I remember first hearing Eddie Van Halen – I distinctly remember it was like hearing a guitar magician – as his playing was too fluid and fast to be done for real. But it was real!
Eddie Van Halen has got to be one of the most innovative guitarists that ever lived. Whilst he says he was not much influenced by Hendrix – the guitar innovator that came before him – he must have been affected by his sheer fearlessness when it comes to experimentation and the new guitar sounds he created.
Eddies guitar rig – while not small – is surprisingly simple as he comes from an era when fuzz and distortion were created by driving the power-amp rather than by external stomp-boxes and preamp gain stages. He achieved the massive overdrive by having his amp volumes on full and then lowering the who volume to listening level using an electrician’s device called a variac.
So in the years before the Internet and information and images were freely available at the touch of a button nobody could figure out how on earth he got his out of this world distortion sounds – let alone figure out how on earth his fingers (or what turned out to be his tapping technique) played so fast and accurately!