Legendary guitarist Eddie Van Halen dies of cancer

Guitarist Eddie Van Halen performing in Canada in 2015.

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In the jewelry industry, the most valuable colored gemstones (emerald, ruby, and sapphire) are called the Big Three. In the music industry there is overwhelmingly unanimous agreement on who are the two greatest rock guitarists of all time, that is, the last seventy years: Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. Arguments arise about who should be in third place. Many see Eddie Van Halen at the helm, who was born in the Netherlands in 1955 and whose full name was Edward Lodewijk Van Halen.

He and his brother Alex, who was two years older than him, received piano lessons at a young age. That laid the foundation for their musical careers. The Van Halens emigrated to the United States in the early 1960s. At first, the youngest turned to drums, but then switched to the instrument that his brother learned to emulate from the admired Cream guitarist Eric Clapton. Instead, Alex took over the orphan drums. This exchange marked the beginning of a rock fairy tale.

The rock sensation of 1978

Eddie and Alex teamed up with singer David Lee Roth and bassist Michael Anthony and founded the group Mammoth, which soon after became Van Halen with the same lineup. Eddie Van Halen impressed audiences and professionals with his unusual and virtuous two-handed tapping technique. You met rock producer Ted Templeman, who had already led the Doobie Brothers to success. The debut “Van Halen” was the rock sensation of 1978 in America.

While three chords were enough for guitarists in UK punk rock bands, Eddie Van Halen’s terrific playing delighted even those who had nothing more to do with Hendrix, Clapton or Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. The unbridled narcissistic spectacle of David Lee Roth, a latex and lycra sex symbol that no other rock star copied in the split, did the rest.

Eddie Van Halen soon received regular awards from relevant trade magazines. He was also in the service of Michael Jackson, but the epoch-making solo of his song “Beat It” did not appear in the credits. Drugs and alcohol joined the stardom in great numbers. For the moment, the addiction did not detract from the success, in 1984 Van Halen celebrated a monstrous success with “Jump.”

Eddie Van Halen jumps to the end of the smash hit “Jump.” Recorded from a concert in East Rutherford, NJ, in 2004.

John Munson / AP THE STAR LEDGER

The eighties and nineties revolved around the musician who did not want to become a drummer and who built and modified guitars himself. As a general rule, the inventor started with the Fender Stratocaster models. In the spring, which was marred by the corona pandemic, “Van Halen’s Top 10 Guitar Riffs” were uploaded to YouTube, and thousands of guitar students are trying hard.

A bow to Mozart

Eddie Van Halen was one of the few to whom the “living legend” cliché was applied, having been known since 2000 that he had long battled cancer that attacked the tongue and later the larynx. This after finally defeating alcohol addiction in the late 1990s.

Van Halen was married to actress Valerie Bertinelli from 1981 to 2007. They named their son, born in 1991, Wolfgang (after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart). Like his father, he started out as a drummer with music and went on, again like this, to guitar. And then, perhaps to impose himself, on the bass. At just 15 years old, he joined Van Halen to replace Michael Anthony.

In 2009, Eddie Van Halen married film actress Janie Liszewski. When he died Tuesday at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, his wife and ex-wife, his son Wolfgang and his brother Alex were with him. Friends and peers said their goodbyes on Twitter, including temporary Van Halen singer Sammy Hagar, Kiss’s Gene Simmons, Billy Idol, and surprisingly Yusuf aka Cat Stevens. Eddie Van Halen was 65 years old.