Eddie Van Halen is dead – VG

Rock band co-founder Van Halen passed away on Tuesday. This is confirmed by his son Wolfgang Van Halen in a message on Twitter.

The Dutch-American musician was born in Amsterdam in 1955 and turned 65.

Van Halen suffered from throat cancer and died at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica on Tuesday, reports celebrity website TMZ.

– My heart is broken. Eddie was not only a god on guitar, but a genuinely beautiful soul, writes Gene Simmons of the band Kiss. On twitter.

His son Wolfgang Van Halen writes on Twitter that he refuses to believe he has to write this:

– My father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, lost his long and hard battle with cancer this morning. He was the best father I could ask for. Every moment I shared with him on and off stage was a gift.

– My heart is broken and I do not think I can be completely well after this loss, writes the son.

He replaced Michael Anthony as bassist in his father’s band in 2006 and went on his first tour with the band the following year. In 2011, he starred in the album “A Different Kind of Truth.”

Former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar wrote on Twitter that he was devastated.

– Broken and speechless. My thoughts go to the family.

Hagar was hired in 1985 to replace David Lee Roth. She sang in the band until 1996 before retiring, and returned in 2003 before retiring two years later.

Lenny Kravitz writes that The sky will be electric tonight

Musician Yusuf Islam, known as Cat Stevens, also shines peace on the guitarist’s memory.

– A guitar innovator with a strong spirit of musical and technical exploration. Prayers and thoughts with your friends and family, he writes.

One of the greatest and best-selling songwriters of all time, Diane Warren, writes that guitars around the world cry silently.

– Shred In Power Eddie Van Halen, tweets Warren.

An eminent guitarist

Well-known Norwegian guitarists have also had a special relationship with Van Halen.

Guitarist and leader of the band Dance With a Stranger, Frode Alnæs, is a longtime fan of Eddie Van Halen.

– It was sad to hear that one of the greatest in his field has passed away. He was truly a virtuoso on his guitars, but one who created tasteful music with his eminent guitar playing. He played very fast, but with good taste, Alnæs tells VG.

Remember especially the Van Halen touch on the Michael Jackson classic “Beat it”, which is characterized by an innovative way of playing the guitar.

– I was in full control even with both hands on the fretboard. He was an incredibly skilled guitarist, but he was also characterized by great musicality. One of the most important, concludes Alnæs.

Svein Dag Hauge, a longtime Lava guitarist and contributor to several Norwegian record productions, also praises Eddie Van Halen.

– He was a man who changed the world of the guitar. For us guitarists, he was the hardest heavy rock guitarist in the world. No one had ever seen a two-handed technique like the one Van Halen mastered. He came up with a whole new way of playing guitar, Hauge tells VG.

Hauge played in his day with the late guitarist Marius Müller on Lava and on various record productions.

– Marius adopted some of the techniques that Van Halen used. It sounded so harsh, it had dazzling technique, but at the same time it had such strong musicality, Hauge describes.

Well-known Norwegian guitarist Mads Eriksen describes Eddie Van Halen as his greatest source of inspiration.

– He has been a great role model for me and the guitarist with whom I have had a solid relationship, says Eriksen to VG.

– He was completely unique and came up with a new style that we hadn’t heard or seen before. His sound was so good, I would say majestic, but at the same time warm, describes Eriksen, who is a well-known guitarist.

– Van Halen was without a doubt the best guitarist of his genre. Something completely new occurred to him. He was for the ’70s what Jimi Hendrix was for the’ 60s. He’s the most influential guitarist since Hendrix, he says.

Did you hear it live yourself?

– No, I never really understood that, but I sat down and my jaw dropped when I got their first album. In 1979, I attended a professional meeting in the United States, where I saw Van Halen. But I got the impression that he was not quite in shape, to put it that way, says Eriksen.

Norwegian rapper Jørgen Nordeng, known as Joddski, also expresses his grief over the guitarist’s death on Facebook.

– Eddie was the toughest guitarist in the world, and Dave made all the other hard rock leaders look like trash. Van Halen’s albums have stuck, unlike other things we liked back then, and it’s a JOY to hear the “Women and Children First” album to this day.

Music journalist Asbjørn Slettemark also illuminates the guitarist’s memory on Facebook.

– Eddie van Halen. Guitarist in perhaps the coolest band of all time. So fat that they became the solution to everything in South Park. Rest in peace.

Long battle against cancer

Eddie Van Halen first began cancer treatment in 2000, removing about a third of his tongue. In 2002, he was declared cancer free.

The guitarist has had problems with alcohol and drugs, which led him to undergo rehab in 2007. He also underwent surgery for diverticulitis in 2012.

According to TMZ, the fight against neck cancer has continued for the past decade, and it is said to have flown between the United States and Germany for five years to treat cancer.

In 2019, he was hospitalized after reacting poorly to cancer treatment, writes the New York Post.

Mark Stone, who was the band’s original bassist, also passed away earlier this year due to cancer.

Together with his brother Alex Van Halen and Mark Stone, the trio formed the band Mammoth in 1974, before changing the name to Van Halen. They then found their vocalist in David Lee Roth, who remained with the band until 1984.

The debut album “Van Halen” was released in 1978 with great success, reaching number 19 on the Billboard Top 200.

Despite numerous vocalists over the years, the rock band produced 12 albums over five decades that sold tens of millions of copies.

Van Halen is on the list of the 20 best-selling artists in history and has sold more than 75 million records.

Eddie Van Halen describes himself as a virtuoso with full control of the instrument, fast and innovative.

He was known for his special playing style with a lot of use of so-called tapping, where the strings are struck directly on the guitar fretboard. In 2012, he was named number one in Guitar Worlds magazine’s Readers Ranking of the 100 Greatest Guitarists in History.

The band was honored with a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007 and has had nine albums on the VG Chart.

Among the band’s biggest hits are 1984’s “Jump” and “Panama.”

Eddie Van Halen became known as one of the best guitarists in the world, and in 2011 he was ranked number eight on the Rolling Stones 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time list.

In addition to the songs he recorded with his own band, he was also known for recording the guitar solo on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”

Eddie Van Halen was born in Amsterdam, Holland in 1955, and his full name was Edward Lodewijk Van Halen. The family moved to the United States in 1962 and settled in Pasadena, California, where they began their musical career in the 1970s.

The case is being updated