Rock guitar legend Eddie Van Halen dies of cancer at age 65
Oct 6, 2020, 12:53 PM | Updated: 2:16 pm
Eddie Van Halen (L) and Wolfgang Van Halen of Van Halen perform at their dress rehearsal for family and friends at the Forum on February 8, 2012 in Inglewood, California. Eddie Van Halen died Oct. 6, 2020. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Influential rock guitar legend Eddie Van Halen has died of cancer at age 65, his son announced Tuesday.
“I can’t believe I’m having to write this, but my father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, has lost his long and arduous battle with cancer this morning,” Wolfgang Van Halen posted on social media.
— Wolf Van Halen (@WolfVanHalen) October 6, 2020
Eddie Van Halen’s blistering guitar technique was the driving force behind the massive success of the band, Van Halen, he formed with his brother Alex on drums, Michael Anthony on bass and flamboyant lead singer David Lee Roth in the 1970s.
Their self-titled debut album, released in 1978, rocketed the band to fame and fortune behind future classic rock staples such as “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “Jamie’s Cryin'” and “Eruption” — the latter a perfect distillation of the lead guitarist’s pyrotechnics.
Eddie Van Halen’s riffs inspired a generation of guitarists and resonated beyond the world of hard rock, with his memorable solo helping propel Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” to the top of the charts.
Van Halen is among the top 20 best-selling artists of all time, and the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
Rolling Stone magazine put Eddie Van Halen at No. 8 in its list of the 100 greatest guitarists.
The band was nominated for five Grammy Awards — winning once for best hard rock performance for the album “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” in 1992.
Van Halen released albums on a yearly timetable — “Van Halen II” (1979), “Women and Children First” (1980), “Fair Warning” (1981) and “Diver Down” (1982) — until the monumental “1984,” which hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album charts (only behind Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”).
But strains between Roth and the band erupted after their 1984 world tour and Roth left. The group then recruited Sammy Hagar as lead singer — some critics called the new formulation “Van Hagar” — and the band went on to score its first No. 1 album with “5150,” More studio albums followed, including “OU812,” “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” and “Balance.” Hit singles included “Why Can’t This Be Love” and “When It’s Love.”
Hagar was ousted in 1996 and former Extreme singer Gary Cherone stepped in for the album “Van Halen III,” a stumble that didn’t lead to another album and the quick departure of Cherone. Roth would eventually return in 2007 and team up with the Van Halen brothers and Wolfgang Van Halen on bass for a tour, the album “A Different Kind of Truth” and the 2015 album “Tokyo Dome Live in Concert.”
Van Halen’s music has appeared in films as varied as “Superbad,” “Minions” and “Sing” as well as TV shows like “Glee” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” Video games such as “Gran Turismo 4” and “Guitar Hero” have used his riffs. “Jamie’s Cryin” was sampled by rapper Tone Loc in his hit “Wild Thing.”
For much of his career, Eddie Van Halen wrote and experimented with sounds while drunk or high or both. He revealed that he would stay in his hotel room drinking vodka and snorting cocaine while playing into a tape recorder. (Hagar’s 2011 autobiography “Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock” portrays Eddie as a violent, booze-addled vampire, living inside a garbage-strewn house.)
“I didn’t drink to party,” Van Halen told Billboard. “Alcohol and cocaine were private things to me. I would use them for work. The blow keeps you awake and the alcohol lowers your inhibitions. I’m sure there were musical things I would not have attempted were I not in that mental state.”
Eddie Van Halen was born in Amsterdam and his family immigrated to California in 1962 when he was 7. His father was a big band clarinetist who rarely found work after coming to the U.S., and their mother was a maid who had dreams of her sons being classical pianists. The Van Halens shared a house with three other families. Eddie and Alex had only each other, a tight relationship that flowed through their music.
“We showed up here with the equivalent of $50 and a piano,” Eddie Van Halen told The Associated Press in 2015. “We came halfway around the world without money, without a set job, no place to live and couldn’t even speak the language.”
He said his earliest memories of music were banging pots and pans together, marching to John Philip Sousa marches. At one point, Eddie got a drum set, which his older brother coveted.
“I never wanted to play guitar,” he confessed at a talk at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 2015. But his brother was good at the drums, so Eddie gave into his brother’s wishes: “I said, ‘Go ahead, take my drums. I’ll play your damn guitar.’”
He was a relentless experimenter who would solder different parts from different guitar-makers, including Gibson and Fender. He created his own graphic design for his guitars by adding tape to the instruments and then spray-painting them. He said his influences were Eric Clapton, and Jimi Hendrix.
Van Halen, sober since 2008, lost one-third of his tongue to a cancer that eventually drifted into his esophagus. In 1999, he had a hip replacement. He was married twice, to actress Valerie Bertinelli from 1981 to 2007 and then to stuntwoman-turned-publicist Janie Liszewski, whom he wed in 2009.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
