American hits of Michale Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ (whose ‘Beat it’ also featured with a solo by Van Halen). The next four albums ‘5150’ (1986), ‘OU812’ (1988), ‘For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge’ (1991) and ‘Balance’ (1995) topped the charts; The band subsequently slowed down their production and after a series of changes to ‘Van Halen III’ in 1998, it was a critical and sales failure. The group’s latest work, ‘A Different Kind of Truth’, is from 2012.